Randall Balmer's Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory is an insightful and engaging journey into the world of conservative Christians in America. Originally published fifteen years ago and the basis for an award-winning PBS documentary, this timely new edition arrives just as recent elections have left an ever-growing number of secular Americans wondering exactly how the other half thinks.
From Oregon to Florida, and from Texas to North Dakota, Balmer offers an immensely readable tour of the highways and byways of American evangelicalism. We visit a revival meeting in Florida, an Indian reservation in the Dakotas, a trade show for Christian booksellers, and a fundamentalist Bible camp in the Adirondacks.
For this fourth edition, Balmer adds two chapters, one on the phenomenally popular "Painter of Light," Thomas Kinkade, and one on Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life. Through the eyes of these and other people Balmer meets on his journeys, we arrive at a more accurate and balanced understanding of an abiding tradition that, as the author argues, is both rich in theological insights and mired in contradictions. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory offers readers a genuine insight into the appeal that the evangelicals movement holds for thousands of Americans.

From Publishers Weekly

The variegated forms of popular evangelicalism--fundamentalist, charismatic, Pentecostal--are investigated in this well-researched study. As Balmer, professor of religion at Columbia University, crisscrosses the country visiting a Dallas seminary, an Episcopal Indian settlement, a bible camp in the Adirondacks, an evangelical filmmaker, he explores not only the depth and variety of the appeal of American evangelicalism, but also his own ambivalence springing from his early grounding "in the protective cocoon of this subculture." A personal journal of discovery as well as a substantial social history, the book presents men and women who, in their stories, render a collage of a religious movement.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Balmer here presents a cross section of modern evangelical Christianity in America in 11 chapters, each sketching some aspect of this world from church camps and seminaries to missions and tent meetings. Every chapter is a narrative account of the author's experiences and conversations plus his own interpretations. Balmer (religion, Columbia Univ.) also gives historical and theological background when it is needed. Balmer grew up in the evangelical world, but his presentation is very even-handed; he is neither defending nor vilifying. Rather, he is trying to give his readers a feel for this very American tradition with a look at both the insights and problems that make this subculture so fascinating. Recommended for public libraries.
- C. Robert Nixon, M.L.S., Lafayette, Ind.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.