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Born Again: The Evangelical Movement

Growth.

The growth of evangelicalism and fundamentalism in the 1980s was a phenomenon that extended well beyond the religious sphere into the cultural and political. Known by many names (born-again Christians, evangelicals, Pentecostals, The New Religious Right) these Christians, mostly Protestants, grew in numbers like no single Protestant denomination. In the 1980s fundamentalists, or militant evangelicals, shared a disregard for modernity as sinful and insisted on the inerrancy of the Bible, the doctrine of dispensational premillennialism in regard to the Second Coming of Christ (the Rapture), and the separation of their churches from other Christian groups that did not believe as they did. They also actively pursued an entrance into the arena of conservative politics. The premier fundamentalist preachers of the era were the Reverend Jerry Falwell, Rev. Richard Zone, Rev. James Robison, and the Rev. Marion "Pat" Robertson. While...

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