Jon A. Shields's starting point in this provocatively titled volume is the remarkable achievement represented by the rise of the Christian Right. Conservative evangelicals were among the most alienated and politically withdrawn citizens in the country in the early 1970s. Moreover, the theological development of premillennialism constituted a strong cultural barrier to their mobilization. From this inauspicious starting point, the leaders of the Christian Right have created a bedrock constituency for the Republican Party—more engaged, better organized, and with greater political education than any other group in America. And all of this happened much more recently than many realize. Shields uses National Election Study (NES) data to show that the key juncture in the rise of the Christian Right was not the Moral Majority and the Reagan “revolution” of 1980 but, instead, the rise of the Christian Coalition almost a decade later. Only in the 1990s did the Christian Right rise to true political prominence.

Yet Shields scarcely questions how this remarkable transformation took place. He is interested instead in exploring what it all means for a democratic polity. The central argument of the book is that the Christian Right contributes to the vitality of American democracy in four major ways. First, its leaders of repeatedly educate members of the movement in the need to use logic and rational argument, rather than religious dogma, in advocacy for the movement's goals. Second, the vast majority of these activists are civil and respectful in their engagement both with the general public and those with whom they disagree. Third, the Christian Right regularly and strenuously seeks to engage in public debate over the issues it finds most important, a willingness not matched by their opponents on the Left. And fourth, the Christian Right has succeeded in bringing a large segment of American citizens—evangelical Christians—into the political fold for the first time in almost a century.

Shields suggests that these activists engage in politics in these ways primarily, if not exclusively, because it is in their interest to do so. As their movement lies outside the cultural mainstream, leaders and activists are strongly motivated to put forth secular arguments for their positions. Resorting to theology, by contrast, hurts their case and has a tendency to marginalize their concerns. Because their movement is widely portrayed as militant and unyielding by an unsympathetic press, they have a strong interest in engagement that is observably calm, rational, and without rancor or violence. The Christian Right, which seeks to change the status quo and have its message heard, has much to gain (and little to lose) by public debate with its adversaries on the Left. With Christian fundamentalists representing a potentially important voting bloc, it makes sense that political entrepreneurs have sought to organize them.

Shields makes his case by using NES data and rich qualitative data drawn from interviews with Christian Right leaders, texts from their publications and speeches, and ethnographic observation of their meetings, rallies, and protests. He argues powerfully that the way in which activists actually engage in the political process—rather than simply how they respond to survey questions about tolerance or compromise—is the key to evaluating their democratic contributions. In highlighting the importance of grassroots engagement to participatory democracy, Shields joins a well-established chorus of other scholars who have come to similar conclusions (Dana Fisher's Activism, Inc. [2006] and Theda Skocpol's Diminished Democracy [2003] come immediately to mind). The new data on how this grassroots mobilization works on the conservative end of the political spectrum is all the more useful for being both qualitative and quantitative.

Going further, Shields also wants to provide a normative evaluation of the quality of the Christian Right's contribution. The depth of moral and political philosophy in the book, however, is much thinner than the data presented. For example, the author argues that the Christian Right's contributions to democracy should be judged on the process it uses to achieve its policy preferences, rather than on the content of these preferences themselves. Yet this clear division between process (means) and policy goals (ends) is overly simplistic. Surely, we would not conclude that a movement that seeks to jail all citizens with HIV, but that pursues that goal through secular argument, civil debate, and the mobilization of a previously silent constituency, constitutes a virtue to the democratic polity, would we? More realistically, can we as easily separate moral evaluation of means and ends when we move away from the abortion issue and toward the Christian Right's other hallmark issues, such as opposition to gay marriage or support for prayer and creationism in the public schools?

The focus on a moral valuation of the Christian Right's contributions leads the book away from some potentially useful analysis regarding moral suasion in social movements. In particular, Shields repeatedly makes the point that social movement leaders are faced with a fundamental tension between the need to mobilize their base (with strident rhetoric, the demonization of the enemy, and consciously Christian/biblical appeals) and the need to affect public policy (with moderated rhetoric, civil engagement, and secular appeals). This is an interesting point, and one that the impressive array of data he has collected on the Christian Right might help us better understand. But while he notes this tension, he does little to unpack it, model its dynamics, or analyze its sources or its effects. A more thorough engagement with the literature on social movements, in both political science and sociology, might be of benefit. The work on framing processes, for example, has much to say about exactly these kinds of tensions and how they are resolved.

Although Shields's central argument is that the Christian Right makes important contributions to the democratic process (and, in comparative terms, greater contributions than their opponents on the Left), he is not blind to some of the more authoritarian threads of the movement. He addresses the radicalized elements throughout his analysis, often finding that they are small and marginalized, even within the movement. Perhaps more importantly, he notes that Christian Right activists as a group bring decidedly little moral skepticism to their political participation, a fact that significantly dilutes their contribution to deliberative democracy.

The normative focus of his argument notwithstanding, Shields brings to light a wealth of new data on the Christian Right in a way that helps us better think about the historical rise of the movement, as well as its similarities to and differences from the far better scrutinized social movements of the Left. His organization of this data around the norms of deliberative and participatory democracy helps us deepen our understanding of one of the most active areas of civic engagement in the United States over the last several decades. These contributions make The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right of use to students, scholars, and journalists alike.