In Paradise Joe's a rogue cultural sociologist demonstrates how evangelicalism came to occupy such a large portion of the ideological heart of American society and politics. He transforms what might have been a conventional academic case study into an entertaining, jargon-free tale of one small Christian college community, an historical and contemporary ethnographic account filled with memorable local and national characters, all the while gleaning from it the larger meaning and significance of evangelicalism in American life. Why has evangelicalism made a progressive, European-style social democracy—and universal healthcare—a virtual impossibility? Why the corrosive distrust of government and science, the malingering legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, the legal and economic inequality, the persistent urban/rural antagonisms? In sum, why are we so different from our closest European ancestors and kin? Paradise Joe's takes these and other daunting questions head on. Observe here the crazy old aunt of evangelicalism dragged down from the attic and cast out into the open, exposed to the light of day for the first time.