Post-War fundamentalism is marked by optimism, mass revival meetings, and disdain for worldly politics. But current events — from America's growing anti-Communism to the election of Catholic John Kennedy to the Civil Rights movement — prod evangelical Christians into the political arena. Dismayed by Supreme Court rulings banning school prayer and encouraged by the Goldwater '64 campaign, conservative Christians rise up in Anaheim, California, to launch a nationwide revolt against sex education.

The symbiotic alliance between Billy Graham and Richard Nixon foreshadows the coming union of religion and politics. The marriage is consummated in Kanahwa County, West Virginia, where national conservative strategists help escalate a local textbook controversy into a major conflagration of jailings, bombings, and a miners' strike. Meanwhile, Watergate teaches Graham the perils of political entanglement. But from Berkeley's Jesus People to Kanahwa's fundamentalists, the die has been cast — and the Religious Right is born.