How the Bible Works: An Anthropological Study of Evangelical Biblicism

I read this book for Dr. Malley's Introduction to Anthropology course at the University of Michigan, and I was impressed. His knowledge of how the Bible is seen by churchgoers is second to none, and throughout the book the reader comes to "know" the people a the Creekside Baptist Church, though that name is a pseudonym. I wouldn't recommend this book for coffee-table reading, as there are lots of technical details; it is better suited for a reader in the academic field.

For anyone interested in understanding the mechanics of American biblicism, this is perhaps the best anthropological study that could be done on the subject. With a fundamentalist/evangelical history in his own life, Malley gets to the core issues with great precision; yet he approaches this study very objectively. This book is not a polemic. It is a fantastic and enlightening empirical study on biblicism. So much information is packed into relatively few pages that you'll likely want to read it multiple times, letting the insights soak in further with each read.