The Intersection of Belief and Place
A Feature Review of
Sanctifying Suburbia: How the Suburbs Became the Promised Land for American Evangelicals
Brian J. Miller
Paperback: Oxford University Press, 2025
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Reviewed by Justin Lonas
My friend Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt writes about the “archive” each of us carries around in our heads by which we make sense of new things we encounter. Our idea of “success” looks a certain way based on the examples of success we’ve seen in our lives or represented to us on screen or in art. Similarly, our perception of “home,” “family,” “happiness,” “danger,” or any number of other concepts is more subjective than we may want to believe, shaped by a long (often unconscious) process of inculturation.
In Sanctifying Suburbia: How the Suburbs Became the Promised Land for American Evangelicals, sociologist Brian J. Miller offers a compelling analysis of how many American Christian’s idea of “church” came to be a large building surrounded by copious parking which one visits primarily to consume content and services. He examines how the increasingly suburban nature of American life through the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st has shaped our perception and expectation of the “Christian life,” but also evangelical visions of morality, flourishing, and political engagement.
That evangelicals in America are a predominately suburban breed is a commonplace, but Miller demonstrates through a data-driven analysis that this perception is rooted in demographic realities. In looking at General Social Survey data and some deep research on other public records like directories of churches, he shows broadly (and in minute detail through a case study of Chicagoland) that the center of gravity of evangelicalism really has moved from cities and rural areas into suburbs over the past century. Of course, evangelicals are not alone among American religious groups in following the majority of Americans and their disposable income toward the suburban dream (79). Still, the percentage of people engaged with white evangelical religious traditions in suburban counties has continued to increase even after the general post-World War II suburban population boom plateaued (158).
Miller also looks beyond raw demographic data to explore the ways that some suburbs implicitly and explicitly encouraged “moral living” in ordinances and institutions through the example of Wheaton, Illinois (110-114). He and chapter coauthor Ben Norquist further investigate the cultural, financial, and employment incentives that led to the development of certain “Evangelical Meccas” housing clusters of influential institutions—Wheaton, Orange County and east Los Angeles suburbs, and the smaller cities of Grand Rapids and Colorado Springs. Such “power centers” of evangelicalism tend to play an outsized role in setting the tone of evangelicalism through higher education, publishing, policy and advocacy, and even humanitarian work. They benefit from proximity and access to centers of wealth and power but often take minimal interest in addressing the social problems that attend such centers.
At the same time, Miller notes that evangelicalism in America is not a monolith. He cites the examples of Philadelphia-based activist and author Shane Claiborne and the late Manhattan pastor Tim Keller as evangelicals who both expressed love for cities and concern for broader social issues (160-161). In my work in relief, development, and advocacy, I’ve seen many large and small churches and organizations faithfully engaged in both urban core environments and under-served rural areas as well.
Miller brings forward the idea of “cultural toolkits”—ways of thinking and being that are often subconscious but readily transferrable among different populations—suggesting that evangelical Christians in the United States operate from a particular frame that has been inexorably shaped by the convenience, affluence, and insularity of suburban life (163). This is a key concept to recognize if American Christians are going to be able to disentangle which aspects of their faith are truly biblical and normative and which are merely culture-bound and temporary. Miller acknowledges that many aspects of standard toolkit—single-family housing, car-bound communities, single-earner households, ethnically homogenous churches, etc.—already seem inadequate to address the core concerns of a changing suburban landscape that is multi-ethnic, experiencing global economic pressures, and facing similar problems (poverty, drugs, gun violence, family breakdown) as more urban and rural areas (181).
The book is a work of academic research, operating at a level of statistical language and information density that will make it inaccessible to many readers. But it is nevertheless a vital contribution to a larger conversation about what it means to be Christian in an America increasingly divided between the rise of an authoritarian Christian nationalism and a large population who are religiously unaffiliated. Perhaps the growing disconnect between suburban “toolkits” and suburban realities even contributes to both—fomenting fear of immigrants and minorities and diversity of lifestyle, and then those trends further pushing people away from Christianity as it becomes identified with them.
I suppose my evangelical upbringing is a bit of an outlier according to the statistics Miller shares. I’ve never experienced the fully insular experience of suburban life that many Americans think of as “normal” life. My family lived in urban environments in apartment buildings when I was a young child and in small rural towns from elementary school through high school. I went to college in an even smaller community and then moved close to the center of a mid-sized city as a young adult. My family and I now technically live in an older inner-ring suburb of that city, but are still only 10 minutes from downtown.
Nevertheless, the church life I experienced through all those years (whether in cities or small towns) was deeply influenced by suburban values or “toolkits”—nuclear-family-centered definitions of Christian responsibility to others, youth activities focused on ginning up spiritual experiences without sacrificing comfort, “othering” non-Christians and ethnic minorities while traveling to do ministry with them, floating above place in regard to the actual neighbors near our churches, being more concerned with abstract moral imperatives and political viewpoints than with the real concerns of our communities, and more.
Miller’s book raises and attempts to answer some vital questions of who is shaping whom. Did evangelicals create the suburban American dream, or has suburbia twisted the gospel into its image with grave consequences for the church and the country as a whole? Maybe it is both. Miller offers a powerful examination of the intersection between beliefs and places (183), reminding us that social location matters more to our biblical interpretation than most evangelicals are comfortable with examining, and that we leave these stones unturned at our peril.
Justin Lonas
Justin Lonas is a poet, writer, cook, hiker, and amateur theologian. He holds an M.Div. from Reformed Theological Seminary. He and his wife Rachel live in Chattanooga, Tennessee with their four daughters. By day, he serves churches and ministry organizations around the world through the Chalmers Center at Covenant College. His writing often explores nature, literature, and the church's ongoing struggle to live out the way of Jesus. Justin's website is jryanlonas.com.
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