The Anointed was nominated for the 2013 Grawemeyer Award, valued at $100,000. It is probably a long shot, but we are hoping. Here is the book description submitted for the nomination:
The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age By Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson
Statement supporting nomination for the 2013 Grawemeyer Award in Religion
American evangelicals have long struggled with secular knowledge that challenges their faith. Believers are understandably protective of faith commitments around which they orient their lives and reluctant to surrender those commitments, even in the face of compelling evidence that they need to do so. The desire to keep secular challenges—evolution, the big bang theory, religious pluralism, homosexuality as “normal”— at bay creates an opening for authority figures that assure believers that their faith is safe and that these secular challenges can be ignored as nothing more than anti-religious prejudice. The result is a real tension within evangelicalism between Christians that accept the consensus of the various scholarly communities and those that reject them and embrace discredited ideas like young earth creationism.
The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age spotlights this tension, arguing that American evangelicalism is not the politically monolithic, textbook red-state fundamentalism that elected George W. Bush, opposes gay marriage, abortion, and evolution, and promotes apathy about global warming as the media portrayals suggest. Such a simplistic view understates the real tensions within evangelicalism, which is often an insular world where serious disagreements are invisible to secular and religiously liberal media consumers.
Evangelicalism struggles with this tension. The Anointed addresses a key question at the heart of this struggle: Why do the majority of evangelical Christians follow leaders with dubious credentials when they have other options? Why do tens of millions of Americans prefer to get their science from Ken Ham, founder of the creationist organization Answers in Genesis, who has no scientific expertise (and built the much ridiculed Creation Museum in Kentucky), rather than from his fellow evangelical Francis Collins, current Director of the National Institutes of Health and author of a major bestseller containing a winsome evangelical testimony? Why is pseudo-historian David Barton so influential and the highly respected Mark Noll all but unknown?
Exploring intellectual authority within evangelicalism, The Anointed reveals how America’s populist ideals, anti-intellectualism, and religious free market, along with the concept of anointing—being chosen by God to speak for him like the biblical prophets—empowers a conservative leadership isolated from the world of secular arts and sciences. Today, charismatic and media-savvy creationists, historians, psychologists, and biblical exegetes receive more funding and airtime than their more qualified counterparts. Though a growing minority of evangelicals engages with contemporary scholarship, the community’s authority structure still encourages anointed leaders to assume positions of leadership. Educated evangelicals are growing increasingly alarmed about the popularity of these anointed leaders and their discredited messages and are searching for ways to help their communities move past these indefensible positions, without sabotaging cherished religious beliefs.
(Here is the catalog language)
The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age
American evangelicalism often appears as a politically monolithic, textbook red-state fundamentalism that elected George W. Bush, opposes gay marriage, abortion, and evolution, and promotes apathy about global 
warming. Prominent public figures hold forth on these topics, speaking with great authority for millions of followers. Authors Stephens and Giberson, with roots in the evangelical tradition, argue that this popular impression understates the diversity within evangelicalism—an often insular world where serious disagreements are invisible to secular and religiously liberal media consumers. Yet, in the face of this diversity, why do so many people follow leaders with dubious credentials when they have other options? Why do tens of millions of Americans prefer to get their science from Ken Ham, founder of the creationist Answers in Genesis, who has no scientific expertise, rather than from his fellow evangelical Francis Collins, current Director of the National Institutes of Health?
Exploring intellectual authority within evangelicalism, the authors reveal how America’s populist ideals, anti-intellectualism, and religious free market, along with the concept of anointing—being chosen by God to speak for him like the biblical prophets—established a conservative evangelical leadership isolated from the world of secular arts and sciences.
Today, charismatic and media-savvy creationists, historians, psychologists, and biblical exegetes continue to receive more funding and airtime than their more qualified counterparts. Though a growing minority of evangelicals engage with contemporary scholarship, the community’s authority structure still encourages the “anointed” to assume positions of leadership.
Publisher: Belknap: Harvard University, October 2011
Order The Anointed
Reviews:
"The authors are evangelicals, a historian and a physics professor who here take a stand against false prophets within the evangelical movement, men who isolate it from scientific understanding and intellectual engagement." —Library Journal
Two Evangelical Christian college professors rise triumphantly to the challenge of explaining the leaders and the culture of the religious Right without rancor or condescension. Those leaders, most lacking academic credentials for the positions they take, include creationist Ken Ham, Christian-America propagandist D. James Kennedy, amateur historian David Barton, family psychologist James Dobson (the only genuine professional among them), and End Times biblical exegetes Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye. They are portrayed within the historical contexts of their fields in four long chapters, for instance, Lindsey and LaHaye within the American apocalypticism that earlier produced the Millerites. To illustrate what Stephens and Giberson say is a common development, the invaluable fifth chapter limns a 25-year-old and the “parallel culture” of the religious Right in which he grew up,
gradually abandoning the peculiarities pushed by its leaders without leaving the faith. The last chapter argues the typically American character of the distinctive evangelical causes and their leaders, who, if not scientists, historians, or biblical scholars, are all business entrepreneurs who “grew” self-led organizations. — Booklist
Critical Review on Patheos.com by a conservative historian.
Cover blurbs:
“Stephens and Giberson have produced a stunning and well-documented indictment of the Evangelical right wing. Here is a ‘must read’ for anyone wanting an insight into one of the most powerful religious-political movements in modern American culture.”
—Owen Gingerich, author of God’s Universe
“Two talented writers join forces to introduce us to some of the most influential religious and cultural leaders in contemporary America—such ‘experts’ as Ken Ham, David Barton, Jim Dobson, and Hal Lindsey. I know of no better place to discover how the conservative half of America lives and thinks.”
—Ronald L. Numbers, author of The Creationists: From Creation Science to Intelligent Design
“This is an important book on a pressing topic that should be read by everyone concerned with the place of religion in American life today.”
—Michael Ruse, author of Charles Darwin
“The Anointed demonstrates how questionable ‘experts’ emerge and flourish within American evangelicalism. Stephens and Giberson function as knowledgeable guides into this intriguing—and troubling—‘parallel universe.’”
—Randall Balmer, author of The Making of Evangelicalism