El-Faizy, Monique

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El-Faizy, Monique

PERSONAL:

Married; children: two sons. Education: University of Pennsylvania, bachelor's degree, 1989; Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, M.S.J., 1992.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY.

CAREER:

Journalist and freelance writer.

WRITINGS:

God and Country: How Evangelicals Have Become America's New Mainstream, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including London Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, St. Petersburg Times, Cosmopolitan (UK), GQ, Parents, Moscow Magazine, Moscow Guardian, Philadelphia Inquirer, Associated Press, Bergen Record, and New York Daily News.

SIDELIGHTS:

Monique El-Faizy is a freelance writer and journalist in the New York area. Supported by her studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, El-Faizy began her writing career contributing to a number of big-name periodicals around the world, including the London Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, St. Petersburg Times, Cosmopolitan (UK), GQ, Parents, Moscow Magazine, Moscow Guardian, Philadelphia Inquirer, Associated Press, Bergen Record, and New York Daily News.

From her perspective as a self-proclaimed former insider, El-Faizy wrote her first book, God and Country: How Evangelicals Have Become America's New Mainstream, about the Evangelical community in the United States. In it she outlines how this group, which may be as large as forty percent of the population, exerts an increasing amount of influence in politics and social life, particularly during the presidency of George W. Bush. She also covers the Christian publishing industry and popular music scenes for their roles in promoting and solidifying the evangelical movement. Reviews for El-Faizy's debut book were mostly positive. Marcia Ford, writing on FaithfulReader.com, remarked: "From page one, El-Faizy demonstrates that she has a firm grasp on the realities of the evangelical world." In Christianity Today, David Bebbington wrote that "the book is uniformly fair-minded, maintaining dispassionate rapportage, and offering some highly sympathetic individual pen-portraits." A contributor to Publishers Weekly concluded: "Well-written, engaging, and informative, this snapshot of American evangelicalism is a must-read for students of American religion."