Can I add a bit about The Cross and the Switchblade? It was wildly popular in Evangelical circles when I was a child and teenager. I read it more than once as it was required reading in different Christian schools I attended. The book epitomizes Evangelical exceptionalism and Christian moral Othering.

It promotes the false notion that a “born again" experience is all that’s necessary to stop violent crime, substance abuse, and poverty.

And it does so smugly, by holding up Evangelical Christians as good, happy, industrious people compared to the rest of the world, who struggle with issues that make them not only unhappy but more than vaguely distasteful and objectionable.