Check the nightstand of any adventurous young Christian in America these days and you're likely to find a dog-eared Bible, some daily inspirations, even a copy of the recent sleeper hit The Gospel According to Tony Soprano. On top of the pile, though, bookmarked by yesterday's church bulletin, chances are you'll come across a title by Donald Miller -- a 34-year-old insider who has lately made it his mission to shake the foundations of his fellow evangelicals with a string of witty, provocative memoirs. Judging by the intensity of the Jesus-oriented blog and print buzz about him, Miller is either bent on saving the faithful from their own dead-end faith or he's spilling ink in the service of Satan.

Like many of his readers, Miller grew up a fundamentalist Christian (a Southern Baptist from Texas), then did stints as an ardent Young Republican, a doorknocker for Christ, and a youth minister in a suburban megachurch. But somewhere along the road to old-school salvation, he took a sharp turn to the left. Miller's three books -- Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What, and the revised, reissued Through Painted Deserts -- track this trajectory from his conservative beginnings to his current incarnation as, by his own account, a rebel evangelical who votes Green, likes to iron out his theology over beers, and horrifies red-state Bush zealots by championing the likes of MoveOn.org on his Web site.

As it happens, those dissident credentials put Miller in increasingly like-minded company. The rise of such American-style phenomena as marathon prayer rings around abortion clinics, right-wing smear campaigns on the United Nations, and faith-based attacks on science has launched a backlash -- not only among political opponents, but within the ranks of the church itself. Call it a family fight.

The evangelical movement has a long history of schisms, but most splinter sects have pushed the church toward conservatism. In this case, 'seekers' in the twenty- to thirty-something set have grown disillusioned with a formulaic, institutional approach to religion and are in search of a more relevant spirituality. They're finding -- or in some cases, founding -- 'emergent' churches: breakaway congregations that embrace a more wide-minded doctrine, a God who doesn't by nature wave a flag or endorse wars, and a deep skepticism about the political agenda of the radical Christian right. And the kind of anti-establishment spirituality that's spelled out in the gospel according to Donald Miller.