Taking America Back for God

Taking America Back for God PDF Author: Andrew L. Whitehead
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190057882
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book

Book Description
Why do white Protestants in America embrace a president who seems to violate their basic standards of morality? The answer, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry argue, is "Christian nationalism," the belief that the United States is -- and should be -- a Christian nation. Knowing someone's stance on Christian nationalism, this book shows, tells us more about his or her political beliefs than race, religion, or political party. Drawing on national survey data and interviews with Americans across the political spectrum, Taking America Back for God illustrates the tremendous influence of Christian nationalism on debates about the most contentious issues dominating American public life.

Taking America Back for God

Taking America Back for God PDF Author: Andrew L. Whitehead
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190057882
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book

Book Description
Why do white Protestants in America embrace a president who seems to violate their basic standards of morality? The answer, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry argue, is "Christian nationalism," the belief that the United States is -- and should be -- a Christian nation. Knowing someone's stance on Christian nationalism, this book shows, tells us more about his or her political beliefs than race, religion, or political party. Drawing on national survey data and interviews with Americans across the political spectrum, Taking America Back for God illustrates the tremendous influence of Christian nationalism on debates about the most contentious issues dominating American public life.

Taking America Back for God

Taking America Back for God PDF Author: Andrew L. Whitehead
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190057890
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book

Book Description
Why do so many conservative Christians continue to support Donald Trump despite his many overt moral failings? Why do many Americans advocate so vehemently for xenophobic policies, such as a border wall with Mexico? Why do many Americans seem so unwilling to acknowledge the injustices that ethnic and racial minorities experience in the United States? Why do a sizeable proportion of Americans continue to oppose women's equality in the workplace and in the home? To answer these questions, Taking America Back for God points to the phenomenon of "Christian nationalism," the belief that the United States is-and should be-a Christian nation. Christian ideals and symbols have long played an important role in American public life, but Christian nationalism is about far more than whether the phrase "under God" belongs in the pledge of allegiance. At its heart, Christian nationalism demands that we must preserve a particular kind of social order, an order in which everyone--Christians and non-Christians, native-born and immigrants, whites and minorities, men and women?recognizes their "proper" place in society. The first comprehensive empirical analysis of Christian nationalism in the United States, Taking America Back for God illustrates the influence of Christian nationalism on today's most contentious social and political issues. Drawing on multiple sources of national survey data as well as in-depth interviews, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry document how Christian nationalism shapes what Americans think about who they are as a people, what their future should look like, and how they should get there. Americans' stance toward Christian nationalism provides powerful insight into what they think about immigration, Islam, gun control, police shootings, atheists, gender roles, and many other political issues-very much including who they want in the White House. Taking America Back for God is a guide to one of the most important-and least understood-forces shaping American politics.

Taking Back God

Taking Back God PDF Author: Leora Tanenbaum
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 9781429958790
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book

Book Description
In Taking Back God Leora Tanenbaum recounts the stories of women across the United States, starting with herself, who love their religion but hate their second-class status within it. If you've witnessed the preferential treatment of men in America's houses of worship, you will not be surprised to learn that there is a surge of women in this country rising up and demanding religious equality. More and more, religious women—Christian, Muslim, and Jewish—are declaring that they expect to be treated as equals in the religious sphere. They want the same meaningful spiritual connections enjoyed by their brothers, fathers, husbands, and sons. They embrace the word of God but are critical of their faith's male-oriented theology and liturgy. They reject the conventional interpretations of religious traditions that give women a different—and, to their minds, lesser—status. Rather than abandoning their faith, they are taking it back and making it stronger, transforming religion while maintaining tradition. Tanenbaum relates the experiences of Catholics, evangelical and mainline Protestants, Muslims, and observant Jews. The conflict they face—honoring tradition while expanding it to synchronize with modern values—is ultimately one that all people of faith grapple with today.

One Nation Under God

One Nation Under God PDF Author: Kevin M. Kruse
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465040640
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book

Book Description
The provocative and authoritative history of the origins of Christian America in the New Deal era We're often told that the United States is, was, and always has been a Christian nation. But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse reveals that the belief that America is fundamentally and formally Christian originated in the 1930s. To fight the "slavery" of FDR's New Deal, businessmen enlisted religious activists in a campaign for "freedom under God" that culminated in the election of their ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. The new president revolutionized the role of religion in American politics. He inaugurated new traditions like the National Prayer Breakfast, as Congress added the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance and made "In God We Trust" the country's first official motto. Church membership soon soared to an all-time high of 69 percent. Americans across the religious and political spectrum agreed that their country was "one nation under God." Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how an unholy alliance of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to define and divide American politics to this day.

White Too Long

White Too Long PDF Author: Robert P. Jones
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982122870
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book

Book Description
"WHITE TOO LONG draws on history, statistics, and memoir to urge that white Christians reckon with the racism of the past and the amnesia of the present to restore a Christian identity free of the taint of white supremacy"--

Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas

Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas PDF Author: Henry Goldschmidt
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 019514919X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book

Book Description
Publisher Description

American Gospel

American Gospel PDF Author: Jon Meacham
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812976665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Get Book

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham reveals how the Founding Fathers viewed faith—and how they ultimately created a nation in which belief in God is a matter of choice. At a time when our country seems divided by extremism, American Gospel draws on the past to offer a new perspective. Meacham re-creates the fascinating history of a nation grappling with religion and politics–from John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” sermon to Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence; from the Revolution to the Civil War; from a proposed nineteenth-century Christian Amendment to the Constitution to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for civil rights; from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. Debates about religion and politics are often more divisive than illuminating. Secularists point to a “wall of separation between church and state,” while many conservatives act as though the Founding Fathers were apostles in knee britches. As Meacham shows in this brisk narrative, neither extreme has it right. At the heart of the American experiment lies the God of what Benjamin Franklin called “public religion,” a God who invests all human beings with inalienable rights while protecting private religion from government interference. It is a great American balancing act, and it has served us well. Meacham has written and spoken extensively about religion and politics, and he brings historical authority and a sense of hope to the issue. American Gospel makes it compellingly clear that the nation’s best chance of summoning what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” lies in recovering the spirit and sense of the Founding. In looking back, we may find the light to lead us forward. Praise for American Gospel “In his American Gospel, Jon Meacham provides a refreshingly clear, balanced, and wise historical portrait of religion and American politics at exactly the moment when such fairness and understanding are much needed. Anyone who doubts the relevance of history to our own time has only to read this exceptional book.”—David McCullough, author of 1776 “Jon Meacham has given us an insightful and eloquent account of the spiritual foundation of the early days of the American republic. It is especially instructive reading at a time when the nation is at once engaged in and deeply divided on the question of religion and its place in public life.”—Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation

Condemned to Repetition

Condemned to Repetition PDF Author: Robert A. Pastor
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691077529
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book

Book Description
The new epilogue to Condemned to Repetition covers events, such as the Arias peace plan and the debate over funding for the Contras, through February 1988.

The God Who Riots

The God Who Riots PDF Author: Damon Garcia
Publisher: Broadleaf Books
ISBN: 1506480381
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Get Book

Book Description
For thousands of years, religious messages have been used to either uphold the status quo or upend it. And while we are all very familiar with the kind of conservative Christianity that suppresses liberation and justifies oppression, progressive Christians are just as guilty of upholding unjust systems when we prioritize harmony and unity over justice. True justice requires us to choose sides. True justice requires action. When we look at Scripture, we see that the God of the Bible was never neutral. Again and again God chooses the side of the oppressed. Jesus said the Spirit of the Lord anointed him "to let the oppressed go free," and those of us who claim to follow Jesus today must commit to this radical mission of liberation. In The God Who Riots, popular YouTuber and public theologian Damon Garcia uses his frank, tell-it-like-it-is style to connect us with the Jesus who flipped tables in the temple and led an empire-destabilizing movement for liberation. The spirit of this God is embodied in today's protests, riots, and strikes. As we join this struggle for liberation, we are joining the God who riots alongside us, within us, and through us.

The Power Worshippers

The Power Worshippers PDF Author: Katherine Stewart
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635573459
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book

Book Description
For readers of Democracy in Chains and Dark Money, a revelatory investigation of the Religious Right's rise to political power. For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America's religious nationalists aren't just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy. Stewart pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and leading personalities of a movement that has turned religion into a tool for domination. She exposes a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances and united not by any central command but by a shared, anti-democratic vision and a common will to power. She follows the money that fuels this movement, tracing much of it to a cadre of super-wealthy, ultraconservative donors and family foundations. She shows that today's Christian nationalism is the fruit of a longstanding antidemocratic, reactionary strain of American thought that draws on some of the most troubling episodes in America's past. It forms common cause with a globe-spanning movement that seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with nationalist, theocratic and autocratic forms of government around the world. Religious nationalism is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals. The Power Worshippers is a brilliantly reported book of warning and a wake-up call. Stewart's probing examination demands that Christian nationalism be taken seriously as a significant threat to the American republic and our democratic freedoms.