Winner of The American Journalism Historians Association Book of the Year Award, 2015 This study of American public relations history traces evangelicalism to corporate public relations via reform and the church-based temperance movement. It encompasses a leading evangelical of the Second Great Awakening, Rev. Charles Grandison Finney, and some of his predecessors; early reformers at Oberlin College, where Finney spent the second half of his life; leaders of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League of America; and twentieth-century public relations pioneer Ivy Ledbetter Lee, whose work reflecting religious and business evangelism has not yet been examined. Observations about American public relations history icon P. T. Barnum, whose life and work touched on many of the themes presented here, also are included as thematic bookends. As such, this study cuts a narrow channel through a wide swath of literature and a broad sweep of historical time, from the mid-eighteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century, to examine the deeper and deliberate strategies for effecting change, for persuading a community of adherents or opponents, or even a single soul to embrace that which an advocate intentionally presented in a particular way for a specific outcome—prescriptions, as it turned out, not only for religious conversion but also for public relations initiatives.

Covering topics ranging from the Moral Monday movement to Christian films and performers, Religion and Media in America is a qualitative study of the ways in which religion has been woven into American popular and civic culture. This book explores how Christianity both adapts to and is affected by new media forms. Its six chapters address religious activism; government imposition of religiosity into secular culture; religious entertainment; Bible translations marketed as consumer goods; and how religious satire comes from both religious and secular sources. Recommended for scholars and students interested in media studies, film studies, religion, communication, American history, American studies, political science, and popular culture.

The acclaimed author of The Barbary Wars offers a critical analysis of the often uneasy relationship between religion and politics in the United States from the Founding Fathers to the twenty-first century.

The United States has led the world in almost every way since World War I. In 1941, Life magazine publisher Henry Luce dubbed his country’s preponderant power “the American Century.” His editorial was a statement of fact but also an aspiration for countrymen to unite in promotion of a world order friendly to American interests. Faith and Foreign Affairs in the American Century examines the nature of public involvement in American diplomacy. As a concept decades in the making, the American Century was conceived by those connected through the country’s leading foreign policy think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations. The missionary couple and Washington insiders Francis and Helen Miller, who fought to make the American empire a radically democratic one, figured prominently in that work. The Millers’ many partnerships embodied the conflicts as well as the cooperation of Christianity and secularism in the long reimagining of the United States as a global state. Mark Thomas Edwards offers in this study a genealogy of the concept of the American Century. Readers will encounter moments of Protestant Christian power and marginalization in the making of modern American foreign relations.

Whether the issue is the rise of religiously inspired terrorism, the importance of faith based NGOs in global relief and development, or campaigning for evangelical voters in the U.S., religion proliferates in our newspapers and magazines, on our radios and televisions, on our computer screens and, increasingly, our mobile devices. Americans who assumed society was becoming more and more secular have been surprised by religions' rising visibility and central role in current events. Yet this is hardly new: the history of American journalism has deep religious roots, and religion has long been part of the news mix. Providing a wide-ranging examination of how religion interacts with the news by applying the insights of history, sociology, and cultural studies to an analysis of media, faith, and the points at which they meet, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the American News Media is the go-to volume for both secular and religious journalists and journalism educators, scholars in media studies, journalism studies, religious studies, and American studies. Divided into five sections, this handbook explores the historical relationship between religion and journalism in the USA, how religion is covered in different media, how different religions are reported on, the main narratives of religion coverage, and the religious press.

In Faith in Freedom, Andrew R. Polk argues that the American civil religion so many have identified as indigenous to the founding ideology was, in fact, the result of a strategic campaign of religious propaganda. Far from being the natural result of the nation's religious underpinning or the later spiritual machinations of conservative Protestants, American civil religion and the resultant "Christian nationalism" of today were crafted by secular elites in the middle of the twentieth century. Polk's genealogy of the national motto, "In God We Trust," revises the very meaning of the contemporary American nation. Polk shows how Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, working with politicians, advertising executives, and military public relations experts, exploited denominational religious affiliations and beliefs in order to unite Americans during the Second World War and, then, the early Cold War. Armed opposition to the Soviet Union was coupled with militant support for free economic markets, local control of education and housing, and liberties of speech and worship. These preferences were cultivated by state actors so as to support a set of right-wing positions including anti-communism, the Jim Crow status quo, and limited taxation and regulation. Faith in Freedom is a pioneering work of American religious history. By assessing the ideas, policies, and actions of three US Presidents and their White House staff, Polk sheds light on the origins of the ideological, religious, and partisan divides that describe the American polity today.

The first guide to American religious history from colonial times to the present, this anthology features twenty-two leading scholars speaking on major themes and topics in the development of the diverse religious traditions of the United States. These include the growth and spread of evangelical culture, the mutual influence of religion and politics, the rise of fundamentalism, the role of gender and popular culture, and the problems and possibilities of pluralism. Geared toward general readers, students, researchers, and scholars, The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History provides concise yet broad surveys of specific fields, with an extensive glossary and bibliographies listing relevant books, films, articles, music, and media resources for navigating different streams of religious thought and culture. The collection opens with a thematic exploration of American religious history and culture and follows with twenty topical chapters, each of which illuminates the dominant questions and lines of inquiry that have determined scholarship within that chapter's chosen theme. Contributors also outline areas in need of further, more sophisticated study and identify critical resources for additional research. The glossary, "American Religious History, A–Z," lists crucial people, movements, groups, concepts, and historical events, enhanced by extensive statistical data.