A theologian and ecumenical consultant who has served in the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran Church, and Costa Rica, M ller-Fahrenholz tries to make some sense of religious undercurrents in the public culture and political life of the US. He hopes that an outsider may be able to identify elements that Americans are too close to see, acknowl

Religious life in early America is often equated with the fire-and-brimstone Puritanism best embodied by the theology of Cotton Mather. Yet, by the nineteenth century, American theology had shifted dramatically away from the severe European traditions directly descended from the Protestant Reformation, of which Puritanism was in the United States the most influential. In its place arose a singularly American set of beliefs. In America's God, Mark Noll has written a biography of this new American ethos. In the 125 years preceding the outbreak of the Civil War, theology played an extraordinarily important role in American public and private life. Its evolution had a profound impact on America's self-definition. The changes taking place in American theology during this period were marked by heightened spiritual inwardness, a new confidence in individual reason, and an attentiveness to the economic and market realities of Western life. Vividly set in the social and political events of the age, America's God is replete with the figures who made up the early American intellectual landscape, from theologians such as Jonathan Edwards, Nathaniel W. Taylor, William Ellery Channing, and Charles Hodge and religiously inspired writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catherine Stowe to dominant political leaders of the day like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. The contributions of these thinkers combined with the religious revival of the 1740s, colonial warfare with France, the consuming struggle for independence, and the rise of evangelical Protestantism to form a common intellectual coinage based on a rising republicanism and commonsense principles. As this Christian republicanism affirmed itself, it imbued in dedicated Christians a conviction that the Bible supported their beliefs over those of all others. Tragically, this sense of religious purpose set the stage for the Civil War, as the conviction of Christians both North and South that God was on their side served to deepen a schism that would soon rend the young nation asunder. Mark Noll has given us the definitive history of Christian theology in America from the time of Jonathan Edwards to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. It is a story of a flexible and creative theological energy that over time forged a guiding national ideology the legacies of which remain with us to this day.

Americans have long considered their country to be good—a nation "under God" with a profound role to play in the world. Yet nothing tests that proposition like war. Raymond Haberski argues that since 1945 the common moral assumptions expressed in an American civil religion have become increasingly defined by the nation's experience with war. God and War traces how three great postwar “trials”—the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and the War on Terror—have revealed the promise and perils of an American civil religion. Throughout the Cold War, Americans combined faith in God and faith in the nation to struggle against not only communism but their own internal demons. The Vietnam War tested whether America remained a nation "under God," inspiring, somewhat ironically, an awakening among a group of religious, intellectual and political leaders to save the nation's soul. With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 behind us and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, Americans might now explore whether civil religion can exist apart from the power of war to affirm the value of the nation to its people and the world.

One of the most potent forces bedevilling the modern world is religious fundamentalism. Armstrong explains how and why fundamentalists' understanding of religion and society differs so starkly from that of their contemporaries.

The first major work of cultural and intellectual history devoted to the subject of the transatlantic religious divide. Using nineteenth and early twentieth century commentary on the subject, Howard helps us understand why Americans have maintained much friendlier ties with traditional forms of religion than their European counterparts.

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.

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.