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This volume reframes the narrative that has too often dominated the field of historical study of religion and politics: the culture wars.
Influenced by culture war theories first introduced in the 1990s, much of the recent history of modern American religion and politics is written in a mode that takes for granted the enduring partisan divides that can blind us to the complex and dynamic intersections of faith and politics. The contributors to Religion and Politics Beyond the Culture Wars argue that such narratives do not tell the whole story of religion and politics in the modern age.
This collection of essays, authored by leading scholars in American religious and political history, challenges readers to look past familiar clashes over social issues to appreciate the ways in which faith has fueled twentieth-century U.S. politics beyond predictable partisan divides and across a spectrum of debates ranging from environment to labor, immigration to civil rights, domestic legislation to foreign policy. Offering fresh illustrations drawn from a range of innovative primary sources, theories, and methods, these essays emphasize that our rendering of religion and politics in the twentieth century must appreciate the intersectionality of identities, interests, and motivations that transpire and exist outside an unbending dualistic paradigm.
Contributors: Darren Dochuk, Janine Giordano Drake, Joseph Kip Kosek, Josef Sorett, Patrick Q. Mason, Wendy L. Wall, Mark Brilliant, Andrew Preston, Matthew Avery Sutton, Kathleen Sprows Cummings, Benjamin Francis-Fallon, Michelle Nickerson, Keith Makoto Woodhouse, Kate Bowler, and James T. Kloppenberg.
Ultimately, this work offers a fresh, up-to-date examination of the historical narrative and future direction of studies of religion, culture, and politics while challenging the stale dichotomies of past interpretations. -Choice
Political historians have been taking religion more seriously of late and this volume shows how powerful and important that attention can be in our present moment. --American Academy of Religion
"The essays in this volume present fresh approaches from some of the bestknown scholars in the field. [T]here is no doubt that the authors of the essays in this volume have made a persuasive case that historians, at the very least, can move beyond the culture wars by paying more attention to the complexity of Americans’ religiously informed thinking." —Fides et Historia
“This collection of essays about religion and politics in the United States in the modern era attempts to pierce through the binary thinking produced by the culture wars. . . . Throughout the volume, the writers work to transcend partisan divides, highlight key figures who were less famous than Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, and uncover additional tensions in religious and political life by examining places of contingence, irony, and surprise.” —The Christian Century
"This book doesn’t solve any problems, but it shows that divisions and culture wars are nothing new in a society where religion and politics often combust. The difference today is a more polarized citizenry." —Catholic News Service
"This collection of essays encourages readers to look beyond predictable clashes over social issues and examine the ways in which faith has fueled 20th-century U.S. politics." —Notre Dame Magazine
“The market is full of books arguing the definition of ‘who is an evangelical’—questions that this collection refreshingly ignores. For those looking for something beyond that argument and for most historians either connected directly to religion and politics or who see this as a subtheme in their own work, this collection carves out unique space that would be welcome.” —David P. King, author of God’s Internationalists
Darren Dochuk is the Andrew V. Tackes College Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He most recently authored Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America and is editor and co-editor of a number of books, including American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History (University of Notre Dame Press, 2014).
Introduction
1. Who Should Lead the Christian Workers? Fights for Headship in Church-Labor Solidarity, 1912-1919 by Janine Giordano Drake
2. American Capitalism and Agrarian Spiritual Dissent in the 1930s by Joseph (Kip) Kosek
3. “The Answers were Apocraphyl!”: Protestantism and the Politics of Pluralism in Phylon’s Early Years by Josef Sorett
4. “The Fullness of the Earth is Yours”: Environmental Politics in the Mormon Culture Region by Patrick Mason
5. “A Gauge of Our Faithfulness”: Religion and the Politics of Immigration Reform by Wendy Wall
6. “To Liberate from the Accident of Family Wealth”: How Liberals Revived and Revised the Case for School Vouchers in the 1960s and 1970s by Mark Brilliant
7. An American Crusade: The Religious Liberty of Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union by Andrew Preston
8. God’s Spooks: Religion, the CIA, and Church-State Collaboration by Matthew Avery Sutton
9. Women Radical Religious in an Age of Fracture by Kathleen Sprows Cummings
10. The Occasional Catholics: Faith, Family, and the “Spanish-Speaking” Voter, 1969-1972 by Ben Francis-Fallon
11. The Camden 28: Fratres Sororesque in Pace (Brothers and Sisters in Peace) by Michelle Nickerson
12. In Defense of People, In Defense of the Earth: Environmentalism and the Religious Right in Late-Twentieth-Century American Politics by Keith Mako Woodhouse
13. Looking Up: Latino Megachurches and the Politics of Social Mobility by Kate Bowler
14. Progressive Politics and Religious Faith by James T. Kloppenberg