The Search for Christian America

The Search for Christian America
Author: Mark A. Noll
Publisher: Helmers & Howard Pub
Total Pages: 199
Release: 1989
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780939443154

Through careful historical and contemporary analysis, the authors address such issues as how much Christian action is required to make a whole society Christian; incorrect views of America's history for effective Christian involvement in critical public issues; and more. (Christian)

The End of White Christian America

The End of White Christian America
Author: Robert P. Jones
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2016-07-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501122290

"The founder and CEO of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and columnist for the Atlantic describes how white Protestant Christians have declined in influence and power since the 1990s and explores the effect this has had on America, "--NoveList.

Sundays in America

Sundays in America
Author: Suzanne Strempek Shea
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2008
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780807072240

A spirited, spiritual pilgrimage to different Christian churches for a year of Sundays-from storefronts to mega-churches, from Massachusetts to Maui When Pope John Paul II died, Suzanne Strempek Shea, who had turned away from the Catholic Church of her childhood, recognized in his mourners a faith-filled passion that she wanted to recapture. She set out on a yearlong to visit a different church every Sunday for a year-a journey that would take her through the broad spectrum of contemporary Christianity lived in this country, from her New England home to the West Coast, the Deep South, the Midwest, and even to Hawaii. Beginning with a rousing Baptist Easter service in Harlem, including a sing-along at the Cowboy Church in Colorado's Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame and a multimedia experience at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church, the largest church in the country, Shea approaches each congregation with the curiosity of a newcomer and with respect for each unique expression of faith. Sundays in America weaves the threads of Christianity in America into a vibrant tapestry, an essential guide for those seeking a new house for their worship, as well as a colorful road trip for the armchair explorer.

One Nation Under God

One Nation Under God
Author: Kevin M. Kruse
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2015-04-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0465040640

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.

Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?

Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?
Author: John Fea
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2011-02-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1611640881

Fea offers an even-handed primer on whether America was founded to be a Christian nation, as many evangelicals assert, or a secular state, as others contend. He approaches the title's question from a historical perspective, helping readers see past the emotional rhetoric of today to the recorded facts of our past. Readers on both sides of the issues will appreciate that this book occupies a middle ground, noting the good points and the less-nuanced arguments of both sides and leading us always back to the primary sources that our shared American history comprises.

Inventing a Christian America

Inventing a Christian America
Author: Steven K. Green
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2017-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190675225

Steven K. Green explores the historical record that supports the popular belief about the nation's religious origins, seeking to explain how the ideas of America's religious founding and its status as a Christian nation became a leading narrative about the nation's collective identity.

Imagining Judeo-Christian America

Imagining Judeo-Christian America
Author: K. Healan Gaston
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2019-11-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 022666385X

“Judeo-Christian” is a remarkably easy term to look right through. Judaism and Christianity obviously share tenets, texts, and beliefs that have strongly influenced American democracy. In this ambitious book, however, K. Healan Gaston challenges the myth of a monolithic Judeo-Christian America. She demonstrates that the idea is not only a recent and deliberate construct, but also a potentially dangerous one. From the time of its widespread adoption in the 1930s, the ostensible inclusiveness of Judeo-Christian terminology concealed efforts to promote particular conceptions of religion, secularism, and politics. Gaston also shows that this new language, originally rooted in arguments over the nature of democracy that intensified in the early Cold War years, later became a marker in the culture wars that continue today. She argues that the debate on what constituted Judeo-Christian—and American—identity has shaped the country’s religious and political culture much more extensively than previously recognized.

Christian America and the Kingdom of God

Christian America and the Kingdom of God
Author: Richard Thomas Hughes
Publisher:
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2009
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780252032851

SUPERANNO With conviction and careful consideration, Hughes reviews the myth of Christian America from its earliest history in the founding of the republic to the present day. With extensive analysis of both Christian Scripture and American history, Hughes investigates the reasons why so many Americans think of the United States as a Christian nation. Timely and thought-provoking, Christian America and the Kingdom of God illuminates the devastating irony of a "Christian America" that so often behaves in non-Christian ways.

Christian America?

Christian America?
Author: Daryl C. Cornett
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1433674076

Throughout her history America has possessed a rich religious component largely comprised of different traditions of the Christian faith. This tide of personal religious devotion connected to government observances and policies has ebbed and flowed through time, but it has always been a part of American identity—one that is full of social and political debate. As such, Christian America? presents a hearty point-counterpoint discussion about the nature of the relationship Christianity has had to American politics and culture throughout the country's existence, aiming to determine which of these four differing opinions is most appropriate. David Barton (WallBuilders) supports the idea that America is distinctly Christian based on centuries of authoritative government declarations. Jonathan D. Sassi (College of Staten Island) believes America is distinctly secular based on the nation’s religiously eclectic and secular beginning (particularly the emphasis on "the complete separation of church and state"). William D. Henard (The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) sees America as essentially Christian, making his case for the nation's crucial faith component while exploring varied interpretations of comments like one made in 2009 by President Barack Obama: "Although... we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation..." Daryl C. Cornett, the book's editor, argues that America is partly Christian, a nation that was shaped by a blend of religious and non-religious tendencies. He writes, "After the Civil War steady decline in religious adherence was the impetus for evangelicals to mythologize American history and pine for a return to a golden age of Christian faith and virtue at its founding that never existed."

Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America

Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America
Author: Barry Hankins
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2008-11-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0802863892

Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) was probably the single greatest intellectual influence on young evangelicals of the 1960s and '70s. He was cultural critic, popular mentor, political activist, Christian apologist, founder of L'Abri, and the author of over twenty books and two important films. It is impossible to understand the intellectual world of contemporary evangelicalism apart from Francis Schaeffer.Barry Hankins has written a critical but appreciative biography that explains how Schaeffer was shaped by the contexts of his life -- from young fundamentalist pastor in America, to greatly admired mentor, to lecturer and activist who encouraged world-wary evangelicals to engage the culture around them. Drawing extensively from primary sources, including personal interviews, Hankins paints a picture of a complex, sometimes flawed, but ultimately prophetic figure in American evangelicalism and beyond.