Faithful Republic: Religion and Politics in Modern America

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"The essays collected here are outstanding and bring to light some of the best scholarship on a topic in which new work is rapidly emerging and fundamentally changing. The research is excellent—the book is full of archival finds from all over the country—and the analyses are stimulating, often sparkling."—Paul Harvey, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs "Faithful Republic is a magnificent collection, one that showcases the impressive scholarship of a new generation of American historians working at the intersection of religion and politics. Diverse in their topics but uniformly strong in their treatment, these essays represent the cutting edge of an important field."—Kevin M. Kruse, author of One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America Despite constitutional limitations, the points of contact between religion and politics have deeply affected all aspects of American political development since the founding of the United States. Within partisan politics, federal institutions, and movement activism, religion and politics have rarely ever been truly separate; rather, they are two forms of cultural expression that are continually coevolving and reconfiguring in the face of social change. Faithful Republic explores the dynamics between religion and politics in the United States from the early twentieth century to the present. Rather than focusing on the traditional question of the separation between church and state, this volume touches on many other aspects of American political history, addressing divorce, civil rights, liberalism and conservatism, domestic policy, and economics. Together, the essays blend church history and lived religion to fashion an innovative kind of political history, demonstrating the pervasiveness of religion throughout American political life. Contributors: Lila Corwin Berman, Edward J. Blum, Darren Dochuk, Lily Geismer, Alison Collis Greene, Matthew S. Hedstrom, David Mislin, Andrew Preston, Bruce J. Schulman, Molly Worthen, Julian E. Zelizer. Andrew Preston teaches history at Cambridge University, where he is a Fellow of Clare College. His most recent books include America in the World: A History in Documents from the War with Spain to the War on Terror and Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy. Bruce J. Schulman is William E. Huntington Professor of History at Boston University. He is the author of The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Politics, and Society. Julian E. Zelizer is Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and a Fellow at New America. He is a contributor for CNN.com and author of several books, most recently The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society.