Christian
The Politics of a Word in America
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A Publishers Weekly Best Religion Book of the Year
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title
For many Americans, being Christian is central to their political outlook. Political Christianity is most often associated with the Religious Right, but the Christian faith has actually been a source of deep disagreement about what American society and government should look like. While some identify Christianity with Western civilization and unfettered individualism, others have maintained that Christian principles call for racial equality, international cooperation, and social justice. At once incisive and timely, Christian delves into the intersection of faith and political identity and offers an essential reconsideration of what it means to be Christian in America today.
“Bowman is fast establishing a reputation as a significant commentator on the culture and politics of the United States.”
—Church Times
“Bowman looks to tease out how religious groups in American history have defined, used, and even wielded the word Christian as a means of understanding themselves and pressing for their own idiosyncratic visions of genuine faith and healthy democracy.”
—Christian Century
“A fascinating examination of the twists and turns in American Christianity, showing that the current state of political/religious alignment was not necessarily inevitable, nor even probable.”
—Deseret News
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bowman (The Urban Pulpit), associate professor of history at Henderson State University, pulls together a thought-provoking series of case studies that charts the long history of Christian political rhetoric in the United States. He is particularly interested in how "Americans have used the language of Christianity to assert the transcendent authority of their democracy against threats they labeled materialistic" during the 20th century, beginning with a chapter on Spiritualist radical Victoria Woodhull's 1872 presidential campaign and ending with one on the fracturing of the late-20th-century religious right. In between, Bowman considers such diverse case studies as the development and contestation of a Western civilization curriculum at Columbia and Howard Universities, Catholic citizenship and activism during the Great Depression, and black activists' use of Christianity to combat white supremacy in a global context. Most striking for our current political moment may be Bowman's attention to the ways the politically powerful have used Christianity to claim a divine right to govern, derived as they saw it from the superiority of a racialized white Christian cultural heritage. Bowman, in this rigorous study, persuasively argues that Christianity has shaped a collective understanding of the national past and continues to lend spiritual weight to competing visions for America's future.
