“Most 19th-century and early-20th-century Americans would have affirmed that the United States was a “Christian nation,” even if they would have disagreed bitterly about the meaning of that phrase. Nor were public displays of generic (or even Christian) religiosity new, though they took on new forms during the Eisenhower administration.”

Kevin Kruse’s One Nation Under God: How Corporate American Invented Christian America has received considerable attention since its release earlier this year. Deservedly so.

I recently reviewed the book for Christianity Today and agree with some of the cautionary notes our Philip Jenkins sounded several months back. Philip suggests that reviewers’ excessively exuberant praise for Kruse’s contention that many of our expressions of civil religion are of relatively recent vintage betray an ignorance of the longer story of Christianity’s intersection with American nationalism and with its governments. I would add that Kruse himself should have placed history within that longer chronology. Indeed, to the extent that expressions of Christian nationalism and civil religion captured the imaginations of many Americans during the early Cold War-era testifies to the deep roots of such ideas.

My conclusion: Kruse is right to suggest that the still-popular-among-evangelicals idea of a “Christian founding” is more myth than history. Even so, this myth is of a much longer vintage [than he indicates]. Indeed, from the earliest days of the American republic, concerned Protestants sought to preserve it from irreligion (as in the French Revolution and Thomas Jefferson’s alleged atheism) and religious pluralism (in the form of 19th-century Catholics and Mormons).

Most 19th-century and early-20th-century Americans would have affirmed that the United States was a “Christian nation,” even if they would have disagreed bitterly about the meaning of that phrase. Nor were public displays of generic (or even Christian) religiosity new, though they took on new forms during the Eisenhower administration. Moreover, the general alliance of Protestant revivalism and big business dates back at least to the era of Dwight L. Moody.

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