Christian: The Politics of a Word in America

by Matthew Bowman

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674985735
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	04/02/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	601 KB

About the Author

Matthew Bowman is Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and Associate Professor of History and Religion at Claremont Graduate University and the author of The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith.

Table of Contents

Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Prologue 1. Reconstruction, Spiritualism, and the Shape of an Argument 2. Creating Western Civilization at Columbia University 3. Challenging Western Civilization at Howard University 4. Catholic Community in the Great Depression 5. The Anxiety of Christian Anticommunism 6. Global Christianity and Black Freedom 7. Cult and Countercult 8. Civil Religion, the Religious Right, and the Fracturing of Christian Republicanism Epilogue Notes Acknowledgments Index

Editorial Reviews

★ 02/26/2018
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. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

A timely and important book. Matthew Bowman brilliantly recovers a now long-forgotten history, in which Americans debated the meaning of ‘Christian civilization’ and in which evangelicals and conservative politicians made the politics of Christianity their exclusive terrain. Christian is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the trajectory of twentieth-century American culture and politics.

John G. Turner

Spanning American history from Reconstruction to the present, Bowman's book shows that the word ‘Christian’ has persistently borne political and cultural meanings that far transcend theological beliefs and religious practices. Elegantly written, deeply researched, and persuasively argued, Christian sets a gold standard for serious scholarship about a topic that matters.

Grant Wacker

Demonstrates with depth and clarity the ongoing struggle over the relationship between Christianity and politics…Well researched and thoroughly engaging, this volume is a masterful achievement that blends scholarship and readability. Without a doubt, historians of religion should incorporate Bowman’s work in their courses on American religious history.

Choice

Wise and absorbing… In the last three hundred years [the term ‘Christian’ has] been used in every conceivable partisan way, as invitation and bludgeon, as warning and password. In deeply-researched chapters ranging across the whole of American history but concentrating on the last 100 years, Bowman takes readers through an impressively wide-ranging examination of the many roles Christianity has played in society… Bowman’s insights are clear and well-put.

Open Letters Review - Steve Donoghue

Bowman tells the rich and complex story of how the term ‘Christian’ moved rightward from the Civil War to the present, through a series of fascinating chapters that cover unusual and unexpected topics. Anyone who wants to know why ‘Christian nation’ has come to mean what it does today will want to read this expertly argued book.

Paul Harvey

Bowman is fast establishing a reputation as a significant commentator on the culture and politics of the United States.

Church Times - David Martin

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…Make[s] for an interesting ride through some familiar and forgotten terrain in American religious history.

Christian Century - Micah Watson

Bowman plunges us headlong into the political tensions behind American Christianity…Bowman illustrates through a series of anecdotes that Christianity has had changeable and politically convenient definitions from the end of the Civil War through the present day…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 - Steven Evans