Global Religion, Global Politics

The concerns that appear throughout this book continue to resonate in the twenty-first century. For instance, courts and legislatures struggle to define the First Amendment's protection of the “free exercise of religion”; and Americans continue to look to their faith traditions for guidance on thorny conundrums of war, race, and sexuality. Two newly prevalent issues have emphasized the global dimensions of these themes. One is the role of Islam in American religion and politics. Another new area of focus is on ecology and the environment. This chapter presents the following documents: George W. Bush's “Freedom at War with Fear” (2001), Ingrid Mattson's “American Muslims Have a ‘Special Obligation’” (2001), Sam Harris' The End of Faith (2004), and Wendell Berry's “Faustian Economics” (2008).

Faith, Freedom, and the Meaning of Citizenship

The Second World War raised the most difficult questions about how a democracy ought to wage a modern war. In particular, Americans confronted the conundrum of when a nation built on the inalienable rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” might ask its citizens to kill and be killed overseas. Religion became deeply implicated in these debates over the morality of violence and the limits of dissent. This chapter presents the following documents: Reinhold Niebuhr's “Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist” (1940), Dorothy Day's “Wars Are Caused by Man's Loss of His Faith in Man” (1940), Jehovah's Witness Flag Salute Cases: Gobitis (1940) and Barnette (1943), and George Docherty's “A New Birth of Freedom” (1954).

Religious Establishment and Religious Freedom in Early America

This chapter presents documents that show how Britain's New World colonies were shaped both by the tradition of religious establishment and by the newer ideas of religious toleration. Unlike the early colonists, many of the founders of the United States doubted that religious establishment was necessary. They were constrained in part by American political realities: the newly independent nation was simply too religiously diverse for any one group to claim official status. The documents provided include John Winthrop's “A Modell of Christian Charity” (1630), the Maryland Act Concerning Religion (1649), William Penn's Frame of Government of Pennsylvania and Laws Agreed Upon in England (1682), James Madison's “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” (1785), and Thomas Jefferson's Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia (1786).

Social Movements and Spiritual Diversity

The 1960s and 1970s were decades of great upheaval in American life. The politics of gender, sexuality, and family changed, transformed by new reproductive technologies and a resurgent feminist movement. The Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal eroded Americans' confidence in political institutions. This period also saw a remarkable intellectual ferment of American religious liberalism, which assumed that religion had to adapt to a changing culture and that social and political reform were necessary imperatives for committed people of faith. This chapter presents the following documents: John F. Kennedy's “Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association” (1960), Martin Luther King, Jr.'s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963), Jerry Falwell's “Ministers and Marches” (1965), Abraham Heschel's “The Moral Outrage of Vietnam” (1967), and Mary Daly's Beyond God the Father (1973).

The Religious Right and Its Critics

The conservative ascendancy of the 1970s and 1980s marked a substantial reversal of American political power. The religious right also mobilized as never before. In particular, groups that had once looked with suspicion at the corruptions and compromises inherent in politics now decided to join the fray. Although they were never unified, these groups agreed on a few central issues; they were strong anticommunists and supported a powerful military to counteract the influence of the Soviet Union. This chapter presents the following documents: Engel v. Vitale (1962), Phyllis Schlafly's The Power of the Positive Woman (1977), Francis Schaeffer's A Christian Manifesto (1981), John Shelby Spong's “Blessing Gay and Lesbian Commitments” (1988), and Employment Division v. Smith (1990).

Modernizing America

The United States became recognizably modern in several key ways in the half-century after the Civil War. Changes such as the end of slavery, urbanization, and the suffrage movement posed formidable challenges to religious authority. Many of the most significant writers on religious politics in this period were not government officials but reformers who sought to remake Americans' public life. This chapter presents the following documents: Reynolds v. United States (1878), the Pittsburgh Platform of Reform Judaism (1885), Frances Willard's Woman in the Pulpit (1888), Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Woman's Bible (1895), W. E. B. Du Bois' “Of the Faith of the Fathers” (1903), Walter Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), and William Jennings Bryan's “Mr. Bryan's Last Speech” (1925).

Slavery and the Civil War

American religion flourished in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. In particular, evangelical Christianity rose to a position of unprecedented cultural authority. Although wide variations exist, evangelicals are generally defined by four attributes: an emphasis on individual conversion; a focus on the saving power of Jesus's death and Resurrection; an appeal to the Bible as the ultimate religious authority; and an enthusiasm for witnessing and activism. As evangelicalism expanded, political discourse increasingly adopted evangelical overtones. Nowhere was this more true than in the conflict over American slavery. This chapter presents the following documents: Frederick Douglass' “Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country” (1847), George Armstrong's The Christian Doctrine of Slavery (1857), Julia Ward Howe's “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (1862), and Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (1865).

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book is an anthology of significant writings on religion and politics from the colonial period to recent times. Rather than offering a comprehensive prescription for our public life, it presents an extended conversation. Although this volume covers a wide range of subjects, it returns throughout to three interrelated themes, common problems that persist across historical eras. The first theme deals with the scope of religious freedom and religious toleration, values inextricably linked to the First Amendment's religion clauses. The second addresses religion's role as an ethical compass for public life. The third major center of gravity, which intermingles with the first two, is about the character of the American nation.