It was Churchill who reminded us that history is written by the victors. Well this is as true of religious history as it is of military, political and geopolitical history. Do you ever wonder how our religious and political divides of today came to be? How it is that the Republican party became a vehicle for the notion of America as a Christian nation?
We’ve all been feed the story that it’s somehow part of originalism. We’ve all been been told that America, as conceived by our founders, was John Winthrop’s Shining City on the Hill. Even our leaders today seem to succumb to that mythology. But the fact is that the idea of America as Christian nation is a relatively recent construct. One that came both out of the Cold War and of business opposition to Roosevelt and the New Deal.
This unholy alliance between Christianity and the Chamber of Commerce would continue to shape our politics and our government right up until today.
Now Princeton Professor Kevin Kruse tells the story in One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America
.My conversation with Kevin Kruse:
