Christian Nationalism in the United States
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religions Christian Nationalism in the United States Edited by Mark T. Edwards Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Religions www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Christian Nationalism in the United States Special Issue Editor Mark T. Edwards MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade Special Issue Editor Mark T. Edwards Spring Arbor University USA Editorial Office MDPI AG St. Alban-Anlage 66 Basel, Switzerland This edition is a reprint of the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Religions (ISSN 2077-1444) from 2016–2017 (available at: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/christian_nationalism). For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: Author 1; Author 2. Article title. Journal Name Year, Article number, page range. First Edition 2017 ISBN 978-3-03842-438-3 (Pbk) ISBN 978-3-03842-439-0 (PDF) Articles in this volume are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY), which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. The book taken as a whole is © 2017 MDPI, Basel, Switzerland, distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Table of Contents About the Special Issue Editor .................................................................................................................. v Mark Edwards Religions Series: “Christian Nationalism in the United States”—Ebook Introduction Reprinted from: Religions 2017, 8(5), 93; doi: 10.3390/rel8050093 ......................................................... 1 Jonathan Den Hartog Religion, the Federalists, and American Nationalism Reprinted from: Religions 2017, 8(1), 5; doi: 10.3390/rel8010005 ........................................................... 3 Ethan Goodnight William Apess, Pequot Pastor: A Native American Revisioning of Christian Nationalism in the Early Republic Reprinted from: Religions 2017, 8(2), 18; doi: 10.3390/rel8020018 ......................................................... 16 Michael Graziano America’s “Peculiar Children”: Authority and Christian Nationalism at Antebellum West Point Reprinted from: Religions 2017, 8(1), 6; doi: 10.3390/rel8010006 ........................................................... 33 John D. Wilsey “Our Country Is Destined to be the Great Nation of Futurity”: John L. O’Sullivan’s Manifest Destiny and Christian Nationalism, 1837–1846 Reprinted from: Religions 2017, 8(4), 68; doi: 10.3390/rel8040068 ......................................................... 45 David Mislin Beyond Christian Nationalism: How the American Committee on Religious Rights and Minorities Made Religious Pluralism a Global Cause in the Interwar Era Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(12), 149; doi: 10.3390/rel7120149 ..................................................... 62 Gene Zubovich The Protestant Search for ‘the Universal Christian Community’ between Decolonization and Communism Reprinted from: Religions 2017, 8(2), 17; doi: 10.3390/rel8020017 ......................................................... 72 Aaron Pattillo-Lunt “This World Is Not My Home”: Richard Mouw and Christian Nationalism Reprinted from: Religions 2017, 8(1), 2; doi: 10.3390/rel8010002 ........................................................... 84 Lauren Frances Turek Ambassadors for the Kingdom of God or for America? Christian Nationalism, the Christian Right, and the Contra War Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(12), 151; doi: 10.3390/rel7120151 ..................................................... 99 Daniel Hummel Revivalist Nationalism since World War II: From “Wake up, America!” to “Make America Great Again” Reprinted from: Religions 2016, 7(11), 128; doi: 10.3390/rel7110128 ..................................................... 115 iii About the Special Issue Editor Mark Edwards is Associate Professor of US history and politics at Spring Arbor University in Michigan. His research centers on the intersection of American religion, culture, and politics. Mark has published articles in Religion and American Culture, Diplomatic History, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Religions, the Journal of Religious History, and the Journal of Cold War Studies. His first book, The Right of the Protestant Left: God’s Totalitarianism (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2012) offers a new view of Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism, and the geopolitics of the ecumenical movement. Mark was also co-chair of the 2014 US Intellectual History conference in Indianapolis with Cara Burnidge. In the Spring of 2018, Mark will serve as Fulbright Scholar to Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, Korea. v religions Editorial Religions Series: “Christian Nationalism in the United States”—Ebook Introduction Mark Edwards Department of History, Political Economy, Geography, and Social Studies, Spring Arbor University, 106 E Main St, Spring Arbor, MI 49283, USA; [email protected] Academic Editor: Victor Roudometof Received: 9 May 2017; Accepted: 10 May 2017; Published: 13 May 2017 While Christianity in American history remains a vibrant subfield, the subject of Christian nationalism in the United States remains understudied. The best survey on the topic, Robert T. Handy’s A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities, was lasted updated in 1984. The long absence of studies is particularly striking, given that related abstractions such as “civil religion” and “culture wars” receive regular updates. Recently, a number of historians have returned directly and indirectly to the subject of Christian nationalism, including John Fea (Fea 2016), Steven Green (Green 2015), Amanda Porterfield (Porterfield 2015), David Sehat (Sehat 2011), Emily Conroy-Krutz, (Conroy-Krutz 2015), Matthew Sutton (Sutton 2004), Kevin Kruse (Kruse 2015), Michael Thompson (Thompson 2015), and Sam Haselby (Haselby 2015), among others. Their scholarship teaches us several lessons. First, we should avoid “decline and revival” narratives and understand Christian nationalism as a construction (a “myth,” as Green terms it) that has arisen at various times in various places to accomplish a myriad of work. Second, Christian nationalism has been advanced by a diversity of persons and groups favorable and hostile to the idea, not just by evangelical Protestants. Third, Christian nationalism can be operational even when its keywords “Christian nation” and “Christian America” are absent. Finally, and most importantly, “Christian nationalism” is a discursive site where politics and history meet—where assertions of identity and power are conjoined. The essays in this Special Issue will assess and apply (or relate) those lessons to a number of new subjects, events, and time periods within American history. Our intent is not to document every instance of Christian nationalism from every possible perspective. Rather, our aim is to prove the utility of “Christian nationalism” as an analytical concept—like “civil religion” or “culture wars”—to understand continuity and disjuncture throughout U.S. politics, culture, and society. Our respective definitions, redefinitions, and reframing of Christian nationalism should spark further investigations into its multiple manifestations and impact. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. References Fea, John. 2016. Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? Revised Edition: A Historical Introduction. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Green, Steven. 2015. Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding. New York: Oxford University Press. Porterfield, Amanda. 2015. Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sehat, David. 2011. The Myth of American Religious Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press. Conroy-Krutz, Emily. 2015. Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Sutton, Matthew Avery. 2014. American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism. Cambridge: Belknap Press. Religions 2017, 8, 93 1 www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Religions 2017, 8,93 Kruse, Kevin. 2015. One Nation under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. New York: Basic. Thompson, Michael. 2015. For God and Globe: Christian Internationalism in the United States between the Great War and the Cold War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Haselby, Sam. 2015. The Origins of American Religious Nationalism. New York: Oxford University Press. © 2017 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 2 religions Article Religion, the Federalists, and American Nationalism Jonathan Den Hartog Department of History, University of Northwestern—St. Paul, St. Paul, MN 55113, USA; [email protected]; Tel.: +1-651-628-3253 Academic Editor: Mark T. Edwards Received: 30 September 2016; Accepted: 27 December 2016; Published: 5 January 2017 Abstract: It may seem a truism to assert that the Federalist Party in the Early American Republic possessed a nationalist emphasis, but the question remains as to the character of their nationalism. This article