ebooks God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights by Charles Marsh in History

Description

The delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention blocked the establishment of Christianity as a national religion. But they could not keep religion out of American politics. From the election of 1800; when Federalist clergymen charged that deist Thomas Jefferson was unfit to lead a "Christian nation;" to today; when some Democrats want to embrace the so-called Religious Left in order to compete with the Republicans and the Religious Right; religion has always been part of American politics. In Religion in American Politics; Frank Lambert tells the fascinating story of the uneasy relations between religion and politics from the founding to the twenty-first century. Lambert examines how antebellum Protestant unity was challenged by sectionalism as both North and South invoked religious justification; how Andrew Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth" competed with the anticapitalist "Social Gospel" during postwar industrialization; how the civil rights movement was perhaps the most effective religious intervention in politics in American history; and how the alliance between the Republican Party and the Religious Right has; in many ways; realized the founders' fears of religious-political electoral coalitions. In these and other cases; Lambert shows that religion became sectarian and partisan whenever it entered the political fray; and that religious agendas have always mixed with nonreligious ones. Religion in American Politics brings rare historical perspective and insight to a subject that was just as important--and controversial--in 1776 as it is today.