About the Book
We're often told that the United States is, was, and always has been a Christian nation. But in One Nation Under God , historian Kevin M. Kruse reveals that the belief that America is fundamentally and formally Christian originated in the 1930s.To fight the slavery" of FDR's New Deal, businessmen enlisted religious activists in a campaign for freedom under God" that culminated in the election of their ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. The new president revolutionized the role of religion in American politics. He inaugurated new traditions like the National Prayer Breakfast, as Congress added the phrase under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance and made In God We Trust" the country's first official motto. Church membership soon soared to an all-time high of 69 percent. Americans across the religious and political spectrum agreed that their country was one nation under God."Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how an unholy alliance of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to define and divide American politics to this day.
About the Author :
Kevin M. Kruse is a professor of history at Princeton University and the author or coeditor of four books, including the award-winning White Flight. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Review :
"Both contributes decisively to an ongoing scholarly conversation and introduces its readers to a plethora of little-known documents, archives, organizations, and individuals. ... A significant contribution to the history of the Christian Right, the Cold War, and the culture wars of the recent past."--H-Net, H-AmRel
"Certain to be controversial, One Nation Under God persuasively reveals how business opponents of the New Deal joined forces with crusading ministers to place religious piety at the core of the American story. The book's redolent account of this underestimated midcentury point of inflection compels a reassessment of how and when the United States came to be regarded as a consecrated Christian nation."--Ira Katznelson, author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time
"In a book for readers from both parties, Kruse ably demonstrates how the simple ornamental mottoes 'under God' and 'In God We Trust, ' as well as the fight to define America as Christian, were parts of a clever business plan."--Kirkus, starred review
"In this brilliant and iconoclastic book, Kevin M. Kruse shows how an unholy alliance of greedy businessmen, venal clergy, and conservative politicians exploited American spirituality for partisan gain. Kruse's research is extraordinary, his prose vivid, his argument profound. One Nation Under God is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding contemporary culture in the United States."--Ari Kelman, author of the Bancroft Prize-winning A Misplaced Massacre
"In this riveting book, Kevin Kruse combines the history of religion with the history of capitalism to craft an original interpretation about America's religious identity. Revisionist in the best sense-bold, daring, and intelligent--it will change how we think about the American past."--Andrew Preston, author of Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy
"Kevin M. Kruse's startling One Nation Under God reveals the extraordinary Cold War politics that put 'under God' in Americas Pledge of Allegiance, 'In God We Trust' on US stamps, and Cecil B. DeMill's The Ten Commandments on Hollywood's biggest movie list. The political warriors for a 'Christian America' made the Puritans look like pikers, and Kruse dissects their successes and foibles with grace, glowing research, and more than a little humor. A compelling read!"--Jon Butler, professor emeritus of American studies, history, and religious studies at Yale University
"Kruse addresses how corporations used clergymen in their PR war against Roosevelt's New Deal and how evangelist Billy Graham helped Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon use religion as the lowest-common denominator' to unite the public. I've yet to finish it, but I can already tell this will be an informative, insightful read."--Shelf Awareness for Readers
"Much has been written about the religious right, but Kevin Kruse has written a breakthrough book by describing the movement's prehistory in the 1930s and 1950s--and in fascinating detail. Engagingly written, One Nation Under God will provoke many arguments, but it will require all sides to come to terms with facts and events largely buried in our collective memory until Kruse bravely set out to challenge our assumptions."--E.J. Dionne Jr., author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right
"Prepare yourself for a startling and important discovery: 'Christian America' is not a legacy of the nation's founders or a construct of the Cold War era. Rather, as Kevin Kruse so powerfully shows, it was the deliberate invention of conservative corporate leaders who allied with like-minded clergymen in the 1930s to fight the antichrist they most feared: Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Kruse convincingly argues that the rise of the religious right over the next decades grew out of these anti-liberal politics, not the other way around. 'Church and state' in America has rarely had a better historian than Kruse."--Lizabeth Cohen, author of Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in America, 1919-1939
"The claim that the United States was founded and then flourished as a Christian nation turns out to be an all-American fraud, disseminated in the 1950s and after by an odd combination of reactionary business-men, well-meaning political leaders, cranks, cynics, and dupes. Kevin M. Kruse's calm and devastating book more than debunks the fraud; it offers brilliant insight into our politics, then and now."--Sean Wilentz, Bancroft Prize-winning author of The Rise of American Democracy
"A fine new book. ... Kruse's thoughtful book illustrates a kind of life cycle of American religious politics: fervent social movements rise up, crest with presidential support, and then slip away, leaving behind rituals, rhetoric, rules, and reforms."--Foreign Affairs
"A lucid narrative."--Commonweal
"A thorough and fascinating treatment of a little known thread of US history."--Sojourners
"An eminently readable book, chock-full of lively and entertaining anecdotes."--Religion in American History
"Illuminating. ... A useful corrective to preacher-politicians who endlessly call for a return to the nation's religious roots. As Kruse skillfully demonstrates, some of those roots took hold only yesterday."--Dallas Morning News
"Kruse's book is a deft elaboration on the irony of the corporate involvement in the Christian America promotion: Supporters, be they of good or ill will, converged on the idea that they were producing or reproducing a nation united 'under God.' Frustrated in their attempts to change the Constitution, they had to settle for the insertion of 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Yet, as the author makes clear, they were, ironically, producing a new and enduringly conflicted and polarized America."
--America
"One Nation Under God comes as something of a revelation (pardon the expression). Kruse makes the case that whatever the relationship between faith and the state in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that connection went through a profound transformation in the 1950s."--Democracy: A Journal of Ideas
"One Nation Under God is an important book. We Christians and Americans need to understand our history.... Kruse offers us a potent reminder of where we have come from, and, perhaps more importantly, how far we still have to go."--Patheos
"A new, meticulous, and vital historical account that should be read by anyone who still scratches their head over whether the Tea Party is a religious movement, or wonders how the idealized conception of America as a 'Christian nation' was constructed... Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand that uniquely American alliance between God and mammon."--National Memo
"An engaging and important book."--Christianity Today
"An engaging history of modern religious nationalism... briskly narrated and richly detailed"--Bookforum
"As entertaining as it is revealing. ... Kruse weaves a narrative that is quite funny, in an understated scholarly way."--Boston Review
"Fascinating, vividly drawn portraits."--American Prospect
"It sheds new light on our tortured past and our abiding predicament."--Baptist News
"Kruse has crafted a tight argument and marshaled a mountain of evidence to support it. His writing is sharp and clear, and his telling eye for detail makes this an engaging story. Simply put, One Nation Under God is an excellent book."--Marginalia
"Kruse's book will be an important resource for anyone who wonders why so many fundamentalist figureheads--clergy and politicians alike--promote fiscal conservatism alongside social conservatism."--Church and State
"The author lays out a new mega-subdivision in our sprawling religious history. The result exposes a class of pulpit vipers who infect an insecure quarter of the population and who can never shake the feeling they are not as believed in as they believe they should be."--Humanist
"A deftly detailed history of Christianity's service to capitalism in the United States."--New Republic
"An illuminating addition to the growing field of the history of American conservatism and capitalism, as well as a vibrant study of the way cultural influence works-one that will make it impossible to take for granted the small print on the back of a dollar bill ever again.... This is what's most interesting in the story Kruse is telling: the pattern of continuity and change that links our own time with those that came before."--The Nation
"An important and convincing reminder that the roots of Christianity were cultivated well before the era of the religious right."--Wall Street Journal
"Fascinating."--Washington Post
"Kruse tells a big and important story about the mingling of religion and politics since the 1930s."--New York Times Book Review
