Religious Ideology in American Politics

The connections between religion and political discourse in the arena of American politics are profound and longstanding. By looking at the writings of American thinkers from colonial times to the present, this work argues for the consistency and permanence of the American religious vision as it relates to political life. Ideas including Manifest Destiny, America as “God’s Country” and Americans as “God’s People” are explored within this framework, as is how these ideals of American exceptionalism and the “City on the Hill” have survived and mutated into the current U.S. political climate.
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Nicole Guétin is an associate professor of English and teaches American culture at the University of Kairouan, Tunisia.

Nicole Guétin
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 222
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2009
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4193-8
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5316-0
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vi
Preface      1
Introduction      5

PART I : THE IDEALIST VISION OF THE NEW WORLD
1. The Puritan Heritage      13
2. Religious Motivations in the American Revolution      30
3. The Emergence of a Collective Consciousness      46

PART II : THE AMERICAN POLICY OF CONQUEST
4. American Expansionism and Destiny      65
5. America: A God-Centered Nation      81
6. American Exceptionalism      97

PART III : THE FOREIGN POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES
7. The Monroe Doctrine      115
8. Racism and the Ethnocentric Debate      134
9. Civil Religion and American Messianism      154
10. Evangelism and Millenarianism      171

Conclusion      187
Chapter Notes      193
Bibliography      205
Index      211