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The Historical Interaction between Nationalism and Christian Theology
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The Historical Interaction between Nationalism and Christian Theology

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Theologies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 December 2022) | Viewed by 17177

Special Issue Editors

Dr. John D. Wilsey

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY 40280, USA
Interests: the historical interaction between nationalism and Christian theology; the history of ideas in the Christian west
Dr. Mark T. Edwards

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of History, Political Economy, Geography, and Social Studies, Spring Arbor University, Spring Arbor, MI 49283, USA
Interests: twentieth-century U.S. history; American intellectual, religious, and diplomatic history
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In their book Taking America Back for God, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry define Christian nationalism as a "cultural framework that blurs distinctions between Christian identity and American identity, viewing the two as closely related and seeking to enhance and preserve their union." They argue that all Americans see the world through Christian nationalism, and their responses to the world often are dependent on whether they accept or reject the idea.

In 1977, a book entitled The Light and the Glory: 1492-1793, authored by Peter Marshall and David Manuel, was published. The book resonated deeply with evangelicals, and continues to do so almost forty years later. Since 1977, Christian nationalism has been most closely associated with evangelicals, but as Whitehead and Perry write, "being an evangelical . . . tells us almost nothing about a person's social attitudes or behavior once Christian nationalism has been considered." In other words, while there is often overlap between evangelicalism and Christian nationalism, the two sets of ideas are not dependent upon each other.

Furthermore, Americans have no monopoly on Christian nationalism. This Special Issue of Religions will feature articles that offer perspectives on the exchanges between nationalism and theology across a range of historical and ethnic contexts broader than the standard white evangelical paradigm, which has been commonly assumed for the past five decades.

Dr. John D. Wilsey
Dr. Mark Edwards
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • nationalism
  • religion
  • identity
  • culture
  • Christianity
  • theology
  • church
  • state

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 272 KiB  
Article
America’s Mosque: The Islamic Center of Washington, Protestant Inclusivism, and the Cold War Genesis of “Multireligious America”
by James D. Strasburg
Religions 2023, 14(2), 156; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14020156 - 28 Jan 2023
Viewed by 1364
Abstract
This article examines the contested nature of American efforts to expand America’s twentieth century notion of tri-faith idealism—the unity of the three monotheistic faiths of Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism—to include Muslims both at home and abroad. It does so through a contextual, historical [...] Read more.
This article examines the contested nature of American efforts to expand America’s twentieth century notion of tri-faith idealism—the unity of the three monotheistic faiths of Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism—to include Muslims both at home and abroad. It does so through a contextual, historical study of the construction and dedication of the Islamic Center of Washington. The construction of the Islamic Center ultimately proved a lightning rod that electrified competing wings of Protestant Christian nationalism within in the United States—namely “inclusivist ecumenists” and “exclusivist populists.” Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Historical Interaction between Nationalism and Christian Theology)
42 pages, 524 KiB  
Article
Between Public Justification and Civil Religion: Shared Values in a Divided Time
by Eric V. Morrow, Boleslaw Zbigniew Kabala and Christine Dalton Hartness
Religions 2023, 14(2), 133; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14020133 - 17 Jan 2023
Viewed by 2326
Abstract
Civil religion as formulated in Robert Bellah’s seminal 1967 article, recalling Rousseau’s Social Contract, has recently been proposed to build shared values and bridge deep partisan divides. A competing approach to shared values, based on public reason, relies on overlapping consensus in [...] Read more.
Civil religion as formulated in Robert Bellah’s seminal 1967 article, recalling Rousseau’s Social Contract, has recently been proposed to build shared values and bridge deep partisan divides. A competing approach to shared values, based on public reason, relies on overlapping consensus in the works of John Rawls. In this paper, we present an in-between strategy that recognizes the insuperable empirical and normative problems of civil religion while using university civic engagement programs to bring about a public square in which religious reasons are found alongside neutral ones, ultimately for the sake of public justification. Having documented recent polarization trends, we consider the last major attempt to defend civil religion from the perspective of democratic solidarity, Phil Gorski’s American Covenant, but believe it falls short: based on sociological work and Augustinian insights, we show the risk of domination that Gorski’s strategy still entails, not least because of the definitional indeterminacy of civil religion and its overlap with religious nationalism. Paradoxically, a late Rawlsian approach that allows for the initial use of religious reasons, with a generosity proviso of necessary translation into public reason at some point, can lead to a public square with more religious arguments than one theorized explicitly from the perspective of civil religion. This is especially important because, given the discussed polarization trends, universities have taken on an increasingly important civic engagement role even as some still rely on a civil religion approach. We insist on public justification in university civic engagement, and for the sake of doing so take as a starting point Ben Berger’s work in favoring civil engagement, which we define as combining moral, political, and social rather than exclusively political commitments. In proposing a novel university shared values mechanism, intended to expose learners to a maximum diversity of opinions and lived experiences, we offer a fresh approach to building trust in cohorts that increases the likelihood of true dialogue across difference. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Historical Interaction between Nationalism and Christian Theology)
14 pages, 284 KiB  
Article
The Anti-Nationalist Patriotism of Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
by James M. Patterson
Religions 2022, 13(9), 822; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13090822 - 04 Sep 2022
Viewed by 2602
Abstract
Scholars today regard Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen as a supporting player in the American efforts to drum up support for the Cold War; however, this view limits Sheen’s influence to the years he spent on television hosting his program, Life Is Worth [...] Read more.
Scholars today regard Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen as a supporting player in the American efforts to drum up support for the Cold War; however, this view limits Sheen’s influence to the years he spent on television hosting his program, Life Is Worth Living (1952–1957). Yet, by the time Sheen left his program, he had been part of public discussions of religion and American politics for almost thirty years. Before his 1930 debut as an authoritative Catholic voice in America, Sheen had become a decorated Catholic scholar, both in his home country and in Europe, earning him a papal audience and broad support in the American Catholic hierarchy. His early contributions to public discussion were sophisticated adaptations of Leonine Catholic social teaching to American circumstances. Critical to his teachings was his view of the American people as the source for political legitimacy. In this respect, he defied the more reactionary clergy of Europe; however, Sheen’s views were vital to his efforts to distinguish why America had a just war against the totalitarian governments of the Axis powers but also a duty to spare people who were as likely to be victims of the regime as they were supporters. Sheen carried this distinction into the Cold War, in which he called for Americans to support the Russian people by opposing totalitarian government there. Therefore, Sheen never advocated the “us vs. them” nationalism so common among Cold War propaganda, which is consistent with his initial opposition to the Vietnam War and his only partial reconsideration of that opposition later. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Historical Interaction between Nationalism and Christian Theology)
21 pages, 358 KiB  
Article
“Velvet Steel” Ministers for God and America: Eleanor Lansing Dulles and the Nineteenth-Century Legacy of Christianity and Nationalism
by Victoria Phillips
Religions 2022, 13(7), 606; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13070606 - 29 Jun 2022
Viewed by 1727
Abstract
The political impact of Dr. Eleanor Lansing Dulles has not been assessed in her capacity as a power broker who brought her theological understandings to Cold War United States policy. The deep influence of both her brothers—Allen, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, [...] Read more.
The political impact of Dr. Eleanor Lansing Dulles has not been assessed in her capacity as a power broker who brought her theological understandings to Cold War United States policy. The deep influence of both her brothers—Allen, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and John Foster, Secretary of State under Dwight D. Eisenhower—on global affairs and diplomacy has been the topic of myriad studies. Works draw extensively on family biography, noting that both “nature and nurture” brought religion to US foreign policy. Including Dr. Dulles in the analysis provides nuance and complexity to definitions of Christian nationalism and underscores the legacy of both missionaries and religious thought in US foreign relations during the early Cold War. Contextualizing religiosity through a study of gender and the Dulles family legacy of female missionaries into the Cold War narrative builds upon the existing literature of the Dulles family, religion, and Cold War diplomacy to challenge concepts such as Christian internationalism, Christian nationalism, and Left–Right binaries. Diplomacy is revealed as her form of Christian missionary work in the secular sphere. Eleanor Lansing Dulles became a missionary not for a religion, but for a nation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Historical Interaction between Nationalism and Christian Theology)
17 pages, 308 KiB  
Article
Proposition 187 and the Travel Ban: Addressing Economy, Security, and White Christian Nationalism in U.S. Christian Communities
by Laura E. Alexander
Religions 2022, 13(4), 337; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13040337 - 09 Apr 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1993
Abstract
The ideology of white Christian nationalism has become increasingly visible in the United States. This ideology intersects with public debate over immigration, posing a threat both to immigrants’ well-being and to American ideals of democracy. This essay considers how religious leaders in primarily [...] Read more.
The ideology of white Christian nationalism has become increasingly visible in the United States. This ideology intersects with public debate over immigration, posing a threat both to immigrants’ well-being and to American ideals of democracy. This essay considers how religious leaders in primarily white Christian communities addressed two historical moments related to immigration in the U.S.: Proposition 187 in California, and the “travel ban” instituted by the Trump administration in 2017. Christian leaders who supported Prop 187 and the ban, and those who opposed the two policies, tended to talk past each other when they discussed the issue of immigration and these specific policies. Pro-187 leaders used rhetoric of economic damage and pro-ban leaders used rhetoric of national security, whereas anti-187 and anti-ban leaders used rhetoric of hospitality and nondiscrimination. Christian leaders who opposed these policies attempted to apply the moral teachings of their religious tradition, but ethicists and religious leaders who wish to fully engage in conversation about immigration in the U.S. should incorporate discussion of economic and security concerns into their consideration of hospitality, in order both to address anxieties and to pull the veil back on racial and religious discrimination that hides behind these anxieties. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Historical Interaction between Nationalism and Christian Theology)
17 pages, 326 KiB  
Article
Revenge Is a Genre Best Served Old: Apocalypse in Christian Right Literature and Politics
by Christopher Douglas
Religions 2022, 13(1), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13010021 - 27 Dec 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 5836
Abstract
Apocalypse is a phenomenology of disorder that entails a range of religious affects and experiences largely outside normative expectations of benevolent religion. Vindication, judgment, revenge, resentment, righteous hatred of one’s enemies, the wish for their imminent destruction, theological certainty, the triumphant display of [...] Read more.
Apocalypse is a phenomenology of disorder that entails a range of religious affects and experiences largely outside normative expectations of benevolent religion. Vindication, judgment, revenge, resentment, righteous hatred of one’s enemies, the wish for their imminent destruction, theological certainty, the triumphant display of right authority, right judgement, and just punishment—these are the primary affects. As a literary genre and a worldview, apocalypse characterizes both the most famous example of evangelical fiction—the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins—and the U.S. Christian Right’s politics. This article’s methodological contribution is to return us to the beginnings of apocalypse in Biblical and parabiblical literature to better understand the questions of theodicy that Left Behind renews in unexpected ways. Conservative white Christians use apocalypse to articulate their experience as God’s chosen but persecuted people in a diversely populated cosmos, wherein their political foes are the enemies of God. However strange the supersessionist appropriation, apocalypse shapes their understanding of why God lets them suffer so—and may also signal an underlying fear about the power and attention of their deity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Historical Interaction between Nationalism and Christian Theology)
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