One Nation Under God, Kevin M. Kruse
One Nation Under God, Kevin M. Kruse
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One Nation Under God
How Corporate America Invented Christian America

Author: Kevin M. Kruse

Narrator: Jeff Cummings

Unabridged: 12 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/14/2015

Synopsis

Conventional wisdom holds that America has been a Christian nation since the Founding Fathers. But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse argues that the idea of “Christian America” is nothing more than a myth—and a relatively recent one at that.The assumption that America was, is, and always will be a Christian nation dates back no further than the 1930s, when a coalition of businessmen and religious leaders united in opposition to FDR’s New Deal. With the full support of Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, these activists—the forerunners of the Religious Right—propelled religion into the public sphere. Church membership skyrocketed; Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and made “In God We Trust” the country’s official motto. For the first time, America became a thoroughly religious nation.Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how the comingling of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to define and divide American politics today.

About Kevin M. Kruse

Kevin M. Kruse is a professor of history at Princeton University and the author or co-editor of four books, including the award-winning White Flight. Kruse lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jason on December 26, 2020

Excellent book! By reading this well-researched book you will learn things like: - A Christian minister, Francis Bellamy, wrote the original American Pledge of Allegiance without any mention of God because he thought that unifying church & state demeaned & insulted both. He also believed that Jesus t......more

Goodreads review by Craig on May 16, 2015

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, there's a lot of useful information about the emergence of religion as a central part of American political life in the years surrounding World War II. I learned a lot about the highly ideological "Religion in American Life" and "Freedom Under......more

Goodreads review by Brian on November 17, 2023

This book illuminates things I never grasped, though they’ve been around me all my life. My parents and I watched the rise of Christian nationalism in the USA, till by the 1980s they quit their Methodist Texan church in futile protest against it. My dad was an idealistic socialist, from his childhoo......more

Goodreads review by Alan on October 05, 2015

This is a very good account of the development of the concept of a "Christian nation" from its use as conservative propaganda against the New Deal to the present. The author interestingly shows how President Dwight D. Eisenhower transformed the idea from being simply part of the tool kit of big busi......more

Goodreads review by Bobby on August 29, 2015

There were times I had to put this book down, because it made me so angry. It incenses me that there are so many Americans who think "In God We Trust" has always been on our money, and "Under God" has always been in the Pledge of Allegiance. This book is important, because it goes back to first caus......more

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