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How Corporate America Invented Christian America
Basic Books
April 2015
On Sale: April 14, 2015
384 pages ISBN: 0465049494 EAN: 9780465049493 Kindle: B00PWX7R56 Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
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 βChristian Americaβ is nothing more than a mythβand 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 the FDRβs New Deal. With the full support of Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, these activistsβthe forerunners of the Religious Rightβpropelled religion into the public sphere. Church membership skyrocketed; Congress added the phrase βunder Godβ to the Pledge of Allegiance and made βIn God We Trustβ the countryβs 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.
 Media BuzzFresh Air - NPR - March 30, 2015
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