America's Religious Wars: The Embattled Heart of Our Public Life

by Kathleen M. Sands

Overview

How American conflicts about religion have always symbolized our foundational political values
 
When Americans fight about “religion,” we are also fighting about our conflicting identities, interests, and commitments. Religion-talk has been a ready vehicle for these conflicts because it is built on enduring contradictions within our core political values. The Constitution treats religion as something to be confined behind a wall, but in public communications, the Framers treated religion as the foundation of the American republic. Ever since, Americans have translated disagreements on many other issues into an endless debate about the role of religion in our public life.
 
Built around a set of compelling narratives—George Washington’s battle with Quaker pacifists; the fight of Mormons and Catholics for equality with Protestants; Teddy Roosevelt’s concept of land versus the Lakota’s concept; the creation-evolution controversy; and the struggle over sexuality—this book shows how religion, throughout American history, has symbolized, but never resolved, our deepest political questions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300213867
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	06/04/2019
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Kathleen M. Sands is professor of American studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and the author of Escape from Paradise: Evil and Tragedy in Feminist Theology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Check Your Bag-gage Here 1

Part I Genealogies of Religion

1 Religion as We Know It: The Career of a Contradiction 25

2 Walls and Foundations: Washington, Jefferson, and Religious Double-Talk 54

Part II Religion Against Religion

3 Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons; Religion and the Struggle for Citizenship 91

4 Nicholas Black Elk and Theodore Roosevelt: Religion and the Fight for Land 135

Part III The Religious Against the Secular

5 Creationists and Evolutionists: Religion and the Question of Human Origins 181

6 Religion, Race, and Science: The Battle over Sexuality 227

Conclusion: Heart Conditions 273

Notes 285

Index 323

Editorial Reviews

[Sands] writes of a long-standing conflict between ‘anti-modernist religion and anti-religious modernism.’”—E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post

“Professor Sands offers a superb analysis of the foundation and separation paradigms that inform the American discourse over profound social and moral conflicts . . . [and] musters abundant historical evidence to make her principal points.”—L. Ali Khan, New York Journal of Books

“Here is a book I recommend . . . a resource for our current struggles to embrace religion as both an essential component of our national history and culture and also as an ever-present sticking-point in accommodating our diverse population in a land committed to both faith and freedom. . . . [An] excellent book.”—Dwight A. Moody, The Meetinghouse

"An intriguing historical and legal analysis of several major battlefronts that have ostensibly been fought over religion in the United States. . . . Sands’ work provides both important context and good discussion fodder for use in graduate and undergraduate classes on American religious history, social history, and jurisprudence. The book is of particular value in American Studies programs to help students wrestle with current tensions and better understand why they need to know the religious history of the United States, and particularly the role Protestants have played."—Christina Littlefield, Reading Religion

“A new way of framing public debate that transcends the culture wars and forces us to grapple with the complexities of the actual interests, identities, histories, and desires at stake. A welcome and timely contribution from a scholar at the top of her game.”—Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, author of Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion

"This is an outstanding entry into the controversies surrounding religion in American life. Insightful, provocative, and accessible, it makes a powerful case for the obfuscation, ambiguities, even incoherence that stalk religion talk."—Linell Cady, Arizona State University

“Kathleen Sands transcends false dualism and instead charges us to use conflicts as opportunities to reveal the living principles, the living heart, of our shared democracy. Her timely analysis is a refreshing and principled contribution to American democracy.”—Nathan C. Walker, co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Education

“In crystalline language and with a deeply informed historical sensibility, Sands traces the tangled intellectual roots of America’s religious wars, showing what a dreadful and consequential mess Americans have made of one of their ostensibly deepest social values.”—Robert Orsi, author of History and Presence
 

From the Publisher

06/14/2019

How might people and groups holding significant differences in their understanding of religion and other issues communicate more effectively and constructively with one another? This is a key question Sands (American studies, Univ. of Hawai'i at Manoa) addresses in her new book. The author notes that religion is a complicated subject, entailing not only beliefs and practices but also personal identity and background, convictions, and concerns. Also, religion in individual and public life has been understood in two different and often conflicting ways: as a wall, where religion is private, and as a foundation, where religion serves a public role. Thus, religion-talk is not just about religion, and discussions focusing on it can result in polarization. Yet, meaningful disagreements about issues are important when living in a democracy. Sands addresses this topic by focusing on specific narratives from American history, such as George Washington's conflicts with Quakers, Mormon and Catholic struggles for equality, Theodore Roosevelt and the Lakota's conflicting understanding of land, and the debates over creation and evolution. VERDICT Those interested in American religious and political history and religious and cultural wars will find this book to be highly informative.—John Jaeger, Johnson Univ., Knoxville, TN

Library Journal

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