One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

Written by Kevin M. Kruse

Narrated by Jeff Cummings

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Apr 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781501238178

Kevin M. Kruse

KEVIN M. KRUSE specializes in twentieth-century American political history, with special attention to conflicts over race, religion, and rights. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his MA and PhD degrees from Cornell University. He is a professor of history at Princeton University, where he has served on the faculty since 2000. Kruse is the author of White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, and, with Julian Zelizer, Fault Lines: A History of the United States since 1974, as well as the coeditor of three essay collections. He is currently working on his next project, titled “The Division: John Doar, the Justice Department, and the Civil Rights Movement.”

Reviews for One Nation Under God

[Nicodemo Sanchez · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An eye opening book, well documented. Full of quotations from the protagonist of this bizarre political/religious/economic American story.

[Meggan Klippen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I’ve long wondered about the source of “ public religion “. This book traces its history in American politics.

[Manuel Duran · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

why is it unbridged, shouldn't this book be bridged, or is it straight postive, if so than how is the Christian supposed to reach the sinner. or is the sinner trying to expose the christians. I think the question threw, your off line!!!!!!

[Rachel Grant · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I think this is an important book. The separation of church and state is equally beneficial to the religious as to the secular.

[Aylea Wilkins · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An extremely well-balanced book. Rather than being derisive of the religious right's own attempts to undermine the separation of church and state or to see non-religious groups as entirely devoid of ethics, Kruse demonstrates a history of modern American political theology in the crusade to combat New Deal-era social gospels.

Kruse does an excellent job of tracing the era of Christian Libertarianism in the 1930s to its logical result in the 1980s and beyond. By aligning big business and industry with a capitalistic version of Christianity that espouses rugged individualism and free enterprise, many political and religious leaders wound up fusing a rhetoric of piety with an appropriative stance on American identity. This book shows how the emergence of far-right Christian Nationalism came to being in a federal government that has avoided the establishment of religion within its juridical and legislative system.