Description
Book SynopsisAmerican Crusades details evangelical pursuits to unite God's purposes with American empires. It argues that religious motivations contributed heavily to United States governmental policies and built sacred spaces in many attempts to influence American society. These embedded ambitions form the core of Americanism, yet somehow remain hidden right in front of our eyes. In the action of caretaking, they advanced their understanding of God's demand on their lives and purposes. Evangelical and theologically conservative Americans linked the sacred and secular, shaping the ethos of the American people. The terminology of religious thinking quickly sacralized concepts like democracy and capitalism in an attempt to control and use them. Once packaged as a sacred space in need of custody, religious leadership sought to fulfill its kingdom responsibility and secure its future. Eventually, a combination of religiously defined secular components coalesced into the term known simply as Americanism
Trade Review"Written by a scholar deep within the evangelical community, American Crusades is a history of our nation's ambitions to remake the world in its own image. After illuminating the deep religious assumptions of the nineteenth century, especially in the administrations of Polk and Wilson, the second half of the book is focused on foreign policy since WW II, DePriest analyzes the way Truman constructed a Christian foundation for the Cold War and Reagan pressed it further at its end. He then follows with a personal analysis of evangelical foreign policy from G.W. Bush to Donald Trump. Unbiased, self-critical, and wise, DePriest uses a wide range of the best new scholarship to show the weaknesses and strengths of America's Protestant and global aspirations." -- Rick Kennedy, Point Loma Nazarene University
Table of ContentsChapter One: Sacred Underpinnings Chapter Two: Power Alignment Chapter Three: Manifest Sovereignty Chapter Four: Igniting the Second Crusade Chapter Five: Evangelical Fractures Chapter Six: Multilateral Alternatives Chapter Seven: Superpower Paradigms Chapter Eight: Initiating Dominance Chapter Nine: In the Shadow of Americanism Chapter Ten: Ecclesiastical Culture Wars Chapter Eleven: Unipolar Supremacy Chapter Twelve: The Fruit of the Vine
