Description
Book SynopsisDespite the separation of church and state, public aid to religious agencies has traditionally been part of liberal social policy. This book shows that the post-World War II expansion of public funding for evangelical health care, educational, welfare, and foreign relief increasingly benefited the religious Right and contributed to its resurgence.
Trade Review"
Piety and Public Funding complicates, and sometimes even demolishes, much of the conventional wisdom about the rise of the religious right. Schäfer's tone is neither bombastic nor polemical, but the result is revolutionary nonetheless: a complete reconfiguration of our assumptions about conservative Protestants and Republican Party politics from the 1940s to the 1990s." * Andrew Preston, Cambridge University *
"Exceptionally clear and engagingly written,
Piety and Public Funding makes an important intervention that every subsequent historian of the conservative counterrevolution will need to take into consideration. By examining the fiscal links between the postwar state and organized religion, Schafer's case marks a distinct departure from both academic and popular conceptions of Christian conservatism in recent American history." * Bethany Moreton, author of
To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: How Evangelicals Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the State
Chapter 1. The Cold War and Religious Agencies
Chapter 2. The Evangelical Rediscovery of the State
Chapter 3. Evangelicals, Foreign Policy, and the National Security State
Chapter 4. Evangelicals, Social Policy, and the Welfare State
Chapter 5. Church-State Relations and the Rise of the Evangelical Right
Conclusion: Resurgent Conservatism and the Public Funding of Religious Agencies
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
