One Nation Under God: How Corporate American Invented Christian America

My first grade school was part of the (now almost forgotten) religious left. When it closed, I ended up on the other end of the spectrum, and I didn't understand it. How could people who wear their Catholicism on their sleeves be so enthusiastic for Reagan and for shredding the social safety net? How did "freedom of religion" come to mean "you must practice some form of monotheistic religion, preferably Christianity but Judaism might be OK?"

Kevin Kruse traces our public and somewhat skewed view of religion to the corporate reaction to FDR's Depression and WWII programs. FDR used some liberal theology to support his creation of the New Deal, and the businessmen who felt he went too far used theology to claim the programs were not only unnecessary but harmful. This occurred during a time of increasing religious affiliation and attendance to record levels which we now think of as a historical norm.

The new religiosity may have started in the 1930s, but it didn't take hold until the 1950s. Promoted by a handful of ministers (including Billy Graham), an outwardly religious (but unaffiliated in early 1953) President Eisenhower, and the best minds of Madison Avenue, we became a "Christian nation" with public prayers and the insertion of "under god" into the Pledge of Allegiance. As one would expect from a religious movement led by millionaires and advertising executives, it focused on power over mercy, and the separation of church and state became almost blasphemous to both. Kruse devotes the third section of his book to the fallout, the lawsuits and eventual culture war that was inevitable when people began to question authoritarian public piety.

Elizabeth Regina

I remember learning that England's victory over the Spanish Armada was a triumph which cemented the island as a world power and laid the seeds for its global empire of the 19th Century. What I didn't realize (and I don't remember being in my textbooks) was that it was the demarcation between Elizabeth I's Gloriana years and her time as an aging monarch without a recognized heir. The last installment in Alison Plowden's Elizabeth quartet has a somber feel. Her not-quite-lover Robert Dudley is dead, and most of her original advisers have died or retired. England has achieved the sort of peace and prosperity her father could never have achieved, but Elizabeth finds herself surrounded by lesser advisors and for practical reasons unable to officially name James VI of Scotland as her heir until shortly before her death. Elizabeth remained fascinating until the end, but Elizabeth Regina feels subdued, as if the Queen was going quietly to her death.