Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-382) and index.
Contents:
Introduction : 9/11 in Parallax Vision : -- 1. Why the Bush blunders? -- 2. Why the imperial overstretch? -- 3. Why the American heresies? -- Washington's World : the Civil Church Expectatnt : -- 4. A divine-right republic in the family of nations -- 5. Washington's farewell address -- 6. Thomas Jefferson and the utopian temptation -- 7. John Quincy Adams and the problem of neighborhood of neighborhood -- 8. Manifest destiny -- 9. European revolutions and American civil war -- 10. The gilded age : last years of orthodoxy -- Wilson's World : the Civil Church Militant : -- 11. ℗ŁCuba libre! -- 12. The progressive social gospel -- 13. Benevolent assimilation -- 14. Twentieth-century trends -- 15. Wilson's war -- 16. Wilson's peace -- Roosevelt's World : the Civil Church Agonistes : -- 17. Modern explosions -- 18. The progressive Republican denouement -- 19. Roosevelt the isolationist -- 20. Roosevelt the interventionist -- 21. World War II : the great masquerade -- 22. Roosevelt the failed high priest -- Kennedy's World : the Civil Church Triumphant -- 23. The cradles of cold war theology -- 24. High priestly prayers -- 25. Impossible dreams -- 26. Age of Aquarius -- 27. A purgatory in time -- 28. The power of words -- Obams's world? : the Global Civil Religion Aborts
Summary:
Pulitzer Prizéwinning historian Walter A. McDougall argues powerfully that a pervasive but radically changing faith that "God is on our side" has inspired U.S. foreign policy ever since 1776. The first comprehensive study of the role played by civil religion in U.S. foreign relations over the entire course of the countrýs history, McDougall's book explores the deeply infused religious rhetoric that has sustained and driven an otherwise secular republic through peace, war, and global interventions for more than two hundred years. From the Founding Fathers and the crusade for independence to the Monroe Doctrine, through World Wars I and II and the decades-long Cold War campaign against "godless Communism," this coruscating polemic reveals the unacknowledged but freely exercised dogmas of civil religion that bind together a "God blessed" America, sustaining the nation in its pursuit of an ever elusive global destiny.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.