Overview

Recovers the religious origins of the War on Drugs Many people view the War on Drugs as a contemporary phenomenon invented by the Nixon administration. But as this new book shows, the conflict actually began more than a century before, when American Protestants began the temperance movement and linked drug use with immorality. Christian Nationalism and the Birth of the War on Drugs argues that this early drug war was deeply rooted in Christian impulses. While many scholars understand Prohibition to have been a Protestant undertaking, it is considerably less common to consider the War on Drugs this way, in part because racism has understandably been the focal point of discussions of the drug war. Antidrug activists expressed-and still do express--blatant white supremacist and nativist motives. Yet this book argues that that racism was intertwined with religious impulses. Reformers pursued the ""civilizing mission,"" a wide-ranging project that sought to protect ""child races"" from harmful influences while remodeling their cultures to look like Europe and the United States. Most reformers saw Christianity as essential to civilization and missionaries felt that banning drugs would encourage religious conversion and progress. This compelling work of scholarship radically reshapes our understanding of one of the longest and most damaging conflicts in modern American history, making the case that we cannot understand the War on Drugs unless we understand its religious origins.

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9781479817924

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"""An in-depth reassessment of the war on drugs, with lessons for students of American religion, crime, and White supremacy.""--Kirkus Reviews ""Kirkus Reviews"""

Religious studies professor Andrew Monteith chronicles how American Protestants began to link drug use with the immorality over a century before Nixon declared there to be a war on drugs. The author urges readers to recognize the religious origins of that war and reconsider the damages the conflict has caused. -- Publishers Weekly

The American crusade against intoxicants began earlier than you might think. An in-depth reassessment of the war on drugs, with lessons for students of American religion, crime, and white supremacy. * Kirkus Reviews * Quite thorough in its scope and features theological, legal, racist, and cultural trends as they related to the war on drugs. . . . Solid historically, important culturally and politically, and eye opening religiously. -- Gary Laderman, Goodrich C. White Professor of American Religious History and Cultures, Emory College A superb analysis of one of America’s most enduring social problems. Monteith’s historical research, coupled with his astute engagement with theories of religion, make this a groundbreaking contribution to many fields. -- Cara Burnidge, author of A Peaceful Conquest: Woodrow Wilson, Religion, and the New World Order

Author Information

Andrew Monteith is Assistant Professor and the Distinguished Emerging Scholar of Religious Studies at Elon University in North Carolina.

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