Overview

White evangelicals occupy strange property on the ideological map in America, exhibiting a pronounced commitment to the principle of limited government, and yet making a significant exception for issues relating to personal morality - an exception many observers take to be paradoxical at best. Explanations of this phenomenon usually point to the knotty political alliance evangelicals built with free-market types in the late twentieth century, but sermonic evidence suggests a deeper and longer intellectual thread, one that has pervaded evangelical thought all the way back to the American founding. In Republican Theology, Benjamin Lynerd offers an historical and theological account of the hybrid position evangelicals have long affected to hold in American culture - as champions of individual liberty and as guardians of American morality. Lynerd documents the development of a resilient, if problematic, tradition in American political thought, one that sees a free republic, a virtuous people, and an assertive Christianity as mutually dependent. Situating the recent rise of the ""New Right"" within this larger framework, Republican Theology traces the contentious political journey of evangelicals from its earliest moments, laying bare the conceptual tensions built into their civil religion.

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9780199363551

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In Republican Theology, Benjamin Lynerd offers a trenchant analysis of the theological foundations and persistent cultural power of American evangelicalism's engagement with American politics. From John Witherspoon to Billy Graham, from Benjamin Rush to Jerry Falwell, and down to our own day, he guides the reader across the shifting terrain of American moral politics and explicates the significance of this potent political theology for the broad history of American public life. * Andrew R. Murphy, Associate Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University * This timely book makes a solid historical contribution by documenting a long, reasonably flexible, yet still very coherent tradition of American 'republican theology.' Yet the book goes beyond history to also offer an unusually perceptive analysis of where 'republican theology' has functioned for the good of the nation-and for the Christian faith-and where it has not. This major book should have a major impact. * Mark A. Noll, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, University of Notre Dame *

This timely book makes a solid historical contribution by documenting a long, reasonably flexible, yet still very coherent tradition of American 'republican theology.' Yet the book goes beyond history to also offer an unusually perceptive analysis of where 'republican theology' has functioned for the good of the nation-and for the Christian faith-and where it has not. This major book should have a major impact. --Mark A. Noll, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, University of Notre Dame In Republican Theology, Benjamin Lynerd offers a trenchant analysis of the theological foundations and persistent cultural power of American evangelicalism's engagement with American politics. From John Witherspoon to Billy Graham, from Benjamin Rush to Jerry Falwell, and down to our own day, he guides the reader across the shifting terrain of American moral politics and explicates the significance of this potent political theology for the broad history of American public life. --Andrew R. Murphy, Associate Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University

Author Information

Benjamin T. Lynerd is the Montesquieu Forum Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Political Thought at Roosevelt University.

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