Next fall I will be teaching a course entitled, "Contemporary Religious Issues." This is the catalog description: "Analysis of selected issues, such as church-state relations, fundamentalism, and debates over abortion, that are central to contemporary religious life. Primary attention to the American scene and some cross-cultural comparisons. Alternate years." As you can see, the person teaching this course has a range of topics from which to choose.
With this being an election year, I am toying with the idea of focusing on religion and politics. I have assembled a list of books to consider for the course, including:
Randall Balmer's God in the White House: A History: How Faith Shaped the Presidency From John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush
John Fea's Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction
Roger Gottlieb's A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet's Future
D.G. Hart's From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism
Frank Lambert's Religion in American Politics: A Short Introduction
D.Michael Lindsay's Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite
Mark Noll's God and Race in American Politics: A Short History
Mark Noll's and Luke Harlow's Religion and American Politics
Gary Scott Smith's Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush
Daniel Williams's God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right
From reading the title of these book, you will notice that I am mostly interested in the relationship between evangelicalism and politics. If you have any further suggestions on books related to religion and politics that I should consider, please drop me a line.
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