God's Own Citizens

Political Participation and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism, 1900 - 1961

Dr. Uta Balbier

The project's analyzes how Protestant fundamentalists, a pious group at the fringe of society, adapted to their secular, modern surroundings and in the process became a politically potent social movement.

Billy Graham, one of the most influential evangelists, ca. 1958.

Three political events and social changes challenged the fundamentalist milieu and triggered debates on the role of fundamentalist Christians as citizens and as Americans: fundamentalists had to take a stand on World War I and two decades later on World War II; they were confronted with two Catholic presidential candidates - one in the 1920s and one in the 1960s; and they had to position themselves in regard to new media and popular culture. In these debates, fundamentalist believers espoused the new religious positions now known as neo-evangelism. Using new media like radio and television, fundamentalist Christians presented themselves to the American public in profoundly new ways.

The overall goal of the project is to illuminate the intersection of religious, political, and national convictions and to investigate the ways in which they influence and challenge one another. The project is designed to move beyond a one-dimensional analysis of how religion influences society in order to provide a multi-dimensional examination of the interaction of religion, politics, and culture in producing a religious hybrid in the first half of the twentieth century.