America’s long-troubled soul

To identify as a Christian in the United States today is hardly controversial. From the covenanted Pilgrims on the Mayflower to born-again presidents, aligning oneself with Christianity, even in the vaguest sense, has always seemed instinctually fitting for most Americans. Sometimes identifying what kind of Christian one claims to be, though, is trickier. With Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity (Basic Books, 656 pp.), the first mainstream survey of Christianity in American history from a major publisher in almost 20 years, modern American religious historian Matthew Avery Sutton offers a road map for navigating this theologically thorny terrain. Sutton’s interest is in the 500-year-long aspiration to make America itself into a fitting “prelude to God’s millennial kingdom,” with Christianity operating as “the dominant engine of American political and cultural life” from its colonial stirrings onward. Whether Americans are aware of it or not, Christianity continues to determine how those who make up the United States understand themselves and the nature of their country. Sutton designates four types of American Christianity that have guided its historical trajectory: tradition-minded “conservatives,” conversion-centered “revivalists,” culturally conscious “liberals,” and social justice–oriented “liberationists.”

According to Sutton, the First Amendment, far from encouraging Enlightenment-infused secularism, “facilitated the rise of an unofficial, Protestant establishment” that never strayed from playing a central and in many cases determinative part in deciding matters on the national stage. Gestures toward “religious liberty” and the “separation of church and state” were in reality intended to protect the interests of the Protestant majority and exclude non-Protestants from the halls of power until the culture wars brought Catholics, Jews, and eventually Mormons closer together.

The group that comes out on top by the latter half of the 20th century is what Sutton labels “apocalyptic revivalists,” evangelicals whose absorption of dispensationalism propelled them toward both sharing the gospel and somewhat paradoxically prioritizing American politics as needed for advancing Christ’s kingdom. Liberals, however, found themselves out of touch with everyday Americans after eschatologically minded evangelicals succeeded in influencing larger swathes of the population using the “competitive, free-market religious landscape” to their advantage. These evangelicals went all-in on media and successfully tapped into ascendant political and social conservatism in the second half of the 20th century.

Sutton’s narrative stays cohesive, sticking to its proposed thesis, until he arrives in the 21st century. At that point the scholarly gloves come off in favor of polemic. This includes but is not limited to railing against Idaho pastor and educator Douglas Wilson as “a pseudo-intellectual guru” and “sad, diminished echo of the culture-warring Jerry Falwell” or rehashing Falwell Jr.’s sex scandal involving his wife Becki or reminding that the swearing-in ceremony of Justice Amy Coney Barrett was “a COVID-19 super-spreader event.” Most partisan of all is Sutton’s bald assertion that the Supreme Court’s recent decisions on cases such as Dobbs and ruling in favor of Colorado baker Jack Phillips and Hobby Lobby reveal how its members are “prioritizing the religious rights of Christians over other kinds of rights.” Professor Sutton is certainly entitled to his personal opinions and interest in these matters, but one will be hard pressed to find how it holds any pertinence to what he initially claims his book is trying to accomplish.

One can still learn many fascinating and important things in Sutton’s recounting of the colorful history of American Christianity. Evangelical readers will also encounter plenty of uncomfortable but necessary truths in this book. It cannot be denied that, historically speaking, on the whole conservative Protestantism was not a friend to the interests of black and indigenous Americans or many immigrants to the United States who also typically claimed Christianity in one form or another. As Sutton correctly reminds us, at the end of the day the American constitutional order “entrust[s] power not to presidents or preachers, not to judges or generals, but to the people.” We Christians in the United States would be wise to make the most of our political inheritance for the sake of our neighbors and the further proclamation of a gospel not made by human hands, American or otherwise. It’s the least we can do after getting this far.