Bibliographic Details
Author: David Sehat
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2023
Series: Oxford Studies in American History
Thesis Statement
David Sehat argues that the political divide in modern America is not between a secular Left and a religious Right, but rather between two competing religious visions of the nation. The progressive movement of the early twentieth century was driven not by secularism, but by a politically engaged, Social Gospel Christianity that sought to create a “Kingdom of God on Earth.” This progressive religious tradition shaped American politics from the Progressive Era through the New Deal and into the civil rights movement. The modern religious Right, far from being the sole inheritor of American religious politics, was in fact a reaction against this earlier progressive religious consensus. The “secular” framing of American politics obscures this deeper religious history and continues to distort our understanding of political conflict in the United States.
Summary
David Sehat’s American Prophets offers a sweeping reinterpretation of American political history from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, focusing on the period 1900–1945 as the crucible in which modern American religious politics was forged. Sehat challenges the conventional narrative that treats the twentieth century as a story of secularization, in which religion retreated from the public square only to re-emerge with the rise of the Christian Right in the 1970s and 1980s.
Instead, Sehat demonstrates that the Progressive Era was saturated with religious language and motivation. Protestant modernists, liberal theologians, and Social Gospel advocates believed that Christianity demanded social and economic reform. Figures such as Walter Rauschenbusch, Washington Gladden, and Jane Addams—as well as later figures like Reinhold Niebuhr—articulated a vision of progressive Christianity that animated movements for labor rights, women’s suffrage, temperance, and eventually the New Deal. For these “American prophets,” the Kingdom of God was not merely a heavenly promise but a political mandate.
Sehat traces this tradition through the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, all of whom drew on progressive religious language and networks. Wilson’s internationalism, for example, was explicitly rooted in a Presbyterian sense of providential mission. FDR’s New Deal coalition depended heavily on progressive Protestant clergy and lay activists who saw social provision as a Christian duty. Even the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Sehat argues, inherited this progressive religious tradition, with figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The book’s crucial intervention is its account of how this progressive religious consensus unraveled. As mainline Protestantism declined and as the Cold War reshaped American religion, a new conservative religious politics emerged, one that defined itself against the social gospel and against the “secular humanism” it perceived in progressive politics. By the mid-twentieth century, American politics had been reconfigured as a contest between two religious visions—one progressive, one conservative—rather than a contest between religion and secularism. This framework, Sehat argues, remains central to American political life.
Chapter-by-Chapter Breakdown
- Introduction: The Myth of Secularism: Sehat lays out the historiographical problem: the assumption that American politics became secular in the early twentieth century and religion returned only with the New Right. He previews the argument that progressive politics was itself a religious movement.
- Chapter 1: The Kingdom of God in America: Examines the Social Gospel movement and its leading figures. Sehat traces the theological roots of progressive social thought in figures like Rauschenbusch and Gladden, showing how they developed a Christian critique of industrial capitalism.
- Chapter 2: The Progressive Crusade: Looks at the Progressive Era through the lens of religious reform. Covers child labor reform, settlement houses, and the women’s suffrage movement as expressions of a Christian social vision. Highlights the role of clergy and religious women in progressive campaigns.
- Chapter 3: Woodrow Wilson and the Church of the Nation: A focused study of Wilson’s Presbyterian worldview and how it shaped his domestic and foreign policies, including American entry into World War I and the League of Nations project.
- Chapter 4: The Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy as Political Event: Sehat reinterprets the famous theological battles within Protestantism during the 1910s and 1920s as fundamentally political disputes about the meaning of American nationhood and the direction of progressive reform.
- Chapter 5: The New Deal as Religious Revival: Argues that FDR’s New Deal was sustained and animated by progressive religious networks. Covers the role of Catholic social teaching, Jewish labor activists, and mainline Protestant clergy in building the New Deal coalition.
- Chapter 6: Reinhold Niebuhr and the Politics of Christian Realism: Examines how Niebuhr’s thought provided a theological framework for New Deal liberalism and later Cold War liberalism, bridging progressive Christianity and anti-totalitarianism.
- Chapter 7: The Unraveling of the Progressive Consensus: Traces the post-war decline of progressive religious politics and the rise of a new conservative religious politics that would eventually be associated with the Christian Right. Sehat frames this as a realignment rather than a secularization.
- Conclusion: The Prophetic Tradition and American Politics: Reflects on the legacy of progressive religious politics and its relevance to contemporary debates, arguing that neither progressives nor conservatives can escape the religious frameworks that shaped American political culture.
Scholarly Reception
American Prophets has been widely praised for its ambitious synthesis and its challenge to the secularization thesis in American political history. Scholars of American religion and politics have noted Sehat’s skill at weaving together theology, politics, and social history. The book was awarded the 2024 Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History from the Organization of American Historians.
Quote 1: “Sehat’s American Prophets is a magisterial account of how thoroughly religion shaped American progressive politics—and of how that history has been forgotten or distorted by both secular liberals and religious conservatives.” — Journal of American History
Quote 2: “Sehat has written the definitive history of the religious roots of American progressivism. He shows that the secular/religious binary that dominates contemporary political commentary is not only false but historically illiterate.” — Reviews in American History