Battle for the city on the hill: Evangelical interpretations of American history, 1960-1996

The rise in the last two decades of the New Christian Right, as it is often called, has profoundly affected the political and social alignments in American culture. Much has been written about this movement as well as its more highly visible personalities, such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, by sociologists and historians. However, the movement's ideas surrounding American nationalism and its reliance on American history to legitimate its claims have not been explored in detail.; This dissertation analyzes the historiography of evangelical nationalism (New Christian Right) and proposes that, instead of a monolithic view, there are five distinct paradigms of interpretation found among the evangelical authors who have written their versions of American history. These paradigms include America as the "New Israel" motif resurrected by Peter Marshall, Jr., America as the "Judeo-Christian Nation" by Pat Robertson, America as the "Christian Republic" by Verna Hall and Rosalie Slater, America as the "Postmillennial Kingdom" by the Christian Reconstructionists, and America as the "Christian Nation" by Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, D. James Kennedy, and Catherine Millard.; In addition, this study discusses the overarching paradigm by which evangelical nationalists construct American history as a Providential history. Paralleling the evangelical structure of Divine authority, certain historical documents form a canon of American "scripture" and particular historic leaders serve as American "prophets." The evangelical nationalist understandings of the Mayflower Compact, John Winthrop's sermon "A Model of Christian Charity," the Declaration of Independence, and the United States Constitution are examined. Their views on Bradford, Winthrop, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson (an especially controversial figure among evangelicals) and Ronald Reagan are analyzed. Finally, this dissertation suggests that the evangelical doctrine of "verbal inspiration" as a hermeneutical category shapes the methodology behind the evangelical nationalists' interpretation of history and their argumentation strategies.; The limitations evangelical nationalism faces in achieving desired aims may be found in its philosophical distance from the mainstream of American cultural thought. Biblical jeremiads and scriptural citations mean little in modern American culture. However, these evangelical authors have discovered American history as a shared common ground with public culture and are utilizing it as an new instrument by which to present their Providential nationalism. The employment of this relatively recent strategy has gained a significant audience from private schools to church pulpits to public forums.