This course provides a thematic and chronological approach to the history of religion and politics in America’s Cold War (1945-1989). Along the way we will engage historical patterns both from the “bottom up” and “top down,” measuring the power of elites as well as rank-and-file Americans to shape the religious and political imperatives of their day. What is religion? What is politics? How did the Cold War redefine them and recast their relationship in profound and lasting ways? These are some of the big-picture questions that we will wrestle with as we make our way through the era and the spiritual as well as political crises related to Cold War tensions that animated and defined it.
