Secularists or Christian? The Religious Lives of American Political Candidates in the Public Sphere

by Dennis Lacorne

Huffington Post


In my book, “Religion in America. A Political History” (Columbia University Press, 2011, translated by George Holoch with a foreword by Tony Judt), I attempt to explain the coexistence of two opposed political trends: a religious tradition that invites US politicians to talk openly about their faith and another tradition that insists on the necessity of preserving a real separation of church and state in America. These two traditions are based on rival narratives of the origin and essence of the American democracy: (1) the narrative of a secular Republic, defended by the Founding Fathers at the end of the 18th century and (2) the Neo-Puritan narrative of a government based on Christian roots, defended at the beginning of the 19th century by New England historians and politicians, among them John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster and George Bancroft.
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