410. Matthew Sutton with Bill Radke: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity

Whether or not you call yourself religious, there's no denying that religion has an impact on society across the continents. And there is no faith more dominant than Christianity in the United States today. Washington State University professor and historian Matthew A. Sutton can show you just exactly how evangelical Christianity entwines itself with all aspects of the country. Drawing from his book, Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity, Sutton chronicles Christians' five-hundred-year endeavor to turn the U.S. into their version of the kingdom of God.

In the centuries after Christianity first arrived on American shores, colonizers (and the colonized) practiced many varieties of the faith. Throughout the nation's history, Christianity has maintained influence and power through new and evolving strains of its faith. As U.S. Christianity has fractured and adapted to changing times, the religion has shaped everything from the promise of Manifest Destiny to Ronald Reagan's approach to the Cold War, the rise of the Southern Lost Cause narrative, to the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement.

Through Sutton's research, he explains how faith affects human behavior, which ultimately shapes the world we make. Tracing the faith's major figures and currents, Sutton pinpoints how U.S. Christianity — always both steadfast and precarious — lives at the center of the nation's shared history.

Matthew Avery Sutton is the Claudius O. and Mary Johnson Distinguished Professor and department chair in History at Washington State University. He is the author of five other books on the history of American Christianity, including Double Crossed and American Apocalypse, and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. He lives in Pullman, Washington.

Bill Radke hosts Week In Review at KUOW. Before that, he created and hosted the NPR humor show Rewind and hosted the Marketplace Morning Report, covering the day's national/international business news. He's been a KUOW reporter, news director, and interview host; also, a stand-up comedian and Seattle P-I newspaper columnist.

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Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity

Third Place Books