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| From Life magazine, May 18, 1959. |
For decades the dominant story of postwar American religious history has been the triumph of evangelical Christians. . . . But now a growing cadre of historians of religion are reconsidering the legacy of those faded establishment Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians, tracing their enduring influence on the movements for human rights and racial justice, the growing “spiritual but not religious” demographic and even the shaded moral realism of Barack Obama — a liberal Protestant par excellence, some of these academics say.>>>
James P. Byrd, "Was the American Revolution a holy war?" Washington Post, July 6, 2013
Holy war can seem like something that happened long ago or that happens far away — the Crusades of medieval Europe, for example, or jihadists fighting secular forces today. But since their country’s founding, Americans have often thought of their wars as sacred, even when the primary objectives have been political.
This began with the American Revolution. When colonists declared their independence on July 4, 1776, religious conviction inspired them. . . .>>>
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