Abstract
This paper examines how evangelical pastors applied Protestant notions of a Hebraic Republic for their parishioners as America transitioned from a colonial frontier to a new republic. As the American constitutions took shape during and after the Revolution, many evangelical pastors argued that America emulated or was inspired by the Israelite polity as described by the Old Testament. America and its institutions thus became a reincarnated Hebraic Republic, a new “city on a hill”, and a new Jerusalem. Originally these pastors drew on a broader, global movement that was shaping republican attempts at reform in Europe, but as they localized the biblical model to their own particular experiences, they brought new meaning to it and exported the transformed model back out to the world.
Highlights
Politics, Philosophy, and Economics Program, The King’s College, 56 Broadway, New York, NY 10004, USA; Abstract: This paper examines how evangelical pastors applied Protestant notions of a Hebraic
On 5 October 2015, contractors used the cover of darkness and an increased presence of state police to separate a granite monument of the 10 Commandments from its base and remove it from the premises of the Oklahoma capitol
Ended the long drama stirred by objections that the monument violated the constitutional separation of church and state, objections upheld by the Oklahoma Supreme
Summary
What is American evangelicalism? The terms “evangelicalism” and “evangelical” are difficult to define precisely according to two prominent scholars of American evangelicalism, George Marsden and Barry Hankins. On the one hand American evangelicals were part of a global Protestant project that was interpreting and applying the Old Testament in new republican political orders. Evangelicalism was itself being democratized in a distinctly American way As these sermons spread more broadly in pamphlet form throughout the colonies, other faiths in the Americas—most notably Jews and Catholics—were encouraged to syncretize or assimilate into the nascent American civil religion. This evangelical application of biblical concepts, being both global and local, has left a lingering legacy on American political life. American evangelicals have not always taken to such dramatic, equestrian displays of piety, but impassioned pleas for the Bible’s application in politics have been in America from the moment that evangelicalism began
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