So what I wanted to do was unpack this word and think about the many different ways that it’s been used and the arguments about what precisely it means to be a Christian in politics in America. They care about abortion, they care about gay marriage, they probably care about smaller government-although I don’t think there’s any obvious connection between any of those and the word “Christian” itself. What is fascinating to me about the times we live in is that there’s a presumption, I think, in the media, in news discourse, that if someone calls themselves a Christian that you know how they’re going to vote. There are a lot of different groups that call themselves Christian, and these groups disagree about what it means to be a Christian. I had always thought and I had been trained in graduate school to think of Christian as being a word that doesn’t have a clear common definition.
I’ve noticed many people will say there’s a sort of Christian position on “Y,” or this person is the Christian candidate running for office. This came out of events during the 2012 presidential election and more of the sort of Religious Right and its presence in politics for a long, long time.
So the subtitle clarifies, but I want to hear how you arrived on just the word Christian as the title.īOWMAN: Sure. HODGES: We’re talking about your book Christian: The Politics of a Word in America. Christian.
I think you’re okay with that!īOWMAN: Sounds good. HODGES: I should let people know that I know you, I’ve known you for a long time, so I’ll call you Matt. You can send questions and comments about this and other episodes to me at ***īLAIR HODGES: Matthew Bowman, welcome to the Maxwell Institute Podcast. Stick around at the end of the episode for our review of the month. Matthew Bowman joins us to talk about his latest book, Christian: The Politics of a Word in America from Harvard University Press. In this episode we’ll complicate the simple story and try to find out who gets to decide what counts as Christian in the United States. There are Christianities-ranging from conservative to liberal, all over the political spectrum. Matthew Bowman’s latest book is a wake-up call, reminding us that there’s no such thing as American Christianity.
I’m Blair Hodges. What comes to mind when you hear the term “American Christians”? Most people today think of the so-called Religious Right, a loosely knit group of conservative Christians who oppose legal abortion, favor gun rights, and hail Ronald Reagan as like unto Moses. BLAIR HODGES: It’s the Maxwell Institute Podcast.
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