Imagining Judeo-Christian America: Religion, Secularism, and the Redefinition of Democracy by K. Healan Gaston (review)

• Published in: American Jewish history 2021-10, Vol.105 (4), p.577-579
• Main Author: Stahl, Ronit Y
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Democracy; Freedom of religion; Jewish people; Politics; Religion; Rhetoric; Secularism; War
• ISSN: 0164-0178; 1086-3141; 1086-3141
• DOI: 10.1353/ajh.2021.0056

The three parts of the book document (1) a Judeo-Christian origin story that comes into focus in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as Protestants acknowledged Jews and Catholics as religious allies rather than religious others in the fight against fascism; (2) a rhetorical and ideological embrace of the "Judeo-Christian tradition" that, forged by World War II and Cold War anti-Communism, appeared to reflect consensus while riven with deep and unresolvable tensions; and (3) a confrontation between Judeo-Christian rhetoric and an American reality that led to a conservative religious embrace of a previously eschewed term, and a progressive distancing from a previously embraced framework. By tracing how each group understood and tethered itself to a linguistic turn of phrase, she shows how "exceptionalists used the term 'Judeo-Christian' to distinguish an authentic, religiously grounded democratic faith from an American liberalism that they deemed hopelessly corrupted by naturalism, humanism, and secularism," whereas "pluralists grounded democracy in religious diversity and intellectual freedom" (12). [...]unraveling the distinctive orientations toward secularism and thus consequences for the definition of religious freedom and its consequences for democracy represent one of the most significant contributions of Gaston's work.