Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Recent years have given rise to a heightened sense of nationalism throughout the world in which movements and leaders often present religious traditions as keys to returning their homeland to a supposedly pristine past. Although Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s elevation of Hindutva in India has vast contextual differences with U.S. president Donald Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” by returning it to some ambiguous, Protestant Christian heritage, both use religious concepts and language for explicitly political purposes. This paper explores some of the twentieth-century roots of this phenomenon in the U.S. in hopes of shedding light on the ways similar processes are happening throughout the world today. Although many are aware of the intimate connection between Protestant leaders and Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s, the interconnection between religion and politics in the United States seen in the Reagan administration goes back several decades. During and immediately after the Second World War, presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower partnered with advertising and media executives to champion a version of religion that promoted nationalism, militarism, and free market capitalism. By promoting national unity through the lens of religious devotion, they hoped to advance policies that moved the nation closer their own preferred visions. The cultural and geopolitical differences between the worlds Truman and Trump navigate are perhaps even greater than those of Modi and Trump, yet examining the ways these past leaders used religion for political gain helps illuminate the ways others use similar tactics today.