Abstract

The rebirth of Christian fundamentalism in the U.S. since 1945 must be acknowledged as a key shift in the post-World War II American political scene. Every president from Truman to Reagan, in one way or another, has recognized the power of Christian symbolism and values as a legitimating animus for the Pax Americana underwritten across the globe by American technology, military force, and culture. While Christian religiosity figured prominently in the classic republican myths of America's Puritan founding and its divine writ of manifest destiny, the U.S. did not officially pledge itself to be “one nation, under God,” or collectively in “In God We Trust,” until the mid-1950s, following congressional action in the age of Ike and Senator McCarthy.