This dissertation explores the manner in which theological elements from a biblical literalist perspective undergird and authorize the historical memory texts produced by Christian nationalist advocates in support of conservative Protestant religious establishment. Christian nationalist discourses exploit notions of divine warrant, public remembrance, and "historical evidence" as means to read the nation and contemporary far right ideological commitments as biblically founded, and hence, as binding upon the nation. Focusing on the rhetoric of David Barton, Christian nationalist par excellence and Republican Party operative, I argue that discourses of Christian nationhood mobilize the theologies of providence, inerrancy, inspiration, and literalism as rhetorical strategies to situate God's law as the definitive legal standard through which American law and cultural values are (de)authorized. Drawing upon the presumptions of biblical literalism to present the textual "proof' of a Christian nation, the politics of this memory work (and the many ways these discourses presume to furnish textual proofs of a biblical nation) aims to influence and to shape public memory, opinion, political behavior, and policy formation in favor of far right Protestant hegemonic interests.
Dissertation
(Re)membering a Christian nation: Christian nationalism, biblical literalism, and the politics of public memory
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2014
DOI: 10.17077/etd.pkbeboyn
Free to read and download, Open Access
Abstract
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- (Re)membering a Christian nation: Christian nationalism, biblical literalism, and the politics of public memory
- Creators
- Tahlia G.M.B. Fischer - University of Iowa
- Contributors
- Jeffrey A. Bennett (Advisor)David Hingstman (Committee Member)Isaac West (Committee Member)Leslie Schwalm (Committee Member)Joy E. Hayes (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Communication Studies
- Date degree season
- Spring 2014
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- DOI
- 10.17077/etd.pkbeboyn
- Number of pages
- vi, 251 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2014 Tahlia GMB Fischer
- Language
- English
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-251).
- Academic Unit
- Communication Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9983776779202771
Metrics
2140 File views/ downloads
487 Record Views