@article{oai:icu.repo.nii.ac.jp:00000115,
 author = {Ribuffo, Leo P.},
 issue = {39},
 journal = {人文科学研究 （キリスト教と文化）, Humanities: Christianity and Culture},
 month = {Mar},
 note = {This article traces the impact of religion on American national politics
from independence in 1776 to the present. The story begins with the current
controversy about the religious beliefs of the most famous “Founding
Fathers” and the creation of a secular republic via the Constitution and its
First Amendment. The nineteenth century was marked by growing
religious diversity, notably fragmentation within the Protestant majority and
the arrival of significant Roman Catholic and Jewish minorities, as well as
the growing impact of religious issues on politics. In general devout
Protestants supported the Federalist, Whig, and Republican parties, while
Catholics and free thinkers usually favored the Democrats, a tendency that
has continued to the present. Protestant advocates of the “social gospel”
were especially active d+ring the pre-World War I reform movement that
historians warily call Progressivism. World War I deepened religious
divisions, and the 1920s was marked by many bitter religion-related
controversies, including increased anti-Semitism and Protestant opposition
to the first Catholic nominated for president by a major party (Democrat Al
Smith in 1928). During the Great Depression President Franklin D.
Roosevelt created a remarkable Democratic coalition that included most
Catholics and Jews along with many southern conservative Protestants. The
period between World War II and the early 1960s brought a multifaceted but
increasingly tolerant religious revival that has affected national politics to
the present. The most recent six presidents (Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter,
Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush) have
been more conventionally Christian than the first six (George Washington,
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John
Quincy Adams). Nonetheless, religion-related conflict has persisted and,
compared to the 1950s, even escalated. President Ronald Reagan brought a
“new Christian right” into his Republican coalition, and President George W.
Bush, a born again Protestant, courted this conservative constituency with
some high level appointments and the rhetoric of American mission.
Democrats and secularists harshly criticized Bush’s tactics. We must beware
of joining commentators who describe these conflicts, in typical American
hyperbole, as a “culture war.” Rather, they represent the latest in a long
series o% cultural “shouting matches” seeking to define a normative
“American Way of Life.”},
 pages = {155--185},
 title = {Religion and American Politics: A Historical Overview},
 year = {2008}
}