Who Is a True Christian?: Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture - Softcover

Congdon, David W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1009429027 ISBN 13: 9781009429023

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2025

Synopsis

'No true Christian could vote for Donald Trump.' 'Real Christians are pro-life.' 'You can't be a Christian and support gay marriage.' Assertive statements like these not only reflect growing religious polarization but also express the anxiety over religious identity that pervades modern American Christianity. To address this disquiet, conservative Christians have sought security and stability: whether by retrieving 'historic Christian' doctrines, reconceptualizing their faith as a distinct culture, or reinforcing a political vision of what it means to be a follower of God in a corrupt world. The result is a concerted effort 'Make Christianity Great Again': a religious project predating the corresponding political effort to 'Make America Great Again.' Part intellectual history, part nuanced argument for change, this timely book explores why the question of what defines Christianity has become, over the last century, so damagingly vexatious - and how believers might conceive of it differently in future.

About this title

About the Author

David W. Congdon is a Senior Editor at the University Press of Kansas, where he acquires new titles in political science, and an Instructor at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. He is the author of three books, including The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann's Dialectical Theology (2015, which won the Rudolf Bultmann Prize in Hermeneutics from the Philipps University of Marburg), and the editor of Varieties of Christian Universalism: Exploring Four Views (2023).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009429027
• ISBN 13: 9781009429023
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 406