To close out the week’s books, here is a new collection from Routledge on early modern Europe, A Sourcebook of  Early Modern European History, edited by Ute Lotz-Heumann (University of Arizona). Many foundational concepts in American church-state relations date from this period, and the book addresses a number of subjects that law and religion scholars will find interesting. Here’s the publisher’s description:

A Sourcebook of Early Modern European History not only provides instructors with primary sources of a manageable length and translated into English, it also offers students a concise explanation of their context and meaning.

By covering different areas of early modern life through the lens of contemporaries’ experiences, this book serves as an introduction to the early modern European world in a way that a narrative history of the period cannot. It is divided into six subject areas, each comprising between twelve and fourteen explicated sources: I. The fabric of communities: Social interaction and social control; II. Social spaces: Experiencing and negotiating encounters; III. Propriety, legitimacy, fidelity: Gender, marriage, and the family; IV. Expressions of faith: Official and popular religion; V. Realms intertwined: Religion and politics; and, VI. Defining the religious other: Identities and conflicts.

Spanning the period from c. 1450 to c. 1750 and including primary sources from across early modern Europe, from Spain to Transylvania, Italy to Iceland, and the European colonies, this book provides an excellent sense of the diversity and complexity of human experience during this time whilst drawing attention to key themes and events of the period. It is ideal for students of early modern history, and of early modern Europe in particular.

To start this week’s books, here is a new biography of Ronald Reagan from the University of Nebraska Press, Ronald Reagan: An Intellectual Biography, by David Byrne (California Baptist University). The book highlights the role that Christianity played in Reagan’s worldview, particularly, the author says, the Christian concept of “a universal kingdom of God.” This puzzles me: Christianity and universalism don’t really go together. I wonder if what the author means is the American tendency, which Tocqueville recognized, to downplay religious difference in the name of equality. The “Kingdom of Freedom” the author describes, in other words, might be a bit more American than Christian. But then, again to cite Tocqueville, Americans have always conflated Christianity and liberty. Readers can judge for themselves. Here’s the description of the book from the publisher’s website:

In this ambitious work David T. Byrne analyzes the ideas that informed Ronald Reagan’s political philosophy and policies. Rather than appraising Reagan’s personal and emotional life, Byrne’s intellectual biography goes one step further; it establishes a rationale for the former president’s motives, discussing how thinkers such as Plato and Adam Smith influenced him. Byrne points to three historical forces that shaped Reagan’s political philosophy: Christian values, particularly the concept of a universal kingdom of God; America’s firm belief in freedom as the greatest political value and its aversion to strong centralized government; and the appeasement era of World War II, which stimulated Reagan’s aggressive and confrontational foreign policy.

Byrne’s account of the fortieth president augments previous work on Reagan with a new model for understanding him. Byrne shows how Reagan took conservatism and the Republican Party in a new direction, departing from the traditional conservatism of Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk. His desire to spread a “Kingdom of Freedom” both at home and abroad changed America’s political landscape forever and inspired a new conservatism that persists to this day.

For our readers who don’t live in New York and so can’t watch the annual Honeymooners marathon, here’s a little seasonal music to welcome in the New Year. Back to our regular programming tomorrow!

A Protestant earnestness has characterized America’s relationship with the outside world from the beginning. Protecting Christian missionaries, and their schools and hospitals, was a key factor in America’s policy towards China in the late 19th century, for example, and President McKinley said it was necessary for America to take control of the Philippines in order to Christianize the population. American leaders wouldn’t talk that way today, of course. But a missionary impulse to do good works in the world is still very much a part of America’s self-image.

An interesting-looking new book from Harvard, Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid, discusses the historical link between American nationalism and humanitarian aid campaigns. The author is Tufts University religion professor Heather Curtis. Here’s the description from the Harvard website:

On May 10, 1900, an enthusiastic Brooklyn crowd bid farewell to the Quito. The ship sailed for famine-stricken Bombay, carrying both tangible relief—thousands of tons of corn and seeds—and “a tender message of love and sympathy from God’s children on this side of the globe to those on the other.” The Quito may never have gotten under way without support from the era’s most influential religious newspaper, the Christian Herald, which urged its American readers to alleviate poverty and suffering abroad and at home.

In Holy Humanitarians, Heather D. Curtisargues that evangelical media campaigns transformed how Americans responded to domestic crises and foreign disasters during a pivotal period for the nation. Through graphic reporting and the emerging medium of photography, evangelical publishers fostered a tremendously popular movement of faith-based aid that rivaled the achievements of competing agencies like the American Red Cross. By maintaining that the United States was divinely ordained to help the world’s oppressed and needy, the Christian Herald linked humanitarian assistance with American nationalism at a time when the country was stepping onto the global stage. Social reform, missionary activity, disaster relief, and economic and military expansion could all be understood as integral features of Christian charity.

Drawing on rigorous archival research, Curtis lays bare the theological motivations, social forces, cultural assumptions, business calculations, and political dynamics that shaped America’s ambivalent embrace of evangelical philanthropy. In the process she uncovers the seeds of today’s heated debates over the politics of poverty relief and international aid.