God and Race in American Politics: A Short History

Short Review: This is a good follow up to Noll's earlier The Civil War as Theological Crisis. Noll takes a step back and looks at US politics from a wide angle lens and in a surprisingly short book discusses the continued role and both Religion and Race in US politics. As always Noll is subtle with his arguments. He does not suggest that there is always an overlap with religion and racial issues, but that religion and racial issues have a continuing influence that does not always play in the same direction at the same time.

So pre-civil war, the much of the discussion around slavery and race was an explicitly religious case that the simple reading of scripture allowed for slavery. Post civil war, Noll suggests that white support of segregation used revivalist tactics and language but almost completely dropped explicit scriptural support, while the rise of the independent African American church started explicitly finding support for racial equality within scripture.

Noll finds that post civil rights era, race and religion still have a very clear relationship but again it is not single directional and continues to play out in ways that might not be predicted.

I am working through Paul Krugman's book The Conscience of a Liberal and it is interesting to see that especially in the post civil war era, Noll and Krugman's different theses, have a lot of overlapping details where they agree.

Noll ends with a theological reflection. He is clearly a small government conservative and Evangelical, but he is uncomfortable with the direction that race plays in negatively motivating the small government conservative Evangelicals in the US.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/god-race-politics/