The Religious Nationalism Podcast Darryl Hart and Crawford Gribben

In this episode, D. G. Hart and Crawford Gribben compare their recent books, "American Catholic: The politics of faith during the Cold War" and "The rise and fall of Christian Ireland," thinking about how the similar religious traditions they describe can interact with different political cultures, and with very different results. 

For further reading:

D. G. Hart, American Catholic: The politics of faith during the Cold War

Crawford Gribben, The rise and fall of Christian Ireland

Michael Brendan Dougherty, My father left me Ireland

Gribben's review of Dougherty, My father left me Ireland, in The Wall Street Journal

In episode 13, Darryl Hart and Crawford Gribben talk to Alex Titov about religious nationalism in Russia. Alex teaches history at Queen's University Belfast, where his research and teaching focus on Russian nationalism, foreign policy, the political history of the USSR, and the biography of Nikita Khrushchev. Alex is a prolific journalist and a frequent broadcaster. You can follow his work on Twitter at @TitovAlexander.

Where now for Team Navalny?

The opposition in Russia can defeat Putin – but only if its message chimes with an impoverished country

Alexei Navalny: Novichok didn’t stop Russian opposition leader – but a prison sentence might

Orthodox Church: biggest split in a thousand years triggered over Ukraine

In episode 12, Darryl Hart and Crawford Gribben talk to Dave Stewart about religious nationalism in early modern Spain. Dave is professor of history at Hillsdale College, MI, and a scholar of religious identities in early modern France and Spain. How did the fifteenth-century re-conquest of the Iberian peninsula contribute to the emergence of a distinct sense of religious responsibility in the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds? Why did protestant reform make such little impact in the region? And how did the political turbulence of the nineteenth century feed into the social and political pressures that erupted in civil war and the birth of Franco-ism?  

National identities based on church membership may have come more readily to Protestant countries in Europe, but Catholic kingdoms and nations also drew heavily on Christian identity.  The case of France, the subject of this episode, is an important reminder of the way that the Catholic Church was entangled in the political institutions (in this case, the monarchy) and cultural expectations that gave the French a unique identity.  The French Revolution, which eventually took an anti-clerical turn, did fundamentally reset the terms of French national identity.  But the legacy of the medieval church, the Reformation, religious wars, and the Edict of Nantes (1598) did not simply vanish after 1798.  To provide guidance on French religious nationalism, D. G. Hart (flying solo this time) interviewed Ullrich Langer, Professor of French (emeritus) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  His specialties include sixteenth-century poetry and prose; Renaissance intellectual history (especially moral philosophy and political theory), and religious conflict in France during the Reformation.  

This recorded lecture, sponsored by the History Department, took place at Hillsdale College on April 15, 2021 to promote D. G. Hart's new book, American Catholic: The Politics of Faith During the Cold War (Cornell University Press).  It is a companion piece to an earlier episode with Daniel McCarthy on Roman Catholics and Christian nationalism in the U.S. 

Below is a bibliography of works mentioned in the presentation: 

Paul Blanshard, American Freedom and Catholic Power (Beacon, 1949)

William F. Buckley, Jr., God and Man at Yale (Regnery, 1951)

John Courtney Murray, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (Sheed & Ward, 1960)

Phyllis Schlafly, A Choice Not an Echo (Pere Marquette Press, 1964)

Richard John Neuhaus, The Catholic Moment: The Paradox of the Church in the Post-Modern World (Harper & Row, 1987)

Charles R. Morris, American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church (Times Books, 1997)

John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (W. W. Norton, 2003)

Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (Free Press, 2012)

Thomas J. Sugrue, “The Catholic Encounter with the 1960s,” in Catholics in the American Century: Recasting Narratives of U.S. History, ed., R. Scott Apple and Kathleen Sprows Cummings (Cornell University Press, 2012)

Joseph Bottum, An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America (Image, 2014)

Sam Haselby, The Origins of American Religious Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2016)

James Chappel, Catholic Modern: The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church(Harvard University Press, 2018)

Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (Yale University Press, 2018)

D. G. Hart, American Catholic: The Politics of Faith During the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2020)

Massimo Faggioli, Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States (Bayard, 2021)

In episode 9, Darryl Hart and Crawford Gribben talk to Adam Mestyan. Adam teaches history at Duke University, NC, and is the author and editor of numerous books and articles, including Arab patriotism: The ideology and culture of power in late Ottoman Egypt (2017) and Primordial history, print capitalism, and Egyptology in nineteenth-century Cairo: Muṣṭafā Salāma al-Naǧǧārī’s The Garden of Ismail’s Praise (2021), along with numerous scholarly articles and publications in venues such as Aeon. You can learn more about Adam's work on Twitter at @adammestyan.