The history of Christianity actively shapes political life, and political life actively shapes the history of Christianity. The papers in this session examine with particular urgency the conditions under which that history becomes a contested resource for shaping public life. Across three distinct contexts, the American classroom, the genealogy of Christian nationalism, and the wartime formation of religious institutions in Ukraine, the papers collectively ask how the history of Christianity is mobilized, mythologized, and institutionally remade in response to present crises.
Drawing on pedagogy, intellectual history, and qualitative fieldwork, the session addresses questions of enduring relevance about the authority of historical narratives, the entanglement of religious and national identity, and the ways in which the history of Christianity is produced, instrumentalized, and studied. Together, the papers demonstrate that how the past is narrated is never simply an academic question; it carries direct consequences for political imagination, institutional formation, and the future of public religious life.
The session speaks to ongoing conversations in American religious history, intellectual history, Christian nationalism, political theology, church-state relations, sociology of religion, and the pedagogy of the history of Christianity.
As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence, debates about religion and national identity increasingly shape public discourse. This paper examines the pedagogical challenges and opportunities involved in teaching the history of early Christianity in contemporary American classrooms, particularly in culturally conservative contexts where students may arrive with strong assumptions about the unity and continuity of Christian tradition. By introducing students to the diversity of early Christian communities and the historical development of doctrine—such as debates surrounding the Council of Chalcedon (451)—courses on early Christianity can complicate confessional narratives while fostering critical historical analysis. The paper explores strategies for distinguishing historical inquiry from theological evaluation, encouraging constructive classroom dialogue, and helping students understand how Christian traditions have developed through ongoing processes of debate and interpretation. These pedagogical approaches highlight the continuing relevance of early Christian history for contemporary discussions about religion and public life.
As the United States prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Christian nationalists are promoting the myth that the founding fathers were predominately orthodox Christian men. I argue that recent efforts to sustain this myth by Christian nationalists like Doug Wilson center on a historical figure who was nowhere near the Pennsylvania State house in 1776: the Protestant reformer John Calvin. I demonstrate how Christian nationalists’ mobilization of Calvin rely on historical narratives advanced during the late nineteenth century by Dutch pastor and politician Abraham Kuyper. Throughout his writings, Kuyper valorized Calvinist rebels across time, from the sixteenth-century religious wars in France to the eighteenth-century American Revolution. Identifying Christian nationalists’ appropriation of Kuyper’s Calvinist genealogy helps us better to understand their efforts to dissociate the American Revolution from the Enlightenment and read founding documents like the Declaration of Independence in ways that promote Christian hegemony.
In Ukraine, war did not simply reshape religious institutions—it generated a new model of military chaplaincy. While in most countries chaplaincy developed gradually within stable state structures, Ukraine followed a different trajectory: it emerged during an ongoing war and was initially driven by civil society rather than state policy. Drawing on original qualitative research, including a personal interview with Colonel Larysa Polianska, head of the Military Chaplaincy Service of Ukraine, this study examines how volunteer clergy, interfaith cooperation, and institutional improvisation shaped chaplaincy under wartime conditions. The Ukrainian case reveals a model of bottom-up institutionalization, in which grassroots religious initiatives preceded state recognition. It also shows how interfaith cooperation, gender transformation in leadership, and the legacy of Soviet secularism are reshaping the relationship between religion, civil society, and the military in contemporary Ukraine.