American exodus, American identity : biblical texts and national identities from the American Revolution to the Civil War.

The broad question that drives my interest in this topic is how people’s religious beliefs influenced their participation in public culture or their interpretation of that culture, particularly national identity. Forming Americans’ national identity as if they were the people of God has always been a complicated and controversial topic, not least because of the questionable exercise of trying to discern and declare the will of God for a whole nation. Americans have always been many peoples, and the era between the Revolution and the Civil War was no different. Though only white males had formal political roles, interpreting national life through biblical ideas was as important to slaves, women, freed people, and others. This was possible because those living by religious belief saw themselves as relating not just to the political body or broader society and its many parts but also to God and his perspective on their social and cultural context. Biblical narratives like the Exodus were useful for many different kinds of people, whether politically powerful or not, because from their perspective God acted in a history they believed to be continuous in some way with their own. He acted on behalf of the nation, but he also acted against the nation that oppresses. He delivered and he punished for sin. Tracking the many uses and changes of biblical texts central to American national identity highlights conflict over beliefs about the religious life of the nation and related political issues and draws in a cross-section of Americans not typically among the political or theologically elite. While this is not, alone, a new idea, this study offers a careful examination of how national identities and scriptural texts were connected across time and between a diversity of groups in America. In particular, the Exodus was a central biblical text with both a timeless quality and an ever-shifting usage in American public religion.