Church & State 250: Faith, Empire, and the American Revolution

Have a comment? Send us a text! (We read all of them but can't reply). Email us: [email protected] the American Revolution really a fight for religious freedom? Katherine Carté, Professor of History at Southern Methodist University and author of Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History, helps separate the national myth from the historical record. Carté explains that the Revolution was not one simple story. It was both a break from British rule and the messy process of building a new United States. Religion mattered deeply, but not always in the way Americans assume. The conflict was not mainly Protestants fighting Britain for religious liberty. It was a political struggle over sovereignty, power, empire, and who had the right to rule. Carté shows how British imperial Protestantism connected Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, missionaries, donors, and colonial institutions before the war disrupted that order. The conversation also explores religious establishments, loyalists, Catholics, Jews, religious tests, secular citizenship, and why “Was America founded as a Christian nation?” is too narrow a question.Guest BioKatherine Carté is Professor of History at Southern Methodist University, where she studies early American history, the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, the Age of Revolutions, early modern religion, and digital humanities. She is the author of Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History, published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and UNC Press, and Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America. Her work helps explain how British imperial Protestantism shaped colonial life, how the American Revolution disrupted that religious and political order, and why the founding era cannot be reduced to simple claims about America being either Christian or secular.Book MentionedReligion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History by Katherine CartéBookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9781469662640Relevant Links & ResourcesKatherine Carté Faculty ProfileURL: https://people.smu.edu/kengel/ Support Sarah Stankorb’s work and preorder Damned If She Does: Why Women Quit Church and What It Means for the Future of Religion, Releases September 15, 2026.  Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798889837091Website: https://www.sarahstankorb.com/Support the showKeep the conversation going.Want to learn more about Faithful Politics, suggest a future guest, or connect with us directly?Visit our website:faithfulpoliticspodcast.comBrowse our bookstore, featuring books from many of our guests:faithfulpoliticspodcast.com/bookstoreSupport the show and help us keep these conversations going:patreon.com/cw/FaithfulPoliticsSubscribe for behind-the-scenes content, reflections, and updates:faithfulpolitics.substack.comContact the hosts:Josh Burtram, Faithful Host: [email protected] Wright, Political Host: [email protected] Faithful Politics:Instagram: faithful_politicsFacebook: FaithfulPoliticsPodcast