American Jesus

On June 14, 2025, a man drove into the Minneapolis suburbs to assassinate Democratic lawmakers, later telling his family: "Dad went to war last night." He believed he was a soldier in a holy war - one authorized by God. He was not acting alone. He was the product of a movement four centuries in the making, now embedded at the highest levels of American government.

American Jesus: The Fight for the Soul of America traces that movement from its origins in Puritan New England - where John Winthrop's "city upon a hill" first cast America as a nation chosen by God - through four hundred years of institution-building to its current, unprecedented proximity to political power. Peter Woollen argues that Christian nationalism is not a fringe phenomenon or a passing reaction, but the most organized and consequential threat to American pluralism and constitutional democracy in our lifetime.

The book moves through three parts: the historical and symbolic roots of the movement; the ideology and key figures driving it today - from Pentecostal prophets and Calvinist Reconstructionists to online provocateurs and MAGA populists, with particular attention to the New Apostolic Reformation and Christian Reconstructionism; and the institutional machinery - media networks, think tanks, legal infrastructure, and the implementation of Project 2025 - that has turned belief into policy.

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, American Jesus offers a clear-eyed, deeply researched guide to understanding how an old idea was repackaged for a new political era - and what is now at stake for the pluralistic democracy the founders built.