Prophesies of Godlessness Predictions of America's Imminent Secularization from the Puritans to the Present Day

Prophesies of Godlessness explores the expectation of moral and religious change that has been voiced in America from the time of the Puritans to today. Predictions sometimes by those fearing it-have a history as old as America. There have been and continue to be patterns-what we call "scripts"-to these prophesies. These scripts have taken a sinuous and at times subterranean route, but they consistently inform the way we think about our future. This book excavates the history of these prophesies, attending in each chapter to a particular era, focal individual, community of thought, and conception of secularization. From the role of prophesies in Thomas Jefferson's thought, to the Civil War, progressivism, the Scopes Trial, the Cold War and beyond, Prophesies of Godlessness argues that expectations about America's future character and piety are not an accidental feature of American thought, but have been, and continue to be, essential to the meaning of the nation itself. Book jacket.

Charles Mathewes is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, where he specializes in Christian theology and ethics, comparative religious ethics, and religion, politics, and society.

Christopher McKnight Nichols is a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He specializes in United States intellectual, cultural, and political history from the late nineteenth century through the twentieth century.