The review explains that for most of its history “no one could have questioned that America was a Christian nation,” noting that even in 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt could assert that America was “a Protestant nation.” Kevin Schultz shows how this assumption gave way in the postwar years to the idea of “Tri-Faith America,” in which Protestants, Catholics, and Jews came to share public legitimacy. A powerful symbol of this change was the USS Dorchester tragedy, when “one Jewish, one Catholic, two Protestants” chaplains died together, “arms joined in common prayer,” conveying the sense that “religious differences just don’t matter.” Schultz traces how this shift affected society “on every level,” ultimately explaining how “today’s full-blown pluralism has come to shape the America that we are.”
This summary was produced using AI-assisted tools to aid reader orientation. Readers are encouraged to engage the full review for precise argumentation and nuance.
Review of Schultz Tri Faith America
