Faith in Freedom w/ Andrew Polk

The Road to Now

Benjamin Sawyer

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Faith has played an important role in American history, but not always in the ways we'd expect.

In this episode, Andy Polk joins Bob and Ben to explain how politicians, advertising executives and public relations experts bypassed America's religious leaders, ignored theological debates, and dismissed historical evidence to fabricate and sell a story of America's religious origins that served their own political needs. That story remains with us today so, to quote the title of Andy's op-ed in The Tennessean: "When you hear 'In God We Trust', pay attention to what comes next."

Dr. Andrew R. Polk is Associate Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University and the author of the new book, Faith In Freedom: Propaganda, Presidential Politics, and the Making of an American Religion (Cornell University Press, December 2021).

This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.

This is a rebroadcast of RTN #216, which originally aired on December 13, 2021. This rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now.
0:08.4	Today we are sharing a fantastic conversation with my colleague at MTSU, Andy Polk.
0:14.9	This is an episode we originally shared back in 2021 when we recorded it.
0:20.2	As I've said before, one of the great things about doing
0:22.3	re-airs is just getting a chance to go back and listen to episodes. This one, top to bottom,
0:27.8	incredible. So we hope you guys enjoy it. And if you listen to it before, I mean, sometimes I go
0:34.4	into these thinking, oh yeah, I know what this is about, and I get back into it.
0:38.3	And our guests are great.
0:39.5	We're so lucky.
0:41.4	Maybe you should say we're very thankful since it's Thanksgiving week.
0:45.7	Guys, thank you for listening to the show.
0:47.9	We're so thankful we have an audience, and we are particularly thankful to our patrons.
0:52.8	You guys keep the show going.
0:54.7	I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving,
0:56.4	whether you're staying at home or traveling.
0:58.7	Just enjoy those people around you and your family.
1:01.3	And don't talk politics.
1:07.1	You've had practice now.
1:08.3	You can do it.
1:09.2	Happy Thanksgiving.
1:11.7	The jacket for Andrew's book is awesome. There it is right there. That's what I thought.
1:16.1	When it came in the mail, I told him, I said, I was like, this is the greatest cover ever.
	...

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