My current book manuscript is tentatively titled Unveiling the Beast: The Apocalyptic Challenge to Christian Nationalism and American Empire.
From Liberty Magazine (1920)
Christians Against Christian Nationalism
Unveiling the Beast tells the untold history of how a movement of American Protestants mounted one of the most provocative challenges to the Christian nationalist ideology that drove U.S. imperialistic policies at the turn of the twentieth century. Told through the lens of an American-born apocalyptic tradition known as Seventh-day Adventism, this account introduces a new cast of anti-imperialists. It shows how they developed a theological and historical framework to protest the politicized religious establishment that endorsed the government’s abuse of power. Not only did they spearhead the leading campaign of Christians against the Christian Lobby in the 1880s and 1890s, but they made the case that the Christian nationalism influencing U.S. domestic policy was also at the heart of American imperial ambitions abroad. Adventists articulated a prophetic warning: imperialistic policies that violated human rights abroad would set a precedent for a more centralized government that would infringe on the rights of U.S. citizens at home.
From Liberty Magazine (1921)
The Beast Strikes Back
This book’s narrative arc charts this story from the imperial thrust of the 1890s to the global crisis of World War I that shook the political and religious culture in the United States. Those who raised anti-imperialist criticism against the government during the Philippine-American War and the Boxer Rebellion in China incited the animosity of public officials and patriotic private citizens, but with no physical consequences. That changed during World War I when reactions to Adventists’ controversial views reached a boiling point and they were deemed unpatriotic, un-American, and a threat to the government. Federal legislation like the Sedition Act (1918) unrolled the deepest infringement of the rights of free speech and the press in American legislative history. The U.S. Department of Justice and the Military Intelligence Division retaliated against critics of U.S. war policies, and Adventists nation-wide were subjected to government surveillance, intimidation, and the threat of imprisonment for their views. In the aftermath of WWI, the last war dissenters still awaiting their freedom from custody were Adventists.
Ellen G. White (1827-1915)
…of all people in the world, those who stand before the world as Christians should be the most respectful of the rights of men, and the most vigilant and tenacious in regarding those rights.
— Alonzo T. Jones (1899)