What do you think?
Rate this book
Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity
A sweeping history of Christianity in America, from the arrival of the first Europeans to the political triumphs of evangelicalism, showing the powerful, singular role the faith has always played in American public life
In the United States today, there is no faith more dominant than Christianity. In Chosen Land, historian Matthew Avery Sutton chronicles Christians’ five-hundred-year endeavor to turn North America into their version of the kingdom of God, revealing the fruitful and dynamic entanglement between the history of America and the history of American Christianity.
In the centuries after Christianity first arrived on American shores, colonizers and colonized from New England to Spanish California practiced many varieties of the faith. After the founding of the United States, the nation’s lack of a state religion forced new and evolving strains of Christianity to battle for potential adherents, as they still do to this day. As American Christianity has bent, fractured, and adapted to changing times, Christian belief has shaped everything from the promise of Manifest Destiny to Ronald Reagan’s approach to the Cold War, the rise of the Southern Lost Cause narrative to the triumphs of the civil rights movement.
A landmark work of narrative synthesis tracing the faith’s major figures and currents, Chosen Land confirms the unique place that American Christianity—always both steadfast and precarious—occupies at the center of our shared history.
In the United States today, there is no faith more dominant than Christianity. In Chosen Land, historian Matthew Avery Sutton chronicles Christians’ five-hundred-year endeavor to turn North America into their version of the kingdom of God, revealing the fruitful and dynamic entanglement between the history of America and the history of American Christianity.
In the centuries after Christianity first arrived on American shores, colonizers and colonized from New England to Spanish California practiced many varieties of the faith. After the founding of the United States, the nation’s lack of a state religion forced new and evolving strains of Christianity to battle for potential adherents, as they still do to this day. As American Christianity has bent, fractured, and adapted to changing times, Christian belief has shaped everything from the promise of Manifest Destiny to Ronald Reagan’s approach to the Cold War, the rise of the Southern Lost Cause narrative to the triumphs of the civil rights movement.
A landmark work of narrative synthesis tracing the faith’s major figures and currents, Chosen Land confirms the unique place that American Christianity—always both steadfast and precarious—occupies at the center of our shared history.
656 pages, Hardcover
Published March 3, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
Read
April 1, 2026The crescendo that Sutton is leading to throughout the entire course of the book is stated in the last two paragraphs. Sutton writes, “When Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, he did so not just as a politician, but as a self-anointed messiah. In his inaugural address, he cast his survival of an assassination attempt as divine intervention. “Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then, and believe even more now, that my life was spared for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.” For Trump and his most fervent supporters, the election was not merely a political victory but providential proof. They saw his return as part of God’s plan to reclaim America, not just as a nation, but as his chosen land.
Trump’s inauguration was a fitting coda to a long and turbulent story. In the United States, the struggle over faith and power had never been merely symbolic—it was, and remains, a battle for power in order to define the nation’s soul through its politics, policy, and culture.”
On March 3, 2026, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) received hundreds of complaints, from every branch of the military, regarding commanders telling troops that Trump’s current (illegal) war on Iran is “Part of God’s divine plan” to usher in the return of Jesus Christ. A Noncommissioned officer was quoted as saying, “This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be “afraid” as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now. He urged us to tell our troops that this was “all part of God’s divine plan” and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”
(Source: https://myemail.constantcontact.com/M...)
Trump’s inauguration was a fitting coda to a long and turbulent story. In the United States, the struggle over faith and power had never been merely symbolic—it was, and remains, a battle for power in order to define the nation’s soul through its politics, policy, and culture.”
On March 3, 2026, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) received hundreds of complaints, from every branch of the military, regarding commanders telling troops that Trump’s current (illegal) war on Iran is “Part of God’s divine plan” to usher in the return of Jesus Christ. A Noncommissioned officer was quoted as saying, “This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be “afraid” as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now. He urged us to tell our troops that this was “all part of God’s divine plan” and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”
(Source: https://myemail.constantcontact.com/M...)
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
"His Assessment Told Only Half The Story". Yes, this is a direct quote Sutton used in this book... and also quite possibly the most succinct summary of this text available. Despite having an ambitious premise with a rather large page count to expound upon it, Sutton here still manages to omit or dismiss key figures and movements when he deems them problematic (Lottie Moon, the Student Volunteer Movement, and Annie Armstrong), fails to show moderating actions by groups he opposes (the Southern Baptist Convention in particular), and fails to show similar controversies involving those he generally supports (black prosperity gospel preachers TD Jakes and Creflo Dollar) while showing in some detail at times the controversies of those he opposes.
And yet, despite all of this - and particularly for those who align with Sutton's progressive biases - there is enough here that you are likely to learn something, almost no matter how much you know about the history of Christianity in the United States.
For those who know no better, Sutton's history here shows at least one version - a significantly biased one - of the history of American Christianity that largely downplays or outright omits much of the history of Christianity in the American South, including the efforts of Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong in the era around the turn of the 19th century into the 20th in particular. Through this period, more focus is placed on the religious developments of the enslaved or formerly enslaved, even when other leading figures - such as first female US Senator and last formerly slave owning US Senator Rebecca Latimer Felton - were pivotal through this period. Further, key Southern revivalists such as Sam Jones are omitted entirely, even when similarly situated and influential black, Northern preachers are later discussed and even when discussing white Northern predecessors and successors to Jones' style, such as Billy Sunday (the real one that the fictional character played by Robert De Niro in Men of Honor claimed no relation to) or Billy Graham.
And yet, for those who perhaps don't know much about the history of American Christianity at all... there is truly enough here that warrants reading this book. As I noted above, you're truly going to learn at least a little. You just also need to treat this as a biased primer and actively seek out a more complete picture, including from original sources such as Felton's Country Life in Georgia In The Days Of My Youth or Jeff Guinn's excellent chronicle of the siege at the Branch Davidian compound, Waco.
Ultimately, the star deductions are for a lack of bibliography, clocking in at just 10% of the overall text available in the Advance Review Copy edition of the book I read, the stark omissions that show only part of the overall premise, and the bias bordering on bigotry against anything white and/ or conservative that is so pervasive throughout this text.
One final curious note is that deep in the text, in the penultimate chapter to boot, there is a brief chronicle of one particular pastor named Doug Wilson who holds a very distinctive view of Christianity.... and who lives in and "took over" the next town down the road from Sutton's base at Washington State University. While there is no public record of any animosity between the two, the lack of balance and clear bias towards perspectives even remotely similar to Wilson's seems more than coincidental - though again, to be crystal clear, there is *zero* public evidence to support this. Still, that particular passage made me wonder, and I leave it to you, the reader of my review and possibly reader of Sutton's book, to draw your own conclusions there.
Those that have a conservative lean to their politics and/ or religion are likely going to want to defenestrate this book long before completing its 600 ish pages. Don't. There really is enough through most of this text that you're going to learn something. Those who lean more in Sutton's direction will likely praise this book quite highly. Again, I leave it to you, the reader of my review, to decide for yourself whether to read this book or not, and I do hope that if you decide to read it at all - even if you wind up DNFing it - that you'll leave your own review and tell all of us what you thought of the text and why.
Recommended.
And yet, despite all of this - and particularly for those who align with Sutton's progressive biases - there is enough here that you are likely to learn something, almost no matter how much you know about the history of Christianity in the United States.
For those who know no better, Sutton's history here shows at least one version - a significantly biased one - of the history of American Christianity that largely downplays or outright omits much of the history of Christianity in the American South, including the efforts of Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong in the era around the turn of the 19th century into the 20th in particular. Through this period, more focus is placed on the religious developments of the enslaved or formerly enslaved, even when other leading figures - such as first female US Senator and last formerly slave owning US Senator Rebecca Latimer Felton - were pivotal through this period. Further, key Southern revivalists such as Sam Jones are omitted entirely, even when similarly situated and influential black, Northern preachers are later discussed and even when discussing white Northern predecessors and successors to Jones' style, such as Billy Sunday (the real one that the fictional character played by Robert De Niro in Men of Honor claimed no relation to) or Billy Graham.
And yet, for those who perhaps don't know much about the history of American Christianity at all... there is truly enough here that warrants reading this book. As I noted above, you're truly going to learn at least a little. You just also need to treat this as a biased primer and actively seek out a more complete picture, including from original sources such as Felton's Country Life in Georgia In The Days Of My Youth or Jeff Guinn's excellent chronicle of the siege at the Branch Davidian compound, Waco.
Ultimately, the star deductions are for a lack of bibliography, clocking in at just 10% of the overall text available in the Advance Review Copy edition of the book I read, the stark omissions that show only part of the overall premise, and the bias bordering on bigotry against anything white and/ or conservative that is so pervasive throughout this text.
One final curious note is that deep in the text, in the penultimate chapter to boot, there is a brief chronicle of one particular pastor named Doug Wilson who holds a very distinctive view of Christianity.... and who lives in and "took over" the next town down the road from Sutton's base at Washington State University. While there is no public record of any animosity between the two, the lack of balance and clear bias towards perspectives even remotely similar to Wilson's seems more than coincidental - though again, to be crystal clear, there is *zero* public evidence to support this. Still, that particular passage made me wonder, and I leave it to you, the reader of my review and possibly reader of Sutton's book, to draw your own conclusions there.
Those that have a conservative lean to their politics and/ or religion are likely going to want to defenestrate this book long before completing its 600 ish pages. Don't. There really is enough through most of this text that you're going to learn something. Those who lean more in Sutton's direction will likely praise this book quite highly. Again, I leave it to you, the reader of my review, to decide for yourself whether to read this book or not, and I do hope that if you decide to read it at all - even if you wind up DNFing it - that you'll leave your own review and tell all of us what you thought of the text and why.
Recommended.
May 30, 2026
"Chosen Land" is a phenomenal account of American Christianity from the onbreak of Catholicism to the Americas to the re-election of Trump in 2024. Matthew Sutton focuses his narrative on four "streams" of American Christianity - the conservative, revivalist, liberal, and liberationist. Focusing on these streams helps to both capture the diversity of American Christianity and to tell a compelling story in what inevitably has to be a selective account.
In the chapters since the 1910s, Sutton covers much of the same material he did in his earlier "American Apocalypse," but this time with a fuller focus on the other (non-conservative/revivalist) streams, helping us to better appreciate how American Christianity really made America. The last couple of chapters did focus almost exclusively on the conservative and revivalist streams, which is understandable given that they are dominant and have impacted American Christianity and politics so much. But I would have liked to have seen just a bit more coverage of the liberal and liberationist streams in more recent times (since the 1970s).
Chosen Land's main argument is that one cannot understand American history without understanding American Christianity. From the Puritans to the Civil War, from American imperialism to the civil rights movement, he makes a strong case, showing how American Christianity impacted both culture and politics. The last chapter title, "The End of Christian America or a New Beginning?" asks whether this will remain the case in the future, especially given the rise of the religious "nones" in the last 20 years or so (now roughly a quarter of the U.S. population). As he states on page 528: "Perhaps the religious right will succeed in remaking the nation along revivalist lines... Or perhaps in the alliances revivalists built with secular politicos as they grasped for power, they sowed the seeds of their own destruction, guaranteeing that no one will ever again think of the United States as a particularly Christian nation."
In the chapters since the 1910s, Sutton covers much of the same material he did in his earlier "American Apocalypse," but this time with a fuller focus on the other (non-conservative/revivalist) streams, helping us to better appreciate how American Christianity really made America. The last couple of chapters did focus almost exclusively on the conservative and revivalist streams, which is understandable given that they are dominant and have impacted American Christianity and politics so much. But I would have liked to have seen just a bit more coverage of the liberal and liberationist streams in more recent times (since the 1970s).
Chosen Land's main argument is that one cannot understand American history without understanding American Christianity. From the Puritans to the Civil War, from American imperialism to the civil rights movement, he makes a strong case, showing how American Christianity impacted both culture and politics. The last chapter title, "The End of Christian America or a New Beginning?" asks whether this will remain the case in the future, especially given the rise of the religious "nones" in the last 20 years or so (now roughly a quarter of the U.S. population). As he states on page 528: "Perhaps the religious right will succeed in remaking the nation along revivalist lines... Or perhaps in the alliances revivalists built with secular politicos as they grasped for power, they sowed the seeds of their own destruction, guaranteeing that no one will ever again think of the United States as a particularly Christian nation."
March 3, 2026
In Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity (Basic Books, 2026), Matthew Avery Sutton provides a provocative and sweeping narrative that challenges everything we think we know about the "secular" nature of the United States. Sutton, a distinguished historian at Washington State University, argues that the separation of church and state was never the barrier to religious influence that modern secularists imagine. Instead, the First Amendment acted as a "free-market catalyst," forcing religious leaders to become "entrepreneurs of faith" who constantly reinvented Christianity to meet popular social and political demands.
Sutton breaks the religious landscape into four "streams"—Conservative, Revivalist, Liberal, and Liberationist—to show how different groups have fought to define the American story. He is particularly adept at showing how an unofficial, primarily White Protestant "quasi-establishment" successfully wove its moral vision into American law and policy, regulating everything from the Sabbath to the modern family.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its treatment of religious outsiders. Sutton uses the 19th-century struggle of the Latter-day Saints as a "stress test" for religious liberty, showing how the landmark Reynolds v. United States (1879) case forced the nation to decide that while the state cannot police belief, it has every right to regulate religious action. Through cases like Reynolds v. United States, the Supreme Court established that the state could regulate religious actions (such as polygamy) while leaving beliefs untouched—effectively ensuring that "freedom" was often a freedom to be some variety of Protestant.
Indispensable and timely, Chosen Land explains the roots of our current political climate with startling clarity. It is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand how religious identity has been forged through conflict and how it remains a dominant engine of American life.
Sutton breaks the religious landscape into four "streams"—Conservative, Revivalist, Liberal, and Liberationist—to show how different groups have fought to define the American story. He is particularly adept at showing how an unofficial, primarily White Protestant "quasi-establishment" successfully wove its moral vision into American law and policy, regulating everything from the Sabbath to the modern family.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its treatment of religious outsiders. Sutton uses the 19th-century struggle of the Latter-day Saints as a "stress test" for religious liberty, showing how the landmark Reynolds v. United States (1879) case forced the nation to decide that while the state cannot police belief, it has every right to regulate religious action. Through cases like Reynolds v. United States, the Supreme Court established that the state could regulate religious actions (such as polygamy) while leaving beliefs untouched—effectively ensuring that "freedom" was often a freedom to be some variety of Protestant.
Indispensable and timely, Chosen Land explains the roots of our current political climate with startling clarity. It is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand how religious identity has been forged through conflict and how it remains a dominant engine of American life.
June 25, 2026
This book is an ambitious undertaking---to explain the history of American Christianity from the Pilgrims to Evangelicals putting Trump in the White House. Even with the 650 page count, there is so much to cover, so this is breadth (not a depth) book, providing a general overview of American history through the lens of Christianity. I picked up this book because I was interested in how and when the Republican Party became the party of Christianity and the rise of Christian Nationalism. I learned a lot about a variety of Christian faiths and their influence in politics. It touches on topics like the Founding Fathers, Lincoln, Catholicism vs Protestantism, MLK, culture wars, prosperity gospel, televangelism, Revivalists and Evangelicals (fundamentalists), the priest abuse scandal, Jones Colony, and the influence of religious faith in the Presidential elections. Some parts weren’t as interesting to me, but the pacing is pretty fast so I didn’t lose interest for long.
-The more religious a person is, the more likely he or she is to vote Republican. How did this alignment take shape? From mutually beneficial alliances between politicians and evangelicals…"together they transformed the Republican party into a vehicle for white Christian Nationalists persuading millions that the GOP alone stood for God and traditional American values”
-“Federal govt in taking over some of the services Americans used to look to churches to provide” might have shifted faith in religion to faith in government
-Despite Trump’s clear lack of Christian character and his short-lived conversion, he won 81% of white Evangelical vote…a higher percentage than George Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain
-The more religious a person is, the more likely he or she is to vote Republican. How did this alignment take shape? From mutually beneficial alliances between politicians and evangelicals…"together they transformed the Republican party into a vehicle for white Christian Nationalists persuading millions that the GOP alone stood for God and traditional American values”
-“Federal govt in taking over some of the services Americans used to look to churches to provide” might have shifted faith in religion to faith in government
-Despite Trump’s clear lack of Christian character and his short-lived conversion, he won 81% of white Evangelical vote…a higher percentage than George Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain
June 2, 2026
This is a thoughtful, compelling, scary, unsettling, thought-provoking, disturbing, well-researched, well-written, challenging, call to action, history of religion in America. Dr. Sutton has crafted a book that covers the course of religion from major denominations to sects, offshoots, and outliers across this country. For the sceptic, it provides a case that all organized religion needs work. To those of a mainline belief, it shows a lot about what went wrong. For people who believe religion is a private, personal thing, it should strike fear. For those of an autocratic belief, it should bring shame, but will probably just stoke their ire. Apparently, no one wants to do what God and Jesus ask of Christian, but instead seek out the brand that best fits their prejudices. It seems to me that there are few characters and churches in this book who could be convicted of being a Christian. It has 570 pages of text but it is very readable.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This book started out as a compelling enough history of American Christianity before eventually devolving into a prolonged screed against Trumpism by the very end. Sutton is a respectable scholar, but the landing was disappointing to say the least. It thus struggles to decide what kind of work it is precisely trying to be. Full review at WORLD forthcoming.
May 7, 2026
Comprehensive, insightful tour of the forces that shaped American Christianity and how Christianity's entrepreneurial Spirit shaped our national identity and justified our excesses. This boopk did more to help me understand the interplay between today's church and state than anything else I've read.
May 7, 2026
The book examines how Christianity and the U.S. changed each other.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews