One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M. Kruse

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    This book would not have been possible without the inspiration and support of countless colleagues, friends, and family. There are not enough pages here to thank them properly or enough time to express the depths of my debt to them all.
    First, I must thank the academic community I’ve been lucky to call home for a decade and a half now. As a member of the faculty at Princeton University, I have been fortunate to have so many colleagues who are both rich with insight and generous with their time. This project has benefited immensely from several workshops in the Department of Religion and the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies and informal chats with many of my colleagues at the Center for the Study of Religion. Special thanks to Wallace Best, Jessica Delgado, Judith Weisenfeld, and Bob Wuthnow. In one form or another, the entire Department of History—faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students—has helped make me a better historian and this a better book. But for their collegiality and contributions to this project, I owe a special debt to Margot Canaday, Alec Dun, Yaacob Dweck, Shel Garon, Michael Gordin, Molly Greene, Josh Guild, Dirk Hartog, Alison Isenberg, Rob Karl, Mike Laffan, Jon Levy, Erika Milam, Rebecca Rix, Dan Rodgers, Keith Wailoo, Wendy Warren, Sean Wilentz, and Julian Zelizer. I owe my department chair, Bill Jordan, my deepest appreciation for his unflagging support. Our staff, of course, is the backbone of our department, and I thank them for the invaluable help they provide us all every day: Elizabeth Bennett, Brooke Fitzgerald, Judy Hanson, Barb Leavey, Pamela Long, Debbie Macy, Kristy Novak, Etta Recke, Max Siles, Jackie Wasneski, and Carla Zimowsk. My graduate students, past and present, all deserve credit for inspiring me to work as diligently as they do. In particular, conversations with Leah Wright Rigueur and Sarah Milov have helped me fine-tune my thinking on the issues in this book, while Dov Grohsgal has doggedly secured the prints and permissions for the images in it. Olivier Burtin graciously offered to look for material related to the project when he made his own early research trips to the American Legion archives and returned with more than I’d even imagined possible.
    Beyond Princeton, countless other scholars have helped this project as well. Sections of the book were presented early on as papers at annual meetings of the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, as well as at smaller conferences, workshops, and invited lectures at Binghamton University, Boston University, Cornell University, Emory University, King’s College London, Southern Methodist University, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Sussex. Many thanks to the receptive audiences at these events and the scholars who participated: Uta Balbier, Anja-Maria Bassimir, Eileen Boris, Heike Bungert, Jim Cobb, Joe Crespino, Jonathan Ebel, Wayne Flynt, Healon Gaston, Lily Geismer, Sally Gordon, Andy Graybill, Stephen Green, Alison Colis Greene, Darren Grem, Ray Haberski, Matt Hedstrom, Heather Hendershot, John Lee, Nelson Lichtenstein, Emma Long, Jonathan Lurie, John McGreevey, Bethany Moreton, Alice O’Connor, Kathy Olmsted, Steve Ortiz, Andrew Preston, Mark Rose, Bruce Schulman, Elizabeth Shermer, Matt Sutton, Stephen Tuck, Wendy Wall, Clive Webb, Jana Weiss, and Diane Winston. Later on, Brian Balogh did me the great honor of inviting me to present a draft of the manuscript at the 2013 Miller Center Fellowship Spring Conference at the University of Virginia, where three phenomenal scholars—Doug Blackmon, Mike Lienesch, and Darren Dochuk—provided thorough feedback and enthusiastic support. Darren, in particular, has to be singled out for praise, as he not only provided me with several rounds of feedback over the course of this project but also put up with me as we presented our work together