Lee Marsden - For Gods Sake: The Christian Right and US Foreign Policy

For Gods Sake

The Christian Right and US Foreign Policy

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LEE MARSDEN

For Gods Sake: The Christian Right and US Foreign Policy was first published in 2008
by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK
and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA

This ebook edition was first published in 2013

www.zedbooks.co.uk

Copyright Lee Marsden 2008

The right of Lee Marsden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

Typeset in Monotype Van Dijck by illuminati, www.illuminatibooks.co.uk
Cover designed by Andrew Corbett

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data available

ISBN 978 1 84813 673 1

Acknowledgements

Very special thanks to all those friends, family and colleagues without whom this book would not have been possible. In particular I would like to thank the Social Science and Law School at Oxford Brookes University for generously funding travel to the United States; colleagues in the British International Studies Association US Foreign Policy working group, Brookes and the University of East Anglia for commenting on drafts of chapters, especially Stuart Croft, Martin Durham, John Street and Heather Savigny. Importantly, I wish to thank Ellen McKinlay, an exceptional editor, two anonymous reviewers and the team at Zed for their hard work and invaluable advice, which has made the book better than it would otherwise have been, although the usual disclaimers apply about any mistakes being my sole responsibility. Thanks to all the interviewees who gave generously of their time and especially Brian Grim of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, for lunch and a sense of perspective. Last, but by no means least, thank you to my stepson Isaac Hogg for research on Blackwater, to my father Dennis Marsden, an unpaid but not unacknowledged researcher, and to Gill, whose patience knows no bounds.

Abbreviations

The Christian Right have become one of the hottest topics in academic debate and the media in both American domestic politics and foreign policy. Undergraduate and Masters students are increasingly producing dissertations on the subject and Ph.D. students are preparing to offer their insights to the debate over the next few years. Security Studies and US foreign policy specialists are busily reinventing themselves as experts on the Christian Right, to move into the rapidly emerging field of Religion and International Relations in the same way as others have become experts in terrorism. In many ways I am making a similar journey but one that brings with it a slightly different angle.