America's supposed moral decline from an imagined golden age, and the threat of divine punishment for the sin of straying from the path of righteousness, have been consistent themes in its political and religious rhetoric. In Prodigal Nation, Andrew Murphy investigates the jeremiad's historical roots and probes the ways in which it continues to illuminate themes and tensions in American social and political life.

Andrew R. Murphy is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, New Bruswick. He is the author of Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America, the co-editor of Religion, Politics, and the American Identity: New Directions, New Controversies, and the editor of The Political Writings of William Penn.

Chapter 1: The American Jeremiad
Part I: Three American Jeremiads
Chapter 2: Puritan New England and the Foundations of the American Jeremiad
Chapter 3: Decline, Slavery, and War: The Jeremiad in Antebellum and Civil War America
Chapter 4: Taking America Back: The Christian Right Jeremiad
Part II: The Jeremiad in American Culture
Chapter 5: Competing Jeremiads
Chapter 6: Constructing a Usable Past
Chapter 7: The Jeremiad and the Culture Wars
Chapter 8: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Jeremiad