An urgent exploration of borders as sacred objects in American culture.
 
Our national conversation about the border has taken a religious turn. When televangelists declare, “Heaven has a wall,” activists shout back, “Jesus was a refugee.” For Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, the standoff makes explicit a longstanding truth: borders are religious as well as political objects.

In this book, Hurd argues that Americans share a bipartisan border religion, complete with an array of beliefs and practices, including a reverence for national security, a liturgy for immigration, and an eschatological foreign policy. Through an analysis of the many ways the United States creates, enforces, and ignores borders at home and abroad, Hurd offers a bold new perspective on the ties that bind American religion, politics, and public life.

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd is professor of political science and religious studies at Northwestern University. Her books include Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion and Politics of Religious Freedom, the latter also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Introduction: Where People Come to Press Close to the Other Side
Chapter 1. Creating: The Liturgy of Asylum
Interlude I. Border/less
Chapter 2. Enforcing: National Security
Interlude II. Unbordered: Land without Law
Chapter 3. Suspending: AmericaIsrael
Interlude III. Crossing
Chapter 4. Refusing: Holy Death in the Borderlands
Interlude IV. Walking: Pilgrimage to Magdalena
Conclusion: The Ideal Border

Acknowledgments
Sources
Index