Heaven Has a Wall
Religion, Borders, and the Global United States
Format:Paperback
Publisher:The University of Chicago Press
Publishing:5th Jun '25
£24.00
This title is due to be published on 5th June, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
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.
“Heaven may have a wall, but this book has no guardrails. Crashing borders of nation-states, legal frameworks, and disciplinary categories, Heaven Has a Wall is grounded by telling examples and provocative interludes. It will certainly find a place on my next religion and law syllabus.” -- Greg Johnson, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Capaciously intellectual and intimately personal, this remarkable book examines the religiosity of asylum applications and border checkpoints, the imposition of borders across sovereign Indigenous land, and worship of Santa Muerte as devotion to a sovereignty that negates borders. Hurd’s work will change how people think about the border—and help readers see ways that religion, law, and politics are entangled, often synonymous, categories.” -- Spencer Dew, Ohio State University
“In invitingly accessible prose, Hurd brings together the resources of political science and religious studies in a short and poignantly personal introduction to the horrors of US border politics. Heaven Has a Wall will be a valuable pedagogical resource for undergraduate instructors.” -- Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Indiana University
ISBN: 9780226841205
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 454g
192 pages