SOLD! Erecting the Pulpit (by Amy Laura Hall)

It’s been a busy few months in the Sinsheimer household—our daughter, Isabella (“Izzy”) Zaidane Sinsheimer, was born on July 18th. We had a rocky delivery but everyone is thriving now. Izzy has already taken an active interest in publishing, and I've come to rely on her incisive editorial eye. Her mom, Layla, has also just been named to the TIME100 NEXT list for her leadership at Future Caucus.

I'm a few book deals behind with my newsletter, so let's start with one that relates to leadership and power in America—albeit of a darker sort. Just before Izzy's arrival I sold Erecting the Pulpit: Muscular Christianity from Teddy Roosevelt to Donald Trump, by Amy Laura Hall, to Richard Brown at Rowman & Littlefield (now part of Bloomsbury). It examines how evangelical strategists fused moral leadership with political and economic hierarchies to sanctify power, consolidate wealth, and divide communities.

Erecting the Pulpit  begins by connecting ideas of “natural law” and manly fitness with religious belief in different episodes of U.S. history. It then traces the conceits of holy husbandry—that leaders make history, that men naturally lead a family, and that Christianity is compatible with robber baronry—through figures like Theodore Roosevelt and Billy Graham, and cultural institutions like political prayer breakfasts and modern megachurches. Finally, it describes how Young Life and other fast-growing parachurch organizations infused white Protestantism with the language of virility and prosperity. Written in a lively style that draws on Amy Laura's firsthand experiences in Cowboy Churches, NASCAR chaplaincies, and everywhere in between, Erecting the Pulpit will appeal to readers alarmed by the precipitous erosion of the separation of church and state and curious about the cultural underpinnings of evangelical power.

Cowboy Churches like this one in Texas—where sermons meet saddle culture—reflect the fusion of faith and frontier masculinity explored in Erecting the Pulpit.

Amy Laura Hall, the daughter of a Texas Methodist minister, is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a Ph.D. from Yale. She is a respected scholar of Christian ethics and cultural studies whose previous works have been lauded for their blend of narrative storytelling and academic rigor. Erecting the Pulpit continues a conversation about mainstream Protestantism that Amy Laura began with Conceiving Parenthood (Eerdmans, 2007).

Here is the Publishers Marketplace deal memo:

Congratulations to Amy Laura and Richard!