Heaven Has a Wall: Religion, Borders, and the Global United States

While it is common to think of national borders as sites of politics, Hurd (political science and religion, Northwestern Univ.; At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion) argues that U.S. Americans view these sites as religious too, whether they know it or not. Continuing her work on religion and politics, Hurd deftly shows how contemporary U.S. border politics are permeated with religious meaning. Drawing on history, law, political theology, critical theories, and personal experience, Hurd examines how borders and the government’s enforcement of them, or lack thereof, create and maintain U.S. national identity. The book is split into eight sections, four chapters interspersed with four interludes. Each chapter deals with an aspect of the border: creating, enforcing, suspending, and refusing it. Between each chapter are the interludes, which offer readers stories expressing the dual nature of borders, places of both restriction and free flow. This mix of sections offers multiple means to investigate the United States’ borders from a variety of angles and reveals the different modes in which border politics operate.