The Nation's Mission: Social Movements and Nation-Building in the United States
Authors
Lori D. Ginzberg
Abstract
Long after the American revolution, social movements played important roles in the
development of the United States as a nation, helping to define and express identities
that were both larger and smaller than the nation itself. Movements that were
founded to advance certain goals — temperance, religious conversion, or the abolition
of slavery — consciously helped to shape and define “Americanness” and
therefore played an important role in constituting the nation itself. Movements
inspired by Protestantism have been a particular force. To outsiders — immigrants,
the irreligious, non-Protestants, or foreigners — American social movements sought
to impose American civilization on peoples, lands, and nations outside their cultural
or political domain, all justified as a mission sanctioned and supervised by God.