Borders and Borderlessness: The Religious Politics of American Power

 

For American borders there is more going on than meets the eye. Drawing on Professor Hurd’s book Heaven Has a Wall: Religion, Borders, and the Global United States, this lecture explored the paradoxes of creation, enforcement, suspension, and refusal of American borders understood as simultaneously religious and political objects. Americans, argued Hurd, 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 offered a bold new perspective on the ties that bind American religion, politics, and public life.

 

Beth Hurd is Professor and Chair of Religious Studies and Professor of Political Science at Northwestern. She has published books on the politics of secularism, religious freedom, and American borders. At Northwestern she co-directs the Global Religion Research Group and manages the Teaching Law & Religion Case Archive. She is the author of The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (2008) and Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (2015), both published by Princeton. Her latest book, Heaven Has a Wall: Religion, Borders, and the Global United States was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2025.