David J. Brewer

David J. Brewer (1837–1910) was an American jurist and Supreme Court Justice whose theological and legal writings significantly shaped late nineteenth-century American Protestant thought regarding the relationship between Christianity and national identity. His most notable work, *The United States, a Christian Nation* (1905), articulated an influential argument that American constitutional and legal traditions were fundamentally rooted in Christian principles, a position that reflected and reinforced the religious nationalism of the Gilded Age. Brewer's jurisprudence and public writings exemplified the broader Protestant establishment's efforts to maintain Christian cultural authority during a period of increasing religious pluralism and secularization.