American history article john butler challenged historians of modern america to Pay Attention to religion. In particular, he noted, religion of the continuing importance in 20th century american politics deserves sustained attention and analysis. Scholars of american religious history have proliferated over the past 15 years, yet in political history, religion has often retained a jackinthebox quality colorful, surprising, anomalous, idiosyncratic, but left on the periphery to pop up occasionally rather than systematically. Today, our roundtable will address how religion matters in american political history, and we will do so in three ways. First, i will ask each of our panelists to focus on a way in which religion matters that is, in their own research, how religion plays a role in spaces that they are working on, but also how centering religion in these spaces gives us a different narrative, a different story than if it were on the periphery or ignored in an way. Second, we will tal