A Conversion Story

Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 -0500

An adult conversion to Catholicism—or indeed to any form of orthodox Christianity—is not an everyday occurrence in the American academy. Most secular academics seem to receive any profession of Christian faith with a vague sense of embarrassment. Adherence to Judaism or Islam is another matter, although why is not immediately self-evident, since both impose stringent demands upon their faithful. Perhaps they meet with greater tolerance because they are less familiar, perhaps because, whatever the reality, they do not carry Christianity’s taint of having long figured as the religion of a male European elite that allegedly used its faith to cow others into submission. Nor does it change anything to remind skeptics that, in the United States, Catholics long suffered a discrimination that was, in its way, almost as implacable as that suffered by black Americans. A vague, nondenominational Christianity—or, better yet, Unitarianism—may be acceptable, but Catholicism lies beyond the pale. Catholicism is not something that people “like us” embrace.

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Culture Wars, Shooting Wars

Wed, 01 Jun 1994 00:00:00 -0400

Before the Shooting Begins:
Searching for Democracy in America’s Culture War
By James Davison Hunter
Free Press. 310 pp. $22.95

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A Conversion Story

Culture Wars, Shooting Wars