The Catholic love affair with the United States of America is heading into rough and uncharted waters—and not only in this 2016 election cycle, but for the foreseeable future. U.S. Catholics have, in a sense, been there and done that, given that the history of the Church in this country includes . . . . Continue Reading »
In recent decades, Abraham Lincoln’s reputation has not fared particularly well in the black community. Ebony magazine editor Lerone Bennett, Jr., famously argued that Lincoln was a proslavery white supremacist, while Julius Lester wrote that African Americans “have no reason to feel grateful to Abraham Lincoln. Rather, they should be angry at him.”
In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492–1783by mark a. nolloxford, 448 pages, $29.95 B iblical images, idioms, and verses are everywhere in early American historical sources, so much so that historians have often treated the Bible, in Mark Noll’s words, as . . . . Continue Reading »
Very few of us who truly care about religious freedom in America would put our faith in a civic religion. Although 2,000 years of history can offer us many shining examples of church cooperating with state, the idea of a “state church” would be almost laughable in our country today. When I . . . . Continue Reading »
No American philosophy has as yet been produced,” complained Charles Sanders Peirce in 1866. “Since our country has become independent, Germany has produced the whole development of the Transcendental Philosophy, Scotland the whole philosophy of Common Sense, France the Eclectic Philosophy and . . . . Continue Reading »
In this insightful, well-researched and thought-provoking book, Todd Scribner presents a compelling story of the development of neoconservative Catholic thought in the 1970s and 1980s. The story covers a wide spectrum of subjects, including church structure, secular political history, Catholic social thought, and public policy. Continue Reading »
In what sense are all men created equal? America’s Declaration of Independence calls it a self-evident truth. But to look around the world, nothing could seem to be less the case, empirically speaking. Some of us are born to wealthy parents, others into poverty; some of us with 170 IQs, others a little slow on the uptake. The genetic lottery, as some call it, does not distribute prizes equally.
Americans once regarded socialism with a mixture of fear and bemusement. Why then have so many lost this fear such that they are prepared to put a socialist in the Oval Office? Continue Reading »
The focus on the increase in death rates for white Americans between ages 45-54 in the media obscures equally troubling results in Anne Case and Angus Deaton’s recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife . . . . Continue Reading »
Many Americans have embraced one of two myths concerning the role of religion in the American founding. The first, widespread in nineteenth-century America and kept alive by popular Christian authors today, is that virtually all the founders were pious, orthodox believers who sought to establish a Christian nation.
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