Critics often complain that Supreme Court decisions have removed contentious issues from the political arena, where they can be debated and decided by citizens and their representatives. That is, it appears, no accident. In a 1969 article on the Harvard Law Review that was cited in . . . . Continue Reading »
In his majority opinion in the 1940 Minersville School District v. Gobitis case, which dealt with the question of whether school districts could require students to salute the American flag, Felix Frankfurter wrote: “The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive . . . . Continue Reading »
Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle claim that nationalism is a religion. In particular, American civil religion is a religion, sustained by violence and blood-letting, focused on the sacred “totem” of the American flag ( Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American . . . . Continue Reading »
William Cavanugh notes ( The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict ): “although Jefferson was responsible for the complete separation of church and state in Virginia, Jefferson wrote in the language of medieval Christianity about the preservation of . . . . Continue Reading »
An article of mine is up at the First Things web site today: http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/05/newsweek-caesar-and-the-things-of-god . . . . Continue Reading »
A recent issue of the TLS reviews Bruce Feiler’s America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story , a study of the influence of Moses on the American political imagination. Everyone from Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and the other Founders to George M.-for-Moses (so described . . . . Continue Reading »
For years, I’ve used Rodney Stark’s book on early Christianity in a theology class and told students that it was written by an unbeliever. It seems that’s not quite true. Stark grew up Lutheran, and has recently discovered that he’s again a Christian. In a . . . . Continue Reading »
Near the end of his recent Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults , Christian Smith summarizes the argument of a 1995 article by N. Jay Demerath of the University of Massachusetts. Demerath writes, that the widely reported decline of liberal Protestantism . . . . Continue Reading »
I came across a reference to James Risen and Judy L. Thomas’s 1998 Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War in a recent article in the Weekly Standard . It’s a riveting account of the development of anti-abortion activism and extremism. It focuses a good deal of attention on the work . . . . Continue Reading »
I don’t buy everything in Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History , especially his insistence that there is no power without guilt because no exercise of power is “transcendent over interest” (Can a gift be given? Same question). Still, the book is as relevant and important . . . . Continue Reading »
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