God's Name In Vain
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- 9,99 €
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- 9,99 €
Publisher Description
America faces a crisis of legitimacy. It's a crisis that dramatizes the separation of church and state. A crisis that, in the messages sent by our culture, marginalizes religion as a relatively unimportant human activity that plays an unimportant role in the national debate. Because the nation chooses to secularize the principal points of contact between government and people (schools, taxes, marriage, etc.), it has persuaded many religious people that a culture war has been declared. Stephen Carter, in this sequel to his best-selling Culture of Disbelief, argues that American politics is unimaginable without America's religious voice. Using contemporary and historical examples, from abolitionist sermons to presidential candidates' confessions, he illustrates ways in which religion and politics do and do not mesh well and ways in which spiritual perspectives might make vital contributions to our national debates. Yet, while Carter is eager to defend the political involvement of the religious from its critics, he also warns us of the importance of setting some sensible limits so that religious institutions do not allow themselves to be seduced, by the lure of temporal power, into a kind of passionate, dysfunctional, and even immoral love affair. Lastly, he offers strong examples of principled and prophetic religious activism for those who choose their God before their country.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Religion can't be kept out of public life. Yale Law School's Carter, building on the argument he made in The Culture of Disbelief, says the only people who want religious people to abandon religion when they enter the public square are people who think religion isn't very important. Indeed, Carter contends, religious discourse very often enriches public debate. Drawing on such historians as Charles Marsh and Nathan Hatch, Carter argues that religion has long motivated social change in America, noting that Christianity undergirded the civil rights movement and crusades such as abolitionism, labor and temperance. But if religion is often good for politics, he says, it's sometimes been "disastrous" for people's religiosity. Black preachers, for example, have had to soften their "prophetic ministry" in order to play in the corridors of power. Carter not only mines the past, he also takes on contemporary policy issues such as school choice, suggesting that religious people should rally around a platform that elevates "parental interest above the interest of the state." Contra Amy Gutman (Democratic Education), Carter believes that religious parents should be able to raise religious children, and that children should not be coerced into a public school system hostile to their beliefs. These subtle arguments are cast in the elegant prose Carter fans have come to expect. His is a sane, fresh voice in the too-often stale debate about religion and public life.
