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Category Archive: American Religion

Americanism - July 10, 2007
David Gelernter, Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion. New York: Doubleday, 2007. 229 pp. Hardback, $24.95. America, G. K. Chesterton said, is a nation with the soul of a church. David Gelernter, the polymathic computer scientist from Yale, suggests that...

Christian America - January 03, 2007
Rosenstock-Huessy again: He writes that Christian conversion always involves a break with an old way of life, a breach with old loyalties and commitments, and a "verification" of that experience by an induction into a new people, "formerly overlooked or...

Innocent abroad - November 03, 2006
In a recent issue of TNR, Alan Wolfe reviewed David Kuo's book telling the story of his service in the current Bush administration. Kuo worked in the office of faith-based initiatives, and though he left the administration he still praises...

RJ Rushdoony's influence - July 29, 2006
Reviewing several recent books on the Christian Right in the current issue of First Things, Ross Douthat has this to say about Rushdoony: "What he has instead are the Christian Reconstructionists—the acolytes of the late R.J. Rushdoony—who are genuine theocrats,...

Religion and Politics - February 20, 2006
Noah Feldman has a challenging review of Jay Sekulow's book on the religion of the Supreme Court in the Feb 20 issue of TNR. He argues that the Constitution's prohibition of religious oaths means a subordination of religious to political...

Exhortation, July 3 - July 03, 2005
America has always been committed to equality; "all men are created equal" is a cornerstone of our founding documents. The promise of America is not that everyone will turn out the same. America promises instead to minimize "artificial" inequities of...

Dulles on Jefferson - January 10, 2005
Now here's news: A Catholic cardinal putting in a good word for Jefferson's deism. Avery Cardinal Dulles ends an article in the January 2005 issue of First Things with this: "Jefferson would probably have insisted on the positive articles of...

Exhortation, July 4 - July 04, 2004
Today we celebrate two hundred and twenty-eight years of American history, and it is a good time to assess, briefly, how we stand as a nation. Reflecting over the past two centuries, it is obvious that this nation is a...

K. A. Paul - May 21, 2004
There's a remarkably huge story on Indian-born evangelist Dr. K. A. Paul, described as the world's most popular evangelist, in the May 17 issue of The New Republic. The story is weird not only for its length (TNR is not...

Two Americas - March 22, 2004
In the Spring 2004 issue of The Public Interest, Joseph Bottum insightfully examines the tensions in "biblical America" between the Enlightenment democratic public order and the fervent religiosity of the people. The tension is original and deep: "Public order in...

American Jesus - February 25, 2004
In American Jesus, Stephen Prothero traces a three-stage process that produced a uniquely American Jesus. First, Jesus was detached, through the awakenings of the nineteenth century, from the creedal and confessional Calvinism of Puritan America; then, scholars disentangled Jesus from...

Neuhaus on Bush - February 09, 2004
Richard John Neuhaus wants to defend the theological prowess of our current President, defending his statement that "Muslims worship the same Almighty" as Christians. Neuhaus has some jolly fun at the expense of "official of the Southern Baptist Convention" and...

Political Religiosity in America - December 26, 2003
Political religiosity in America is a strange bird, and add journalism to the mix and it approachs mythical proportions. Consider Howard Dean: Yesterday, Drudge was listing a report on Dean's plan to highlight his religious background as he campaigns in...

Just War - October 30, 2003
Christopher Lynch ends a review of several books on just war (Weekly Standard, Nov 3), with the comment that "popular punditry's now-routine use of the theory and the flood of recent books on the topic suggest that a change in...

Turner on ECUSA - October 23, 2003
Philip Turner, currently Vice President of the Anglican Communion Institute and former Dean of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, has a very incisive article on the current crisis in ECUSA in this month's edition of First Things. A few quotations:...

Noll on Edwards - October 02, 2003
Mark Noll's account of Edwards's role in the undermining of the Puritan "sacred canopy" in New England, in his recent book America's God, is an important analysis of one phase in the rise of American religion. According to Noll, the...

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