Volume 53, Number 10 · June 8, 2006
American Religion: The Great Retreat
By Gordon S. Wood
American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation
by Jon Meacham
Random House, 399 pp., $23.95
The Faiths of the Founding Fathers
by David L. Holmes
Oxford University Press, 225 pp., $20.00
It's never been easy to reconcile religion with politics. We know that not only from the bloody sectarian strife taking place today in Iraq but also from the passionate disputes we ourselves are having at the present time—though as yet we haven't been bombing one another. From stem cell research to intelligent design, from prayer in the schools to the mention of God in the Pledge of Allegiance, issues of religion and politics bitterly divide Americans. While some think that the country has forgotten God and its Christian heritage, others fear that the government and the culture are being taken over by religious enthusiasts out to create a theocracy.
Review, 5170 words
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