God's Name in Vain: How Religion Should and Should Not Be Involved in Politics - Hardcover

Carter, Stephen L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465008860 ISBN 13: 9780465008865

Publisher: Basic Books, 2000

Synopsis

The sequel to Culture of Disbelief discusses the role of religion in cultural politics and argues that the religious perspective is essential to American politics, presenting a series of historical and contemporary examples that illuminate the various ways in which politics and religion do an do not mesh well.

About this title

Review:

God's Name In Vain: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics is a timely work of cultural history by Stephen L Carter, a professor at Yale Law School and the author of The Culture of Disbelief. The book presents two interrelated arguments:

First, that there is nothing wrong and much right with the robust participation of the nation's many religious voices in debates over matters of public moment. Second, that religions--although not democracy--will almost always lose their best, most spiritual selves when they choose to be involved in the partisan, electoral side of politics.

In making these arguments, God's Name in Vain cites historical anecdotes ranging from the Abolitionist movement to the Christian Coalition. Carter's writing is rhetorically powerful, his historical knowledge is estimable and his spiritual and political convictions are passionate. But Carter's real crusade in God's Name In Vain is not intellectual, theological or political. It is moral. He writes in the book's Introduction:

[M]orality, in religious terms, is nothing but the actual practice of one's religious faith. Religion is what we profess and morality is what it moves us to do. Politics needs morality, which means that politics needs religion.

The idea is interesting and it is popular but it is a fallacy. Even Carter's most devout readers may be disappointed that his elegant ideology is blind to the reality of secular morality. --Michael Joseph Gross

Synopsis:

In this sequel to his best-selling Culture of Disbelief, Stephen Carter redefines the role of religion in cultural politics, mapping out politics' involvement with religion from freeze-out to overzealous embrace. . 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0465008860
• ISBN 13: 9780465008865
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248