The Last Freedom: Religion from the Public School to the Public SquareThe presidency of George W. Bush has polarized the church-state debate as never before. The Far Right has been emboldened to use religion to govern, while the Far Left has redoubled its efforts to evict religion from public life entirely. Fewer people on the Right seem to respect the church-state separation, and fewer people on the Left seem to respect religion itself--still less its free exercise in any situation that is not absolutely private. In The Last Freedom, Joseph Viteritti argues that there is a basic tension between religion and democracy because religion often rejects compromise as a matter of principle while democracy requires compromise to thrive. In this readable, original, and provocative book, Viteritti argues that Americans must guard against debasing politics with either antireligious bigotry or religious zealotry. Drawing on politics, history, and law, he defines a new approach to the church-state question that protects the religious and the secular alike. |
From inside the book
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... reading about it in concert with the Mozert case highlights a central point I want to make about the vulnerability ... readers that there are more than abstract principles at stake in the discussion about religion. These are human ...
... readers to the possibility that perhaps we have our own biases to overcome. The other option is for us to convince ourselves that we are the only generation in American history to have no such biases. Chapter 5 brings us to the ...
... reading material that confirms their own prejudices. Like all forms of prejudice, religious bias has serious consequences for those against whom it is directed. It undermines values that are fundamental in a liberal democracy, the same ...
... reader to the dangers ahead, Suskind cites a statistic indicating that 42 percent of all Americans identify themselves as evangelical or “born again” (a figure that also includes African-Americans, who do not seem to concern him). We ...
... reader is treated to a litany of historical travesties that have been committed in the name of God: feudalism, the caste system, slavery, execution, castration, chastity belts, human sacrifice, cannibalism, all sorts of sexual taboos ...
Contents
1 | |
15 | |
9780691130118_4CH3pdf | 44 |
9780691130118_5CH4pdf | 66 |
9780691130118_6CH5pdf | 87 |
9780691130118_7CH6pdf | 114 |
9780691130118_8CH7pdf | 145 |
9780691130118_9CH8pdf | 176 |
9780691130118_10CH9pdf | 208 |
9780691130118_11NOTpdf | 241 |
9780691130118_12INDpdf | 263 |
Other editions - View all
The Last Freedom: Religion from the Public School to the Public Square Joseph P. Viteritti No preview available - 2007 |