by Randall Balmer and Mark Silk (2006)
"The Middle Atlantic region's religious diversity began in the 17th century and continues today. European religious minorities recognized the need to tolerate other faiths if they themselves were to be tolerated. From Quaker Pennsylvania to English Catholic Maryland to New York with no state religion, the Middle Atlantic colonies inspired the framers of the Constitution to keep a wall of separation between religion and government. But the religious diversity of the region is tempered by the many religious institutions that have centers in the area, especially in Washington, DC and New York City. The diversity here is due less to fluid identities and emerging religions than to many established religious institutions recognizing and tolerating each other. Protestant, Catholic and Jewish traditions function alongside each other here and they make room for the religions of new immigrants."--Publisher's website.
Robert Benne
Encouragees church bodies and individual believers to step beyond noisy rhetoric, offering practical help in identifying core Christian beliefs, deciding which can and should influence public policy, and translating those beliefs into political action.
Richard T. Hughes
The idea of the United States as a Christian nation is a powerful, seductive, and potentially destructive theme in American life, culture, and politics. Many fundamentalist and evangelical leaders routinely promote this notion, and millions of Americans simply assume the Christian character of the United States. And yet, as Richard T. Hughes reveals in this powerful book, the biblical vision of the "kingdom of God" stands at odds with the values and actions of an American empire that sanctions war instead of peace, promotes dominance and oppression instead of reconciliation, and exalts wealth and power instead of justice for the poor and needy. With conviction and careful consideration, Hughes reviews the myth of Christian America from its earliest history in the founding of the republic to the present day. Extensively analyzing the Old and New Testaments, Hughes provides a solid, scripturally-based explanation of the kingdom of God--a kingdom defined by love, peace, patience, and generosity. Throughout American history, however, this concept has been appropriated by religious and political leaders and distorted into a messianic nationalism that champions the United States as God's "chosen nation" and bears little resemblance to the teachings of Jesus. Pointing to a systemic biblical and theological illiteracy running rampant in the United States, Hughes investigates the reasons why so many Americans think of the United States as a Christian nation despite the Constitution's outright prohibition against establishing any national religion by law or coercion. He traces the development of fundamentalist Christianity throughout American history, noting especially the increased power and widespread influence of fundamentalism at the dawn of the twenty-first century, embodied and enacted by the administration of President George W. Bush and America's reaction to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Timely and provocative, Christian America and the Kingdom of God illuminates the devastating irony of a "Christian America" that so often behaves in unchristian ways.
Theodore R. Weber
"Was John Wesley the "fanatical Tory" conservative of many political portraits, with his loyalty to the British monarchy, his support of taxation without representation, and his severe criticism of American independence? Or was he an emergent political liberal, condemning slavery, defending the rights and liberties of the British people, and urging government intervention in the economy to relieve hunger and poverty? This historical and theological study of Wesley's political thought concludes that he is understood best neither as Tory nor as liberal (both of which he was, in important respects), but as a staunch champion of limited constitutional government and of the subordination of power to law - in the context of the "Glorious Revolution" and the organic unity of the British community. Wesley's understanding of rights is a mixture of the historical and the natural, but is closer to the adaptive conservatism of Edmund Burke than to natural rights individualism in the following of John Locke.". "Weber argues further that Wesley's deliberate exclusion of the people from politics can be challenged from within his own theology by recovering and developing his concept of the political image and integrating it with his understanding of the order of salvation. This process of recovery and integration discloses the political vocation for all humankind, and opens the way to an authentically Wesleyan political language. It has significant implications also for rethinking Wesley's theology as such, and not only the Wesleyan language of politics."--BOOK JACKET.
Ernest L. Fortin
In Volume Two of "Ernest Fortin: Collected Essays", Fortin deals with the relationship between religion and civil society in a Christian context: that of an essentially nonpolitical but by no means entirely otherwordly religion, many of whose teachings were thought to be fundamentally at odds with the duties of citizenship. Sections focus upon Augustine and Aquinas, on Christianity and politics; natural law, natural rights, and social justice; and Leo Strauss and the revival of classical political philosophy. Fortin's treatment of these and related themes betrays a keen awareness of one of the significant intellectual events of our time: the recovery of political philosophy as a legitimate academic discipline.