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Stephen Carter's thesis is quite a noble one: he thinks that we as a society have taken religious freedom and morphed it into something of an anti-religion bias. The public square, for instance, seems to give less and less credence to arguments or ideas informed by religion. Pro-lifers or those opposed to gay marriage are written off as 'fanatics' or simply holders of weak, because religiously informed, positions. The establishment and free-exercise clause (which Carter DOES see as a wall of seperation between church and state) has increasinly been used to banish religion from the public square entirely.
This is all quite unique for me because I am an non-believer, probably unlike many reviewers here. Even as a non-believer (polite term for atheist) I can see the trivialization of religion in our culture and particularly in the political arena. As we speak, George W. Bush is being dismissed as a 'fundamentalist' because he, like most americans (according to current surveys) opposes gay marriage. Apperently opposing gay marriage ipso facto makes one a fundamentalist which ipso facto marginalizes the whole opinion.
Here's the problem: the three stars I've given this book are for the thesis and the very good research (especially in part 1, where the problem is surveyed). The other two stars that I did NOT give the book were for execution. Each chapter seems to be on a wholly new topic (a seperate essay unto itself) and Carter does little to hold them together. The very first section diagnoses the problem, the second section discusses the 1st amendment religion clauses (and as a law scholar, Carter gives a VERY surface level account) and the third section (apperently) works at a solution (which I was still waiting for when I closed the book for the final time). In brief, the research was good and Carter brings up many good points; they are just packaged in a quite random, meandering, book.
The only other problem to speak of is that on the one hand, Carter chastises current politics (liberal politics) for discounting religious faith; on the other he chastises religious faith for often being too dogmatic and zeolous. BUT THAT IS WHAT RELIGIONS DO!
Not all, to be sure, but most any catholic sect, for instance, takes stands, believes sincerely in them, and is convinced that their take is the only right one. Quite simply, most religions firmly beleive that their way is right and others are wrong - that they have acess to the 'truth as revealed through god' where the rest are mistaken. To suggest that religion can still be religion while saying, "But I may be completely wrong about divine revelation or commandment," seems to take the religion out of religion. Thus, I (and Stanley Fish has wisely said just this about Carter) think Carter is trying to let faith back into liberalism by telling religion to be more secular. (Be open minded about gay marriage; you might be wrong, after all, Mr. Robertson!). [Read the section on religion in Stanley Fish's "The Trouble With Principle" for these critiques.]
To conclude, the issue is one that needs to be addressed and Dr. Carter has produced a well-researched endeavor to highlight what is wrong. Sadley, I did not come away from this book with a feeling that its direction and layout were strong, or that Dr. Carter's solutions were workable.
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Yes another piece of work crying victim SO read this if you want to be up on the psuedo-intellectual fashion of the day. If you can't beat them join them...as the right learns its lesson and jumps on the sympathy bandwagon(hear Bill o'reilly and Michael moore cry there way all the way to the top). It may be true that religion plays less of a role, but here comes the BIG assumption. As the audience equivocates religion and christianity nobody is there to encourage the reader to DIG just a little deeper. Are you certain that it is only secular humannists that are pushing religion out of relevance concering how we are governed? (is this the case now, was it ever??)OR IS THERE A REASON THAT CHRISTIANS MIGHT WANT TO KEEP SEPERATE ALSO???? This STUFF IS DANGEROUS and not just for secular humanists and flat earth atheists(who by the way ARE also RELIGIONs)(which by the way, is it really possible to say that christians have less representation than atheists, or buddhists..etc?). When it comes down to it it rests on the mere assumption of a majority BUT this can create several problems(including WHICH christian majority will make the decisions?)and the possiblity of a future where any other group is a majority and wants to oppress your group. If you are a christian you might enjoy the premise of this book BUT in the end it will lead you to fascism(let's hope it doesn't get violent).
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I found this to be an especially thought-provoking, at times unsettling book to read. Carter has obviously given a great deal of careful thought to the important issues he addresses. For example, he is deeply concerned about what he views as a deterioration of spirituality in American society. Ours is perhaps the most democratic of all capitalistic cultures, ensuring strict separation of church and state as well as the right to embrace any religion (or none). Carter fully supports that separation and indicates zero-tolerance of threats to that right. However, he repudiates efforts by those among the national media with a strong liberal bias who trivialize basic values which are, in fact, common to all of the world's major religions. He asserts that these values should guide and inform national policy (not the other way around), just as they once did when thirteen colonies declared war on the most powerful nation in the world and then reaffirmed the same values 12 years later in the new nation's Constitution and Bill of Rights.
In Christianity on Trial, Vincent Carroll and David Shiflett provide both a broad overview and a close analysis of various accusations against the Christian church over the centuries. Many of these accusations were valid; others were not. However, undeniably, the Hellenic-Hebraic values of Christianity are inextricably bound up in the fabric of American legal as well as political and social history. It's hard for me to believe but it has been more 40 years since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his associates began their efforts to achieve full and unqualified human rights for all Americans. Carter is hardly alone when asking "What has been accomplished since then? What remains to be done?" Not all readers will agree with the answers he has formulated, at least thus far, but I think everyone who reads this book will be much better prepared to consider basic issues which transcend legality in pursuit of justice, which transcend consensus in pursuit of fundamental human decency.
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While much of this book might be considered thoughtful and well written, one thing bothers me A LOT. Carter says "we would do well to reclaim the venerable idea that religious faith can be our best guide for political action."
I disagree. Politics is for ALL people and not ALL people believe in the mythology of religion. Why should those of us who believe that religion is merely a crutch for those who fear death, and is pure fiction made up in the minds of those who are too afraid to accept and feel the reality that they are merely the body and will die some day for good (no after life - sorry!), have to live under the rule of religious belief?
Politics and religion should have no over lap at all. Would you want politics to take into account Star Trek for the sci fi Trekie world? The Bible is as much fiction as that. I know death is scary but do you want the TRUTH or just some story to make you feel better?
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Written for the general audience (though the author claims otherwise in the preface), Stephen L. Carter's work is less consuming than some of the other works on this subject-instead of providing intricate arguments in support of a philosophical position, or detailed recount of historical occurrences, Carter's aim is to focus our attention on the concern that the public square seems to trivialize religious commitments. This is not a knock on the author's intellectual capacity, but an observation on the editorial nature of this work. Carter's project is to, as he says, "present the case for taking religion seriously as an aspect of the lives and personas of the tens of millions of Americans who insist that religion is for them of very first importance." In doing this, he treats several fiercely debated social issues. Though he arrives at the same conclusion on some of these issues as secular liberals, he attempts (he says) to defend these outcomes without resorting to what he calls anti-religious fervor that often characterize the liberal case.
The book began with a series of anecdotes that illustrate how religious convictions are often perceived as waste of time or even naïveté. For example, a magazine article in the mid-1980s considers Pat Robertson a dangerous Neanderthal because he happens to believe that God can heal diseases. In a separate article, President Reagan was viciously attacked for telling religious broadcasters that all the laws passed since biblical times "have not improved on the Ten Commandments one bit." These incidents point to a common problem that the public generally refuses to accept the notion that rational, public-spirited people can take religion seriously. The book spent most of the very first half to observe different themes and occurrences where this sentiment is demonstrated. And as Carter complains, "the institution says, in short, that religion is like building model airplanes, just another hobAuthor name: something quiet, something private, something trivial-and not really a fit activity for intelligent, publicly spirited adults."
In the second part of the book, Carter examines the legal/constitutional dimensions of the problem. Here he defends the separation of church and state, but insists that it is possible to maintain that separation while treating religious beliefs with respect (this type of liberal's respect can be no more than what Stanley Hauerwas calls "killing compassion" and fake humility), and treating religious believers as something irrational. The principle solution that he provides is for the courts to ensure that legislation does not infringe on religious freedom "unless the burden is absolutely essential." I think we may call this the accommodationist position. Some of the conclusions he develops on specific issues in light of this principle are that we ought to ban public prayer, ban scientific creationism in biology classes, allow parents to exempt children from educational programs on religious grounds, and allow parochial schools to participate in private school voucher programs. And in the closing pages, Carter provides what he calls an alternative to liberal political theory, which amounts to no more than a passionate rallying-cry that demands the nation to figure religion more prominently in its public square.
Carter is inescapably a liberal. On two dimensions, he is caught between a rock and a hard place which I would more scrupulously refer to as metaxic tension. The very first dimension is this: on the one hand, he is impressed by his intuitive faculties that religion seems to be at odds with, and as a result trivialized by, the institutions of liberal democracy. While on the other, he is sufficiently programmed by the pedagogy of the liberal project that he cannot escape from the language and commitment to the position that he seeks to minimize. This situation is not unlike the development of computer operating systems in recent years. Microsoft, like everyone else, recognizes the inherent flaws and limitations of their PC DOS. But instead of writing a new operating system from the ground up (like Apple did with their Macintosh OS) which would fundamentally address those inherent flaws and limitations, Microsoft decided to put a facade called Windows on top of the still constrained DOS to camouflage those problems. Though the pretense, the face, had changed, the resulting operating system still suffers from the same fundamental flaws and limitations that plagued its predecessor. So like uncle Gates, Carter makes patchwork improvements on the liberal position to formulate what is nevertheless a liberal position. The second dimension of the metaxic tension is this: because of the appliqué nature of Carter's attempted theory, he faces fierce opposition from both liberals who assent to a coherent liberal commitment and non-liberals who assent to a coherent non-liberal commitment. These camps would simply dismiss Carter as being inconsistent. Ultimately, The Culture of Disbelief did not really think through the fundamental issues concerning the interplay between religion and liberal democracy. It did not ask the pertinent questions concerning the identity of the human being and his proper relationship to the world. There was certainly a failure also to address the method questions, resulting in inconsistent conclusions on specific social issues that were brought forth. With these limitations in mind, the book was an interesting editorial enterprise, just as I am contempt in using Microsoft Windows.