The Culture of Disbelief
How Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion
by Stephen L. Carter
This hardcover with dust jacket is a former library book and is in good condition with minor shelf wear. It has the typical library stamp and labels on the cover and spine. The dust jacket is protected by a clear plastic cover. A label was removed from the front free end page. There is no writing or highlighting.
328 pages, 1993 edition, ISBN 0465026478, Basic Books
From the DJ flap
America, it is often noted, is the most religious nation in the Western world. At the same time, many political leaders and opinion makers have come to view any religious element in public discourse as a tool of the radical right for reshaping American society. In our sensible zeal to keep religion from dominating our politics, Stephen L. Carter argues, we have constructed political and legal cultures that force the religiously devout to act as if their faith doesn't really matter.
This book explains how we can preserve the vital separation of church and state while embracing rather than trivializing the faith of millions of citizens or treating religious believers with disdain. What makes Carter's work so intriguing is that he uses liberal means to arrive at what are often considered conservative ends. Carter explains how preserving a special role for religious communities can strengthen our democracy. The book recovers the long tradition of liberal religious witness (for example, the antislavery, antisegregation, and Vietnam-era antiwar movements), and argues that the problem with the 1992 Republican convention was not the fact of open religious advocacy but the political positions being advocated. A vast array of issues appear in a new light: everything from religion in schools to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's mass weddings, from abortion to the Branch Davidians.
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