Under God: Religion and American Politics - Hardcover

Wills, Garry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671657054 ISBN 13: 9780671657055

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1990

Synopsis

Discusses why church and state will never be separate in the United States, using the issues of Election '88 as examples

About this title

About the Author:

Garry Wills is an Emeritus Professor of History at Northwestern University. Born in Atlanta in 1934, he has taught widely throughout the United States. A prolific writer and scholar, Wills is the author of more than twenty books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lincoln at Gettysburg, Papal Sin, and What Jesus Meant. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

From Publishers Weekly:

Explicating his theory that religion is an inextricable element of American political life, Wills sheds new light on the 1988 presidential campaign. While George Bush wooed Jerry Falwell and extolled patriotism, religion, law and order, Jesse Jackson and Pat Robertson--both ordained ministers, both from the South, both advocates of a moral revival--represented antipodal political extremes. The "secularity" of Michael Dukakis's campaign came across in his "pinched ideal of politics," while Gary Hart, a product of Yale Divinity School, failed to find "a new moral language" to account for personal indiscretions. Wills ( Reagan's America ) writes incisively of Mario Cuomo's stand on abortion and of Robert Bork, "a friend of censorship." He gives his central thesis historical ballast; for example, Abraham Lincoln saw the Civil War as an act of "expiatory suffering," and deist Thomas Jefferson in his private writings revealed his enthusiasm for Jesus's ethical doctrines. Author tour.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0671657054
• ISBN 13: 9780671657055
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 445