Customer Reviews

Under God

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I wish I had discovered this book sooner! It's well-written and packed with fascinating information and analysis. I was particularly taken by chapter 33, "Madison and the Honor of God". Mr. Wills is dead-on accurate in his assessment about Madison being the single most effective force in disestablishment - information unknown to the general public. Books of this ilk can be dry, but Mr. Wills artfully weaves the threads of cold, hard history together, compelling the reader to continue. Great insights into the personalities behind the topic. A great book to start one's exploration of church/state separation. Even if you're already well aquainted with the subject, there are jewels of little-known information here that are worth picking up.

Garry Wills gave up an endowed chair in the history department at Northwestern University to become a full-time author and public intellectual. A devout Catholic with a doctorate in the classics, he writes often and intelligently about religion in America. "Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America" (1992), "Saint Augustine" (1999), and "'Negro President': Jefferson and the Slave Power" (2003) are among his nearly 30 books, many of which examine the political consequences of debates over religious ideas. "Under God: Religion and American Politics" (1990) uses the 1988 presidential election -- which, after the demise of Gary Hart in a sex scandal, pitted right-wing preacher-businessman Pat Robertson and left-wing preacher-politician Jesse Jackson against tone-deaf secularist Michael Dukakis and an outwardly pious (and ultimately victorious) George H.W. Bush -- as a jumping off point to examine a wide range of issues in American intellectual and religious history, all of them more relevant now than in 1988.

Wills's thesis in "Under God" is that the United States has always been a Protestant (and not a "Judeo-Christian") nation; that secularist politicians like Dukakis and the journalists who follow them ignore that fact at their peril; that at times much blood has been wrongly shed, but at other times much good has been done, in the name of religion in America; that religious concerns -- guilt and shame, redemption, suffering, and good works -- are nothing if not serious business; that some media-savvy evangelical Christians have an influence vastly disproportionate to their learning; and that Jefferson and Madison's "wall of separation" between church and state, prefigured in the lip service John Winthrop paid to the Church of England (while actually encouraging the separate growth of New England Congregational churches) and in Roger Williams's removal of his brand of purist Protestantism from the meddling of politicians, has paradoxically been very, very good for religion.

There are footnotes, all right, at the end of "Under God," but the tone is anything but scholarly. Wills can write, and his book reads more like an integrated collection of essays than a dissertation. Among the topics he weaves together are a re-examination of the Scopes trial of evolution vs. creationism; the impact of black millennialism on the civil rights movement in America from Lincoln to Jesse Jackson; and a re-examination of eroticism in the context the anti-intellectualism and censoriousness of religion in 19th-century America. He cites to and explains authoritative translations of the Bible, not for divine inspiration but for historically accurate sources.

Wills's portraits of politicians and the use they make of religious themes and vernacular are extraordinarily good. Almost alone among public intellectuals, he has an eye for the art of the possible and the angst of religious experience. This is a good read. -- Robert E. Olsen

Gary Hart's journey was a sort of Kierkegaardian parable. Being a Nazarene, for Hart, was life-imprisoning.

A nearly twenty year old analysis of a Presidential election, 1988, from a religious perspective, remains useful to us. Religious beliefs of the participants and their ability to engage people on such a basis still determine election results.

Careful observation and interesting facts abound in this survey of the fate of Gary Hart, Pat Robertson, George H.W. Bush, Danny Quayle, Michael Dukakis, Jesse Jackson, Mario Cuomo, and Bruce Babbitt. Dukakis felt uncomfortable with moral appeals.

Award winning historian Gary Wills wrote this book after coming to the conclusion that the mass media and the elite that determines its content are hopelessly out to sea when it comes to understanding the role that Christianity has played and continues to play in American history and politics. Wills, a theologically liberal Roman Catholic, effectively demolishes the popular folklore that has grown up around the Scopes trial and Inherit the Wind. While never weakening his own support for evolutionary theory, Wills scrapes the facade of noble humanism that has been applied to Clarence Darrow, whose own interest in evolution had more to due with facist ideas about race than science, and the tarnish of buffoonery that has been applied to William Jennings Bryant, whose defense of intentional creation had more to due with a respect for human dignity and progressive social welfare than with blind allegiance to superstition.

It might appear that reading a book now about the presidential campaign of 1998 would be a wast of time, but in this case appearance would be very much wrong. Gary Wills has written a serious examination of religion in the lives of major contemporary and historical figures (e.g. Jessie Jackson and Thomas Jefferson.) I would love to read an update on the current presidential contenders. I found his thoughts on the Scopes "monkey trial" fascinating. I also found his work on James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and other historical people to be well worth reading. Mr. Wills concludes that religion has an undeniable effect on the actions of political leaders and after reading this I believe you will concur.

Wills covers the strong religious influence in the 1988 campaign, but more importantly gives background to explain the fundamentalist domination of the Republican Party and their success in 2000 and 2004. As I tell Europeans, politically influential secularist intellectuals likeThomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were rare exceptions in our history: politically and intellectually seen, America is not an enlightenment land, America is a reformation land, still dominated by the 16th century mentality of fundamentalist religion. So Wills hit the nail right on the head as early as 1988. See also my review of George Lakoff's 'Moral Politics', which attempts to clarify the secular-religious split in America.

The book is not flawless. Wills gets it completely wrong on Snow's two cultures: that's not about ivory towered academics alone, most of the world has no idea or completely wrong ideas about science. Wills seems to think that Alan Bloom's idea that feminism is 'not natural' should carry some weight. Wrong, no scientific basis for that at all. Says Dukakis was the first 'modern' presidential candidate. Wrong again. Thomas Jefferson was a nonChristian deist who understood Newtonian mechanics, and was mainly formed by enlightenment ideas. Maybe Jefferson was the first and last U.S. President or presidential candidate, aside from jimmy Carter, to have studied and understood physics. Also, 'post Newtonian science' has in no way abandoned 'measurement': consider quantum physics and cell biology, among many examples! Evolution via mutations is observable/measureable at the molecular level, as the mutation of bacteria and viruses to new and unforeseen forms illustrates. See Robert Weinberg's "One Renegade Cell: How Cancer Begins" for a describtion of the evolution of a single rapidly replicating cell into a full blown metastacizing tumor via 5-6 mutations.

Wills alludes to neo-cons like Bloom and Podhoretz without pointing out that they're neo-cons. Maybe we can forgive him for that omission: that was before the neo-cons, on the backs of the Christian fundamentalists, got the power to create the Iraq war out of a few big lies about WMD. Lies that were swallowed hook line and sinker by frightened, badly uninformed people.

Also of interest: "What's the Matter With Kansas?," by Thomas Frank.

Is the United States a Christian country? Well, not if you believe our Founding Fathers, including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Franklin. They argued for complete separation of church and state. And Wills is actually quite good at telling us what Madison, the most important of them in this regard, said.

But America does have plenty of Christians. And Wills claims (in 1990) that polls show nine out of ten Americans believe in god. As a Polytheist who regards such a belief atheistic, I find that a discouraging statistic, but that does not mean it is untrue.

Wills also argues that an atheist (who does not believe in any Goddesses or Gods, not even the monotheist one) would have no chance of being elected President (presumably being a candidate without a prayer). Given what Adams and Jefferson said about Christianity in their letters to each other, I doubt that either of their positions would get them elected today.

Wills discusses the issue of the words in our Pledge of Allegiance, including the reference to the monotheist god. I do think symbols are important. Our flag does not have a Christian Cross on it, and that's intentional. And I do not understand either side in this dispute. Do the Christians really want to be on the wrong side of Madison's arguments and demand that Polytheists refer to the monotheist god? Do non-monotheists really want to appear unpatriotic by refusing to salute their own flag because of these words?

The author then moves into the debate over Darwinian evolution. And he contrasts William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial not so much with Clarence Darrow as with H. L. Mencken. Willis is quick to criticize Mencken's completely politically incorrect attacks on Women, Jews, and Blacks. Well, maybe I am just too tolerant. I agree that Mencken's style was like Nietzsche's. But I find their works thought-provoking rather than parts of a demonic theology!

Wills then claims that the real winners of the Scopes trial were not the Darwinians. He is right about that. After the trial, the quality of American biology textbooks went way down. Wills says "it was not Scopes that put evolution in the schools, but Sputnik." That is true. The author then argues in favor of putting creationism into the science classroom. I am disappointed with Wills for wanting to do this. We're not talking about a ritual Pledge to our Flag here. We're talking about teaching falsehoods in science classes. Shame on him!

There is also a discussion of Jesus, including the virgin birth, miracles, and resurrection. By the way, I have always thought these made Jesus less heroic and more attackable. After all, without any of this, who would dream of comparing Jesus with powerful people such as Stalin or Mohammed or Julius Caesar? Jesus would be a simple hero and no one would find cause to demonize him.

Wills is not afraid to talk about abortions and a Woman's Right to Choose. My only comment on this is to say that I can't see an argument for an embryo being sacred in the first few hours after fertilization, before we even know if it will be twins or not.

It is an interesting book, but the comments about creationist arguments are simply wrong. Even if Wills is being sincere and merely in error here (rather than being reckless or dishonest), I can't give him more than one star for this book after that.