Under God: Religion and American Politics [Hardcover]

Garry Wills (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1990

In Under God, Garry Wills, one of our liveliest and most eminent political observers, moves through the tapestry of American history, illuminating the instances where American politics and American religion have collided.

Beginning with the 1988 presidential contest, an election that included two ministers and a senator accused of sin, Wills surveys our history to show the continuity of present controversies with past religious struggles and argues that the secular standards of the Founding Fathers have been misunderstood. He shows that despite reactionary fire-breathers and fanatics, religion has often been a progressive force in American politics and explains why the policy of a separate church and state has, ironically, made the position of the church stronger.

Marked by the extraordinary quality of observation that has defined the work of Garry Wills, Under God is a rich, original look at why religion and politics will never be separate in the United States.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

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.

Review

"Easily the most engrossing and informative -- and far and away the best written -- book on American politics in many, many moons."

-- Booklist

"Abounds in complexities and ironies."

-- Time

"A brilliant examination of the connection between religion and politics in American life."

-- The Milwaukee Journal

"A devastating analysis."

-- The Washington Post

"Intellectual journalism of the highest order."

-- San Francisco Chronicle --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 445 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 2nd edition (October 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671657054
• ISBN-13: 978-0671657055
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,994,546 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Garry Wills is one of the most respected writers on religion today. He is the author of Saint Augustine's Childhood, Saint Augustine's Memory, and Saint Augustine's Sin, the first three volumes in this series, as well as the Penguin Lives biography Saint Augustine. His other books include "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power, Why I Am a Catholic, Papal Sin, and Lincoln at Gettysburg, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beyond the Traditional Platitudes, November 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Under God (Paperback)

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.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Walls Make Good Neighbors, March 30, 2005

By 

Robert E. Olsen (McLean, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Under God (Paperback)

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

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Political concerns, February 9, 2008

By 

Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Under God (Paperback)

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.