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Under God (Paperback)

~ (Author) "PREACHERS AND POLITICIANS WERE STUMBLING OVER EACH OTHER IN THE 1988 campaign..." (more)
Key Phrases: New England, Pat Robertson, Jesse Jackson (more...)

4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

Beginning with the 1988 presidential contest, an election during which two ministers and a senator accused of sin, this book surveys American history to show how religion has often been a progressive force in politics and why the policy of a separate Church and state has, ironically, made the position of the Church stronger in the US. Garry Wills is the author of "Reagan's America" and "The Kennedy Imprisonment".

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Product Details

Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (November 15, 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0671747460
ISBN-13: 978-0671747466
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,171,338 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
PREACHERS AND POLITICIANS WERE STUMBLING OVER EACH OTHER IN THE 1988 campaign. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New England, Pat Robertson, Jesse Jackson, New York, Roger Williams, United States, World War, Ronald Reagan, Gary Hart, George Bush, John Kennedy, Rhode Island, Andrew Young, Michael Dukakis, Willie Horton, First Amendment, Anne Hutchinson, Francis Schaeffer, Jimmy Carter, Declaration of Independence, Jerry Falwell, John Winthrop, Mario Cuomo, New Testament, Cotton Mather

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 170 books:

City of God (Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans) (Pelican Classics) by Augustine of Hippo on 12 pages
The PEOPLES RELIGION (AMERICAN FAITH IN THE NINTIES) by Gallup on 6 pages
Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism 1870-1925 by George M. Marsden on 5 pages
The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche by H. L. Mencken on 4 pages
Magnalia Christi Americana or: The Ecclesiastical History of New England from Its First Planting by Cotton Mather on 4 pages

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100 books cite this book:

The Politics of Virtue: Is Abortion Debatable? by Elizabeth Mensch on 8 pages
The Culture of Disbelief by Stephen L. Carter on 4 pages
Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Garry Wills on 4 pages
Not the Way It's Supposed to Be : A Breviary of Sin by Cornelius Plantinga Jr. on page 23, page 50, and page 99
The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words by Ronald C. White Jr. on page 230, page 237, and page 239

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	55% buy the item featured on this page: Under God 4.1 out of 5 stars (7) $28.95
	20% buy Under God: Religion and American Politics $12.48
	15% buy Head and Heart: American Christianities 4.2 out of 5 stars (16) $21.42
	5% buy Under God 3.7 out of 5 stars (17) $6.80

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews

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4.1 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)

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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

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.

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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)

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

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

By	Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

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.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, with some valuable insights
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Published on April 18, 2005 by Jill Malter

4.0 out of 5 stars Sheds light on 2000, 2004 campaigns
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... Read more

Published on February 23, 2005 by Professor Joseph L. McCauley

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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. Read more

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