Product Description

In this sequel to his best-selling Culture of Disbelief, Stephen Carter redefines the role of religion in cultural politics, mapping out politics' involvement with religion from freeze-out to overzealous embrace.

America faces a crisis of legitimacy. It's a crisis that dramatizes the separation of church and state. A crisis that, in the messages sent by our culture, marginalizes religion as a relatively unimportant human activity that plays an unimportant role in the national debate. Because the nation chooses to secularize the principal points of contact between government and people (schools, taxes, marriage, etc.), it has persuaded many religious people that a culture war has been declared.

Stephen Carter, in this sequel to his best-selling Culture of Disbelief, argues that American politics is unimaginable without America's religious voice. Using contemporary and historical examples, from abolitionist sermons to presidential candidates' confessions, he illustrates ways in which religion and politics do and do not mesh well and ways in which spiritual perspectives might make vital contributions to our national debates.

Yet, while Carter is eager to defend the political involvement of the religious from its critics, he also warns us of the importance of setting some sensible limits so that religious institutions do not allow themselves to be seduced, by the lure of temporal power, into a kind of passionate, dysfunctional, and even immoral love affair. Lastly, he offers strong examples of principled and prophetic religious activism for those who choose their God before their country.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1271739 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Amazon.com Review
God's Name in Vain: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics is a timely work of cultural history by Stephen L. Carter, a professor at Yale Law School and the author of The Culture of Disbelief. The book presents two interrelated arguments: "First, that there is nothing wrong, and much right, with the robust participation of the nation's many religious voices in debates over matters of public moment. Second, that religions--although not democracy--will almost always lose their best, most spiritual selves when they choose to be involved in the partisan, electoral side of politics." In making these arguments, God's Name in Vain cites historical anecdotes ranging from the Abolitionist movement to the Christian Coalition. Carter's writing is rhetorically powerful, his historical knowledge is estimable, and his spiritual and political convictions are passionate. But Carter's real crusade in God's Name in Vain is not intellectual, theological, or political. It is moral. He writes in the book's Introduction: "[M]orality, in religious terms, is nothing but the actual practice of one's religious faith. Religion is what we profess and morality is what it moves us to do. Politics needs morality, which means that politics needs religion." The idea is interesting, and it is popular, but it is a fallacy. Even Carter's most devout readers may be disappointed that his elegant ideology is blind to the reality of secular morality. --Michael Joseph Gross

From Publishers Weekly
Religion can't be kept out of public life. Yale Law School's Carter, building on the argument he made in The Culture of Disbelief, says the only people who want religious people to abandon religion when they enter the public square are people who think religion isn't very important. Indeed, Carter contends, religious discourse very often enriches public debate. Drawing on such historians as Charles Marsh and Nathan Hatch, Carter argues that religion has long motivated social change in America, noting that Christianity undergirded the civil rights movement and crusades such as abolitionism, labor and temperance. But if religion is often good for politics, he says, it's sometimes been "disastrous" for people's religiosity. Black preachers, for example, have had to soften their "prophetic ministry" in order to play in the corridors of power. Carter not only mines the past, he also takes on contemporary policy issues such as school choice, suggesting that religious people should rally around a platform that elevates "parental interest above the interest of the state." Contra Amy Gutman (Democratic Education), Carter believes that religious parents should be able to raise religious children, and that children should not be coerced into a public school system hostile to their beliefs. These subtle arguments are cast in the elegant prose Carter fans have come to expect. His is a sane, fresh voice in the too-often stale debate about religion and public life. (Oct.) Forecast: Carter's The Culture of Disbelief altered America's debate on religion's role in public life, and there is no reason that this outstanding, thoughtful title shouldn't do the same particularly since its release is timed so perfectly with the presidential election.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Law professor and evangelical Christian Carter is serious about dissent. Moreover, he maintains that dissent is a vital function of religion. There must be prophets to upbraid kings and nations when they are wrong. Christian prophets have led the two major correctional movements in U.S. history--abolition in the nineteenth century and black civil rights in the twentieth--and walling them out of the political arena in the name of the First Amendment is unconscionable. For "Religion's Sphere," as Carter entitles the first part of this book, is coextensive with God's domain, which is everywhere. Religion suffers, however, when religionists get too embroiled in partisan politics, as Carter thinks the Christian Coalition did, and compromise the faith. Better to participate as Fannie Lou Hamer did, Carter says, and perhaps lose a battle but remain true to the greater truth one professes, as she stood firm for the kingdom of God. The liberal democratic state suffers worse when it quarantines religion, as, by Carter's lights, recent laws, court decisions, and elite opinion have, for then it muzzles those, such as the prophets, for whom the divine organization of reality is the first principle of life. The second part of his riveting essay Carter devotes to specific policies and attitudes that hurt religion: how war is waged (impersonally, mechanically); "measurism," the contention that only what can be measured is important; legislative and judicial determinations of religious legitimacy; and state systems, such as public education, when they preempt familial and communal prerogatives. Densely but accessibly argued, this may be the most important book about freedom of religion of our time. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

OK but very pre-9/11
Carter focuses on two issues:

1. To what extent should religion speak about political issues? Carter favors a broad reach for religion; because religion by definition covers every conceivable moral issue, there is no logical reason why political issues should be outside its reach. (And his excellent discussion of the religious element in the abolitionist movement shows that both religious involvement in American politics AND secularist criticism of same are nothing new). However, I wonder whether Carter's book would have been written differently since the rise of radical terrorist Islam.

2. Exactly how partisan should religion be? Carter argues that those who argue in the name of religion should be forever outsiders, lest they become coopted (and thus less radical and less truly religious) by being folded into a political coalition and thus making their allies' views more important than their own spiritual demands. Accordingly, religious leaders should try to avoid endorsing candidates (though Carter opposes legal restrictions on their right to do so). Carter uses an interesting Biblical example of how religious leaders should behave: rather than calling for new rulers in Israel, the prophets called on the existing kings to repent. (Of course, there are exceptions to this rule that Carter does not mention, e.g. Samuel anoiting King David).

I found the latter discussion more interesting than the former. I wish Carter was a bit more attentive to the dangers of overpowerful religion, and that he was a bit stingier with generalities about "American culture." Liberal secularists are part of American culture- but so are conservatives who are happy to hear the latest pronouncements of James Dobson or other religious conservatives.

Carter also devotes some space to legal issues, discussing the paradox of First Amendment religion doctrine: the purpose of the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses was in part to protect religion from the state- yet the clauses force the state to decide which religions it protects and accommodates, thus giving the state power over religion! This conundrum, however, has no perfect answer.

Religion Vs. Politics: Round 1
The author Stephen L. Carter uses both recent and distant historical evidence of religions interaction with politics to illustrate what he believes to be the "Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics", as in the name of his book. Carter goes on to show the negative effects to religion if it was to become intricatly involved in politics, as well as the negative effects on society if religion was to shun political interaction.
Carter use compelling arguments that target the ethos of both political and religious groups during various levels of interaction. Carter is highly opinionated in his writing but seems to want to present the facts for the reader to base a decision off of then to try and persuade the reader; Carter just wants the reader to be informed. However, Carter does make his opinion very well known and does use facts to strongly back it up, but he still gives evidence to support the opposing view so that a comparison can be made by the reader.

All-in-all, it was a very enlightening book to read that opened both my eyes and my mind to things in the world around me that I was blind to before.

Good read, shaky argument.
Stephen Carter is both eloquent and efficient in his writing, managing to make a topic as broad as the separation of church and state fit into one book. It's not a fast read, but it's definitely not a difficult one, either. The organization of the book keeps it from becoming confusing, despite having two different (though related) theses in one book. He also keeps the book interesting, as well: while he continuously refers to the past to justify his argument, he extrapolates enough to keep these events relevant to his argument, thereby keeping his book from becoming a mere retelling of history.

The theses I mentioned earlier are as follows:
1. There is "much right" with the inclusion of religion in politics.
2. If religion is included TOO MUCH in politics, religion will lose its best self.

He separates these theses into different parts of the book. I found that the second thesis was well-supported, explaining that religion must not become involved in partisan politics lest it compromise its values in order to fit the values of a political party. However, his first thesis is supported by a faulty argument.

He makes his bias clear early in the book, stating that he is a devout Christian. However, though he is aware of his bias, he does not seem able to take himself out of it. A huge part of his argument for the first thesis is based upon the Abolition Movement. He uses abolitionist preachers as an example of a time where Christianity was used in politics to bring about a positive movement. Even though this may be true, he fails to address movements in which religion was used as a coercive force. He refutes an argument used to support the separation of church and state, which is that some religious regimes have used their force for coercion, saying that the religious regimes have done no more wrong than secular regimes. The reverse of the same point, though, can be used to refute his own argument: there is no proof that religious regimes have done any more RIGHT that secular regimes. Furthermore, the Abolition Movement could very well have been started by secular motives, not just Christianity.

Overall, it is a very interesting and informative read, but those who do not believe in religion will not be convinced by his argument.