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The Decline And Fall Of The Modern Religious Right's Notion Of A Christian America Creates A Calmer Political Environment And, For Many Believers, May Help Open The Way For A More Theologically Serious Religious Life.

-Jon Meacham

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The Decline And Fall

Jon Meacham

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The Decline And Fall Of The Modern Religious Right's Notion Of A Christian America Creates A Calmer Political Environment And, For Many Believers, May Help Open The Way For A More Theologically Serious Religious Life.

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I've Been Accused Of Being Old Before My Time More Than Once. It's True That I've Always Felt An Affinity For, And Been Comfortable Around, Older People. I Attribute This To A Childhood Spent Around My Grandparents - And Even A Great-grandparent Or Two. I Wouldn't Trade Those Experiences For Anything.

I Believe That My Children, Who Are Young, Will Look Back On The Early Years Of The 21st Century In Rather The Same Way I Look Back On The Middle Of The 20th: As A Time When Seemingly Respectable People Supported Discrimination Against Americans Simply Because Those Americans Were Different From Themselves.

The American System Of Political Spending Is So Unregulated That It Might Make Adam Smith Rethink Free Markets.

We Chose The Most Interesting Image Available To Us To Illustrate The Theme Of The Cover, Which Is What We Always Try To Do. We Apply The Same Test To Photographs Of Any Public Figure, Male Or Female: Does The Image Convey What We Are Saying? That Is A Gender-neutral Standard.

America Has Long Raised Political And Cultural Cognitive Dissonance To An Art Form. We Are Capable Of Living With Enormous Inequality And Injustice While Convincing Ourselves That We Are In Fact Moving Toward What Churchill Called The "broad, Sun-lit Uplands."

A Wise Nation Should Cultivate A Political Spirit That Allows Opponents To Cooperate Without Fearing An Automatic Execution From Their Core Supporters. Who Knew That The Real Rogues In American Politics Would Be The Ones Who Dare To Get Along?

The Fact Is That America Has Been At Her Most Prosperous When Government And The Private Sector Have Been Not At War, But In A Wary, If Often Underplayed, Alliance. History Is Unmistakable On This Point.

Scripture Is Not Inerrant; Believers Are Called To Interpret Biblical Texts In Light Of Tradition And Reason.

I Am A Southerner Who Grew Up With And Around Guns. I Own Some Still. My Father Gave Me A .22 Rifle When I Was 9 And A Single Barrel .410 Shotgun When I Was 10.

As A Southerner Born After The Epic Events Of The Civil Rights Movement, I've Always Wondered How On Earth People Of Good Will Could Have Conceivably Lived With Jim Crow - With The Daily Degradations, The Lynchings In Plain Sight, And, As The Movement Gathered Force, With The Fire Hoses And The Police Dogs And The Billy Clubs.

The Attacks Of September 11 - And Subsequent Acts Of Terror From London To Madrid To Fort Hood, Texas - Embody The Most Repulsive Of Human Instincts, The Will To Power At The Price Of The Lives Of Others.

The Occupy Wall Street Protests At Last Suggest That America's Wealth Gap Is Once Again Becoming An Organizing Political Principle In The Country.

One Of The Earliest Resurrection Scenes In The Bible Is That Of Thomas Demanding Evidence - He Wanted To See, To Touch, To Prove. Those Who Question And Probe And Debate Are Heirs Of The Apostles Just As Much As The Most Fervent Of Believers.

A Globalized World Is By Now A Familiar Fact Of Life. Building Walls Or Moats May Sound Appealing, But The Future Belongs To Those Who Tend To Their People And Then Boldly Engage The Rest Of The World, Near And Far.

Reagan Is The Republican Fdr, An Exemplar Of Presidential Greatness.

An Important Thing To Remember About The Press Is There Is No Ideological Bias.

Extremists Often Derive Their Inspiration From Literal Interpretations Of Texts That Should Rightly Be Read Not As Associated Press Reports From The Ancient World, But As Theological And Literary Enterprises Requiring Independent Intellectual Assessment.

While We Remain A Nation Decisively Shaped By Religious Faith, Our Politics And Our Culture Are, In The Main, Less Influenced By Movements And Arguments Of An Explicitly Christian Character Than They Were Even Five Years Ago. I Think This Is A Good Thing - Good For Our Political Culture.

[t]o Argue That Something Is So Because It Is In The Bible Is More Than Intellectually Bankrupt.

It's Possible That The 2012 General-election Race Will Be The Least Overtly Religious One Since 1972, The Last Campaign Before Roe V. Wade And The Rise Of Jimmy Carter Brought Evangelicalism Into The Political Mainstream. That's Because Faith Remains A Complicated Issue For Obama, Who Is Still Wrongly Thought To Be A Muslim In Some Quarters.

The Central Tenet Of Christianity As It Has Come Down To Us Is That We Are To Reach Out When Our Instinct Is To Pull Inward; To Give When We Want To Take; To Love When We Are Inclined To Hate; To Include When Are Tempted To Exclude.

Among The Many Problems With Taking The Bible Literally Is It Reduces The Most Mysterious And Complex Of Realities To Simple - Even Simplistic - Terms. Yes, Scripture Speaks Of Fire And Damnation And Eternal Bliss, But The Bible Is The Product Of Human Hands And Hearts, And Much Of The Imagery Is Allegorical, Not Meteorological.

Like The Bible-a Document That Often Contradicts Itself And From Which One Can Construct Sharply Different Arguments-theology Is The Product Of Human Hands And Hearts.

The Perennial Conviction That Those Who Work Hard And Play By The Rules Will Be Rewarded With A More Comfortable Present And A Stronger Future For Their Children Faces Assault From Just About Every Direction. That Great Enemy Of Democratic Capitalism, Economic Inequality, Is Real And Growing.

The Way To Put Oneself In A Position To Take The Harder, More Honorable Political Path Is To Argue For One's Virtues In A Vigorous Way.

President Obama Is Now Losing To 'republican Nominee' In Polls - No Name Needed.

From Jefferson To Jackson To Lincoln To Fdr To Reagan, Every Great President Inspires Enormous Affection And Enormous Hostility. We'll All Be Much Saner, I Think, If We Remember That History Is Full Of Surprises And Things That Seemed Absolutely Certain One Day Are Often Unimaginable The Next.

I Am A Huge Admirer Of Franklin Roosevelt's, And I Believe Social Security Has Done Untold Good In Alleviating The Once-widespread Issue Of Poverty Among The Elderly. Fdr Believed In The Greatness And Generosity Of Americans - But He Was Also A Cold-blooded Politician.

Environmental Concern Is A Little Like Dieting Or Paying Off Credit-card Debt - An Episodically Terrific Idea That Burns Brightly And Then Seems To Fade When We Realize There's A Reason We Need To Diet Or Pay Down Our Debt. The Reason Is That It's Really, Really Hard, And Too Many Of Us In Too Many Spheres Of Life Choose The Easy Over The Hard.

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Jefferson Was The Rare Leader Who Stood Out From The Crowd Without Intimidating It.

I Don't Think Anyone Is Qualified To Answer Questions Of Eternal Fate Definitively, Much Less Pinpoint It To A Given Day.

It Would Be Great If Politics Were Fact-based, But It Is Not, And It Is Surely Not Nuance-based. What Works In A Classroom Or A Think Tank Does Not Work On Capitol Hill Or In The White House. Obama Sometimes Seems To Be Running The Brookings Institution, Not The Country.

Without Education, We Are Weaker Economically. Without Economic Power, We Are Weaker In Terms Of National Security. No Great Military Power Has Ever Remained So Without Great Economic Power.

National Security

Whenever There Is News Of A Terrible Shooting, I Wonder Why America Has So Miserably Failed To Enact Even Common-sense Gun Legislation.

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Steadiness Of Faith, Was, In The Long Run, As Illuminating And Essential As Sophistication Of Thought.

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Sometimes Paranoids Have Enemies, And Conspiracies Are Only Laughable When They Fail To Materialize.

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Cynically But Accurately Put, Americans Oppose Public Intervention Or Regulation If It Helps Others, But Favor It If It Helps Them - Take Social Security, Disaster Relief, Public Works Projects, For Example.

In America, Now, Let Us - Christian, Jew, Muslim, Agnostic, Atheist, Wiccan, Whatever - Fight Nativism With The Same Strength And Conviction That We Fight Terrorism. My Faith Calls On Its Followers To Love One's Enemies. A Tall Order, That - Perhaps The Tallest Of All.

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Part Of What I Loved - And Love - About Being Around Older People Is The Tangible Sense Of History They Embody. I'm Interested In Military History, For Instance, Because Both My Grandfathers Fought In World War Ii. I'm Interested In Writing Because One Of Those Grandfathers Wrote Books.

In The Closed Circle Of The War Cabinet, Pounded By Terrible Report After Terrible Report, There Had Been Uncertainty About Whether He Could Fend Off The Drift To Exploring A Deal With Hitler. The Determination Of The Larger Group Trumped The Tentativeness Of The Smaller, And Churchill Fulfilled His Role As Leader By Disentangling Himself From Defeatism--one Of His Singular Achievements At The End Of May 1940.

The Government Invented The Internet.

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I Am An Episcopalian Who Takes The Faith Of My Fathers Seriously, And I Would, I Think, Be Disheartened If My Own Young Children Were To Turn Away From The Church When They Grow Up. I Am Also A Critic Of Christianity, If By Critic One Means An Observer Who Brings Historical And Literary Judgment To Bear On The Texts And Traditions Of The Church.

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Justified Or Not, The Supreme Court Has A Kind Of Sacred Status In American Life. For Whatever Reason, Presidents Can Safely Run Against Congress, And Vice Versa, But I Think There Is An Inherent Popular Aversion To Assaults On The Court Itself. Perhaps It Has To Do With An Instinctive Belief That Life Needs Umpires.

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The Problem For Those Who Assert Biblical Authority In Support Of Traditional Definitions Of Marriage Is That One Could, With Equal Validity, Assert That The Lending Of Money Or Certain Kinds Of Haircuts Are Forbidden By God, Or That Slavery And The Subjugation Of Women Are Authorized By The Lord.

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The Decline And Fall Of The Modern Religious Right's Notion Of A Christian America Creates A Calmer Political Environment And, For Many Believers, May Help Open The Way For A More Theologically Serious Religious Life.

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An Epic Subject Requires A Writer Of Epic Skill And Scope, And We Have A Perfect Pairing In Cleopatra And Stacy Schiff. Absorbing And Illuminating, This New Biography Will Endure.

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With The Perspective Afforded By The Passage Of Time, Where Does 9/11 Rank As A Turning Point In Our National History? For The Victims And Their Families, Innocents Going About Their Lives, Suddenly And Brutally Murdered, No Other Day Can Ever Matter As Much.

Only The Most Unapologetic Biblical Fundamentalists, For Instance, Take Every Biblical Injunction Literally. If We All Took All Scripture At The Same Level Of Authority, Then We Would Be More Open To Slavery, To The Subjugation Of Women, To Wider Use Of Stoning. Jesus Himself Spoke Out Frequently Against Divorce In The Strongest Of Terms.

Given That Sexual Orientation Is Innate And That We Are All, In Theological Terms, Children Of God, To Deny Access To Some Sacraments Based On Sexuality Is As Wrong As Denying Access To Some Sacraments Based On Race Or Gender.

It Is True That Traditional Christianity Is Losing Some Of Its Appeal Among Americans, But That Is A Religious, Not Political, Matter. It Is Worth Remembering That The Jeffersonian 'wall Of Separation' Between Church And State Has Always Been Intended To Protect The Church From The State As Much As The State From The Church.

If A Person Is Homosexual By Nature - That Is, If One's Sexuality Is As Intrinsic A Part Of One's Identity As Gender Or Skin Color - Then Society Can No More Deny A Gay Person Access To The Secular Rights And Religious Sacraments Because Of His Homosexuality Than It Can Reinstate Jim Crow.

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