The Public Interest articles from March 2004

The Public Interest archives from March 2004

Editor's note.(Editorial)
March 22, 2004... An entire issue on religion in America perhaps deserves explanation. The subject has, it is true, never been completely absent from our pages. Yet, for a variety of reasons, a more careful and thorough treatment seemed to be in order. Our...

The soul of a nation.
March 22, 2004... IN the immediate wake of the September 11 attacks, Americans found themselves faced with an unexpected choice between radically different perspectives on the proper place of religion in modern Western society. The alternative perspectives were...

The unraveling of Christianity in America.
March 22, 2004... THE religious scene in America today is a picture of confusion. And it might not be too Platonic to suggest that the soul of the typical individual harbors this confusion as well. Religion has been reduced to an option, and there are just so...

America in Islam.
March 22, 2004... FOR all practical purposes, the question of Islam in America is little more than a generation old. Yet it is already extraordinarily complicated and burdensome, both for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, with no signs of becoming any less so. This...

Implementing the faith-based initiative.(Religion and Social Policy I)
March 22, 2004... AS the media reports it, President George W. Bush's faith-based initiative is all about passing federal legislation to steer federal money to church-related charities and away from secular organizations. This, were it actually the case, would...

Getting faith-based programs right.(Religion and Social Policy II)
March 22, 2004... CONTRARY to much commentary on the subject, a clear-cut consensus exists on the constitutionality of permitting local congregations and other faith-based organizations to deliver diverse social services funded in whole or in part by government....

Faith healing.(Religion and Social Policy III)(faith-based initiatives Teen Challenge and Prison Fellowship )
March 22, 2004... PRESIDENT Bush's faith-based initiative seeks to elevate the civic role of modern-day Good Samaritans. If that seems doubtful, it's because partisan sniping has obscured an important fact about the intended partners in this initiative. They are...

Protestant, Catholic, Jew ...(Reconsiderations)(Book Review)
March 22, 2004... WILL Herberg's Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology was originally published in 1955. It is a classic work in the sociology of religion, once described by the noted historian of American religion Martin E. Marty as...

Religious souls and the body politic.
March 22, 2004... ONE of the casualties of the September 11 attacks and the ensuing war on terrorism has been the easy attitude Americans typically have taken toward religion. Jefferson famously stated that it did not matter whether his neighbor believed in...

Secular Europe, religious America.
March 22, 2004... AMERICA and Europe, or at least the nations of "old" western Europe, have been increasingly at odds since the end of the Cold War. Even a casual observer can see this in the rampant anti-Americanism on the continent. The hostility manifests...

The case of Frankfurter v. Jackson.(religious freedom and U.S. constitutional history)
March 22, 2004... MOST every aspect of life in the modern state is exposed to laws and regulations, many of which can have the effect of restricting the free exercise of religion. This gives rise to demands that the state "accommodate" religion by refraining...

Against separation.
March 22, 2004... IN 1802, in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the First Amendment had the effect of "building a wall of separation between Church & State." As it happens, when Congress drafted the First Amendment in 1789,...

The fire next time.(Review Essay)
March 22, 2004... THINK not that I am come to send peace on earth," Christ declares in the Gospel of Matthew. "I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter...

Religion and the social scientist.(Review Essay)
March 22, 2004... WITH The Transformation of American Religion, ([dagger]) the distinguished sociologist and chronicler of the culture wars Alan Wolfe has written a curiously instructive book on the ways we Americans "actually live our faith." Wolfe writes as a...