References Concerning Politics

and Religion in America

Religion and American Culture - The First Amendment Issues - Fundamentalism and the Christian Right - Mainline and Liberal Protestantism - African-American Religious Experience - Judaism in America - Catholicism - Women and American Religion - Other Religious Movement

Religion and American Culture

Bloom, Harold. The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. (A controversial work on the religious impulse that unites religious factions in America)

Butler, Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. (An important and provocative account of the fluctuation in American religiosity)

Carter, Stephen. Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion. New York: Basic Books, 1993. (A recent bestseller concerning the effect of political rhetoric and law on public religious expression)

Fink, Roger and Rodney Stark. The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992. (A new interpretation of American religious life based on rational choice and economic theory)

Hunter, James Davison. Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. New York: Basic Books, 1991. (Bestseller about contemporary Evangelical, Catholic and Orthodox Jewish movements)

Kelly, George Armstrong. Politics and Religious Consciousness in America. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1984. (An excellent account of religious consciousness by a renowned Hegel scholar.)

Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribner's, 1958. (Classic argument connecting Protestantism with the rise of Capalitalism)

Wuthnow, Robert. The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War Two. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. (A solid survey of contemporary American religion by a noted religion scholar)

The First Amendment Issues

Howe, Mark de Wolfe. The Garden and the Wilderness: Religion and Government in American Constitutional History. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1965. (A classic and erudite account of religion and politics in the United States)

Kramnick, Isaac and R. Lawrence Moore. The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness. New York: Norton, 1996. (A separatist interpretation of the founding)

Malbin, Michael. Religion and Politics: The Intentions of the Authors of the First Amendment. Washington, D.C: American Enterprise Institute, 1978. (Another view on the relation between religion and politics during the founding)

Monsma, Stephen V. When Sacred and Secular Mix: Religious Nonprofit Organizations and Public Money. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996. (A case study on one of the most important areas of contemporary church-state jurisprudence)

Pfeffer, Leo. Religion, State and the Burger Court. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1984. (The classic defense of separatism)

                    Fundamentalism and the Christian Right

Marty, Martin. With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America. New York: Broadway Books, 1996. (One of the most respected scholars of American religion on the Christian Right)

Marty, Martin and R. Scott Appleby. The Glory and the Power: The Fundamentalist Challenge to the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. (Part of an extensive project at the University of Chicago to study the role of Fundamentalism in the modern world)

Reed, Ralph. Politically Incorrect: The Emerging Faith Factor in American Politics. Dallas: Word Publishing, 1994. (The former leader of the Christian Coalition explains the New Christian Right)

Wilcox, Clyde. God's Warriors: The Christian Right in Twentieth-Century America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. (An thorough account of the Christian Right in the Twentieth-Century)

                    Mainline and Liberal Protestantism

Hauerwas, Stanley. After Christendom? How the Church is to Behave if Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation are Bad Ideas. (A sharp critique of liberal Protestantism by a noted Christian ethicist from Duke)

Hammond, Phillip. The Protestant Presence in Twentieth-Century America: Religion and Political Culture. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992. (Argues that religious pluralism has cost mainline Protestantism its dominance in America)

Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense. New York: Scribner, 1944. (A famous articulation of Niebuhr’s Neo-Orthodoxy also known as "Christian realism")

Rauschenbusch, Walter. A Theology for the Social Gospel. New York: Macmillan, 1917. (The classic argument for socially active Christianity)

                    African-American Religious Experience

Cone, James. A Black Theology of Liberation. Philadelphia: Lippincott. 1970. (The classic articulation of black liberation theology)

Garrow, David J. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Leadership Conference. New York: Morrow, 1986. (A history of MLK’s political and religious activism)

Haley, Alex and Malcolm X. Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Grove Press, 1965. (An important case study of an African-American religious pilgrimage)

Lincoln, C. Eric and Lawrence H. Mamiya. The Black Church in the African American Experience. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990. (An excellent account of African American religion)

                    Judaism in America

Cohen, Naomi Wiener. Jews in Christian America: the Pursuit of Religious Equality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. (A history of Jews and interfaith relations in America)

Ivers, Gregg. To Build a Wall: American Jews and the Separation of Church and State. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1995. (An interesting survey of Jewish American thought on the relationship between church and state)

Lipset, Seymour Martin. Jews and the New American Scene. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. (An excellent and up-to-date empirical study of Jews in America)

                    Catholicism

Byrnes, Timothy. Catholic Bishops in American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. (A history of the role of bishops’ statements in various political struggles in American history)

Murray, John Courtney S.J. We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960. (A defense of Catholic patriotism by one of the most important Vatican II American theologians)

Novak, Michael. Catholic Social Thought and Liberal Institutions: Freedom with Justice. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1989. (A discussion of the relationship between Catholic social thought and American institutions by a noted conservative Catholic)

Women and American Religion

Daly, Mary. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1973. (The classic theological attack on traditional religion)

Davidman, Lynn. Tradition in a Rootless World: Women Turn to Orthodox Judaism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. (An interesting study of American women and Orthodox Judaism)

Streichen, Donna. Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism. San Francisco: St. Ignatius, 1991. (A biting critique of religious feminists in action)

                    Other Religious Movements

Conklin, Paul K. American Originals: Homemade Varieties of Christianity. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. (An excellent survey of Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Pentecostals, and other movements)

Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck and Jane Idelman Smith, eds. Muslim Communities in North America. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994. (The best work on followers of Islam in America)

Kephart, William M. and Millaim W. Zellner. Extraordinary Groups. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. (A good study of small separatist and non-separatist religions in America)