America's Battle for God
German theologian Muller-Fahrenholz knows the U.S. well, having come to it for graduate study in 1965 and spent long periods in it since. (He knows English, or at least how to write about ideas in it, better than many American theologians.) He believes that the U.S. political concept of civil religion, whereby political leaders reflexively mouth "God bless America" to salve religious citizens without endorsing a particular faith, has taken on a lot of baggage since the 1960s and especially since the Reagan administration. It now includes, and by inclusion justifies, political messianism, end-times ideology, and cultural and economic triumphalism. Muller-Fahrenholz argues that these additions to civil religion are genuinely rooted in national history but clearly contradict basic religious principles, especially those of Christianity. Synthesizing the thought of many others--as he does all along--he advocates some very Christian practices for setting U.S. relations with the rest of the world aright: acknowledgment of sin and reconciliation through ecological responsibility and political humility. Victor's guilt and victim's shame will never be assuaged otherwise.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved