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In the Oct. 8 New Republic, Alan Wolfe of Boston College reviews Head and Heart: American Christianities, the latest book by Garry Wills. The argument of Head and Heart, as condensed by Wolfe, should gladden the heart of anyone who has night sweats because of the Religious Right:
In a Web-only interview with the Rev. Joel Hunter (pictured), Newsweek‘s Eve Conant introduces a new 44-page study, “Come Let Us Reason Together,” that tries to define common ground for evangelicals and progressives. Such projects are not new. Perhaps the best-known previous effort was called the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice.
In the latest Time, Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy provide an informative and lively report on the media-averse Council for National Policy and its threat to go all Ross Perot on the Republican Party if it dares to nominate the pro-choice (but also pro-constructionist) Rudy Giuliani.
Paul Elie’s latest essay for The Atlantic, a 6,400-word report on the variety of political thinkers who cite the late Reinhold Niebuhr as their hero, starts off strong but spends too much time waist-deep in the big muddy of debates about the Iraq War.
I approached Newsweek‘s cover story on Mitt Romney with dread. Would this be still another media demand that Romney deliver a J.F.K. speech that promises to build an unscalable wall between his faith and his public service?
It’s almost the Gregorian chant of liberal religion, and you don’t need to attend many inquirer’s classes before hearing it: “We take the Bible too seriously to take it literally.” Yet it’s usually the same people who talk the most about biblical literalism, as if it were a metastasizing cancer in American culture. By percentage, very few Americans engage in the sort of biblical interpretation that will deprive them of coffee in the morning or a blood transfusion in the emergency room.
Eve Conant of Newsweek has written a curious article: In trying to describe Democrats learning to speak the patois of evangelicals, she writes in a style that is nearly tone deaf to evangelical culture.
Nancy Gibbs has done a great job in the latest Time of discussing the agonizing details involved in the trial of Warren Jeffs, the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. Jeffs is being tried as an accomplice to rape on the grounds that he insisted on a girl, then 14, marrying her first cousin, despite her weeping protests that she was not ready. Jeffs’ defense attorneys argue he cannot be held accountable for what went on in the newlywed couple’s bedroom.
This week brings two online discussions of the book God’s Harvard by Washington Post Style reporter Hanna Rosin. One discussion, on the Post‘s website, features questions from readers, with fairly predictable results. It’s a funny mix of Patrick Henry College alumni and people who are frightened by them.
