Abstract

Subject to Debate

When people complain about the secularization of the U.S., and the naked public square, and the banishment of religion from civic debate, as Stephen L. Carter does in his book "The Culture of Disbelief" and Harvey Cox did recently in the book "The Atlantic," the author wants to ask, what on earth is one talking about? In the U.S. religion plays a bigger part in public life. The whole country is drenched in religion, and that goes for the so-called left as well. Think of the big black voices, Jesse Jackson, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, are Protestant divines, Marian Wright Edelman just published a book of prayers. Among whites, Michael Lerner has a whole magazine devoted to his peculiar view of Judaism as a hybrid of socialism and psychobabble.