the48er

Religion and Atheism

Head and Heart: American Christianities by Garry Wills

One of America's top public intellectuals says that America's religious pendulum has repeated swung back and forth between enlightenment (head) and evangelicalism (heart). When Enlightenment Deists founded the nation, he observes, "churchgoing [was at] an all-time low of 17 percent of the population." That climate fostered the founders' only truly original contribution to political theory: the disestablishment of religion as a government institution. The Enlightenment gave way, however, to the Second Great Awakening, and so the swings have continued ever since. The author outlines the subsequent oscillations briskly, pausing often to note influential voices from both ends of the spectrum. Wills says that the Bush administration marks the first time that evangelicals have actually usurped the nation's enlightenment disestablishment principles in favor of imposing right-wing evangelical theocracy. The good news is that Wills thinks the current outbreak of emotional religious fanaticism has about run its course -- the pendulum is now swinging back toward enlightenment.

Head and Heart ... published October 4, 2007 by The Penguin Press HC

What Do Muslims Believe?
The Roots and Realities of Modern Islam by Ziauddin Sardar

A London-based New Statesman columnist and author of over 40 books offers an accessible introduction to Islam. This paperback's a mere 140 pages, yet it makes room for maps, a chronology, glossary, selections from the Qur'an and Hadith, a bibliography and contact information. The author takes fellow Muslims to task for having abandoned many of their faith's core tenets, but he sees better times ahead. Says Sardar,

[P]repare yourself for the re-emergence of a dynamic, thriving civilization for Islam. It will not emerge in the near future. It will take several decades, even half a century. It will be deeply rooted in history and tradition, but it will be a totally different entity. It will demonstrate that liberal humanism is not a Western invention; rather it has deep roots in Islamic history. It will show that pluralism is not a gift of secularism. Rather pluralism and diversity are intrinsic to the worldview of Islam. And it will not be for or against the West. Rather it will be across and above the West.

What Do Muslims Believe? ... published August 21, 2007 by Walker & Company

Everything You Know About God Is Wrong:
The Disinformation Guide to Religion edited by Russ Kick

This massive book systematically reveals the distortions, myths, and utter weirdness that have been shoved down our throats by organized religions of all stripes, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, new religions, and others who want to keep their lucrative franchises intact. ... [It goes] where wise men have often feared to tread for fear of lightning bolts [or] stoning.

So declares the editor of this anthology and its several dozen irreverent selections. His words "utter weirdness" shouldn't be taken lightly. The volume's overall effect is not one of discrediting mainstream religions, but of catching them at their worst and weirdest -- as in its coverage of Christian snake handlers. In another time and place, this barrage of often cheap shots might seem unfair. But given what millions of America's ostensibly Christian voters have encouraged and enabled BushCo to do to America and the world since 2001, the impulse to aim low and continue firing is certainly understandable. The first and one of the best offerings is Richard Dawkins' anagrammatic "Gerin Oil."

Everything You Know About God Is Wrong ... Aug. 7, 2007, the Disinformation Company

So Help Me God: The Founding Fathers and
The First Great Battle Over Church and State by Forrest Church

Church frames his discussion of the Founders' heated and protracted debate over the proper relationship between church and state with sections built around each of America's first five presidents. He establishes that the New England Federalists (especially John Adams) -- heirs to their region's Puritan traditions -- leaned toward the establishment of an explicitly Christian America, whereas the Virginians (particularly Jefferson, who in his day was viewed by many as an atheist) favored a far more secular approach, rooted in Enlightenment thinking. The author's qualifications for wading into this highly contentious historical thicket are excellent. With a Harvard Ph.D. in church history, Church was for 30 years the senior minister of Manhattan's historic All Souls UU congregation. During that tenure he's also been a prolific author -- as is reflected in the consistently high luster of his prose. The fact that he's the son of of the late Idaho Senator Frank Church may or may not constitute an additional qualification -- but it doesn't hurt.

So Help Me God ... published September 10, 2007 by Harcourt

Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim,
the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation by Eboo Patel

Every time we see a teenager kill someone in the name of God, we should picture a pair of shadowy hands behind him, showing him how to make the bomb or point the gun, giving him a manual with the prayers to say while committing murder, steadying his shaking hand with callused, steely ones, blessing him as he resolves to do the deed.

So says Eboo Patel, "an American Muslim from India," who founded and directs the Interfaith Youth Core, an organization that seeks to foster a spirit of understanding and cooperation between young people of widely diverse religious backgrounds. In presenting his arguments against religious exclusivism and for interfaith comity, the author does a superbly equitable job of noting both the highlights and lowlights of virtually all major world religions. For example, he opens with a consideration of Eric Rudolph, a "Christian," but also devotes plenty of space to Ghaffar Khan, a Muslim.

Patel spoke with Neil Conan on NPR's Talk of the Nation; he'd previously contributed an essay to NPR's national media project This I Believe.

Acts of Faith ... published July 11, 2007 by Beacon Press

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of
The Search for God by Carl Sagan; edited by Ann Druyan

Sagan speaks to us, congenially as ever, from beyond the grave with a little help from his widow and long-time collaborator Ann Druyan. His tolerant amiability and ever-present sense of wonder provide a welcome relief from some contemporary scientists' scorched-earth screeds against virtually all spiritual inclinations. With a title that's a tip of the hat to American pragmatist and scientist William James and one of his most important works, Sagan's book consists of edited transcripts of his 1985 Gifford Lectures. His search for God, says Druyan, was concerned "with the devoutness of the search itself. ... His argument is not with God ... [but] with those people who think we know everything that we need to know about God." Included are transcripts of the Q&A that followed the lectures. Astrophysicist Steven Soter updated the scientific references. Sagan ends with a once again timely meditation on the threat of nuclear war.

The Varieties of Scientific Experience ... pub'd Nov. 2, 2006 by The Penguin Press HC

Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers by Brooke Allen

Among the falsehoods most cherished by America's Christian Right and its GOP toadies, none is more easily disproved than the canard that America was founded as a Christian nation. Some of the founders were orthodox Christians, but many of the most consequential of them were simply not Christian in anything remotely like the sense in which the word "Christian" is now understood. Says Allen,

If we define a Christian as a person who believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ, then it is safe to say that some of the key Founding Fathers were not Christians at all. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine were deists -- that is, they believed in one Supreme Being but rejected revelation and all the supernatural elements of the Christian Church; the word of the Creator, they believed, could best be read in Nature. John Adams was a professed liberal Unitarian, but ... in his private correspondence seems more deist than Christian. ¶ George Washington and James Madison also leaned toward deism, although neither took much interest in religious matters.

Moral Minority ... published October 25, 2006 by Ivan R. Dee, Publisher

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

"Darwin's Rottweiler" has taken some well-deserved hits for herein exhibiting his usual haughty scorn for theists and much or most that's associated with their traditions. But particularly given the dangers posed by primitivist religious fanatics of virtually all stripes, it's easy to embrace his lucid, engaging and often very funny observations. This is no mere chucklefest, though. As Dawkins has written elsewhere,

Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!

The God Delusion ... published September-October 2006 by Houghton Mifflin

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

One of America's best known and most outspoken atheists reprises his 2004 bestseller The End of Faith with another jeremiad against the fanciful nonsense that clearly dominates millions of Americans' notions about religion. It's not merely a difference of opinion that's at stake. Imbecility of Biblical proportions is literally a matter of life and death. Says Harris,

Forty-four percent of the American population is convinced that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next fifty years ... [but] only after things have gone horribly awry here on earth. ... [I]f the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen -- the return of Christ. ... The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this ... should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.

*Also available, unabridged, on Audio CD

Letter to a Christian Nation ... published September 19, 2006 by Knopf

Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the
Faithful Majority from the Religious Right by Bob Edgar

The general secretary of the National Council of Churches, representing 45 million mainstream American Christians, thinks that the overwhelming majority of his fellow worshippers reject the far-right teachings of such preachers as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Edgar cites extensive scriptural support for liberal policies, observing that the Bible mentions

abortion not once, homosexuality only twice, and poverty or peace more than two thousand times. Yet somehow abortion and homosexuality have become the litmus tests of faith in public life today. Those with different ideas about them, or even those who simply believe religion is about far more, are routinely dismissed as un-Christian, unfaithful, even un-American. The politics of faith have been co-opted in the service of a political agenda defined by fascination with war, indifference toward poverty, and exploitation of God's creation for the benefit of a relative few.

Middle Church ... published September 5, 2006 by Simon & Schuster

The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America by Ray Suarez

A senior correspondent for PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer examines a broad range of issues and interviewees relating to religion and politics in America. Although Suarez describes himself as both patriotic and actively religious, he's quick to point out that "Ours was not founded as a Christian country. In the 230 years since then that label has only become less appropriate." Nevertheless, he says,

We can't get American religion out of politics, or politics out of religion. It's too late for that. It would be like trying to get the sugar out of a cup of coffee. But finding a way these two behemoth institutions in American life can coexist, while respecting the convictions of believers and protecting the rights of nonbelievers and those who disagree, is the riddle we must solve.

Saurez spoke about religion and politics on NPR's All Things Considered and at Chautauqua.

The Holy Vote ... published August 29, 2006 by Rayo

A History of the End of the World:
How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible
Changed The Course of Western Civilization by Jonathan Kirsch

Few bits of dubious scripture have troubled the world quite so much as the final book of the Christian Bible: The Apocalypse/Revelation of John. An attorney, book columnist for the LA Times and the author of previous volumes about the Bible (Harlot by the Side of the Road; King David; God Against the Gods) explains the origins and history of the work. Says Kirsch,

[T]he book of Revelation is regarded by secular readers -- and even by progressive Christians of various denominations -- as a biblical oddity at best and, at worst, a kind of petri dish for the breeding of dangerous religious eccentricity. Most Jewish readers ... are deeply offended to find that Jews are described in Revelation as members of "the synagogue of Satan." Indeed, the fact is that Revelation has always been regarded with a certain skepticism -- as "a curiosity that accidentally and embarrassingly belongs to the New Testament" -- even within pious Christian circles, and even in antiquity.

Kirsch spoke with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air.

A History of the End of the World ... published August 22, 2006 by HarperSanFrancisco

Mindful Politics: A Buddhist Guide to
Making the World a Better Place edited by Melvin Mcleod

To call this collection of 34 features about Buddhist approaches to politics "wide- ranging" would be a gross understatement. The quality of the pieces is wildly uneven and the perspectives on Buddhism range from those of traditional, globally-influential Buddhists to that of one of America's most strident atheists. Many of the political perspectives voiced are deeply resonant with the traditions of American progressivism. Martin Luther King, for example, is cited often. So it is that Sam Harris, the aforementioned atheist, would like to retain many Buddhist ideas and practices while dispensing with Buddhism as a religion. Says Harris, "[M]ost Buddhists worldwide practice it ... in many of the naive, petitionary, and superstitious ways in which all religions are practiced." But overall this volume is very friendly toward Buddhism. It includes the writings of such Buddhist leaders as the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh as well as those of American practitioners including Jerry Brown and Peter Coyote.

Mindful Politics ... published July 28, 2006 by Wisdom Publications

Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical's Lament
by Randall Balmer

Many of America's evangelical Christians have betrayed their faith's noblest legacies, says a veteran Columbia religion prof, himself an evangelical. Balmer (Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory) notes that 19th-century evangelicals were among the era's foremost liberals, spearheading efforts to emancipate women and slaves. In that light, it's particularly telling that the modern religious Right was born in the defense of Bob Jones University's racism -- and not in a righteous groundswell of opposition to 1973's Roe v. Wade, Balmer argues persuasively. While delivering some fascinating history concerning American religious movements, the author repeatedly challenges his brothers and sisters to heed Jesus' injunctions to be compassionate and peaceful -- attributes conspicuously absent from a GOP that is, by association, fouling the Balmer's lamented tradition.

Balmer spoke with Linda Wertheimer on NPR's Morning Edition.

*Also available, unabridged, on Audio CD

Thy Kingdom Come ... published July 3, 2006 by Perseus Books Group

Why the Christian Right Is Wrong by Robin Meyers

Meyers, an Oklahoma City UCC minister, gave a speech at a peace rally 18 months ago in which he chided American fundamentalists for some of their beliefs and behaviors that contradict Jesus' teachings. Ever since, the speech has circulated widely on the Net. Now it serves as an ultra-condensed preview of where the preacher goes with this important and extravagantly praised volume. Said Meyers,

When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to pay for a war with no exit strategy and no end in sight, creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks of our children, you are doing something immoral. When you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a country that was once the most loved country in the world, and act like it doesn't matter what others think of us, only what God thinks of you, you have done something immoral. When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical voters, and use the Constitution as a tool of discrimination, you are doing something immoral.

Why the Christian Right Is Wrong ... published May 19, 2006 by Jossey-Bass

Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism
by Michelle Goldberg

While Christian extremists who actually favor the implementation of a U.S. theocracy are relatively small in numbers, Goldberg explains, they're very well organized and disproportionately influential. Among the dangerous lunacies she examines are those of Rousas John Rushdoony and Christian Reconstructionism and Dominion Theology. She reports,

Speaking to outsiders, most Christian nationalists say they're simply responding to anti-Christian persecution. They say that secularism is itself a religion, one unfairly imposed on them. They say they're the victims in the culture wars. But Christian nationalist ideologues don't want equality, they want dominance.

Particularly chilling is Goldberg's discussion of the Christian right's "parallel universe" that simply denies many aspects of empirical reality while instead embracing primitivist Christian fantasy and fanaticism.

Terry Gross interviewed her on NPR's Fresh Air

Kingdom Coming ... published May 11, 2006 by W. W. Norton

The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation
For Women and Islam by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu to a conservative Muslim family; her grandmother abused her and father arranged her marriage to a distant cousin in Canada. En route, however, she "defected" to the Netherlands, where she's now a secular feminist and a member of that nation's lower house of parliament. The author's also an outspoken critic of Islam and its subjugation of women. She wrote the script for the controversial and provocative 10-minute film Submission (the title's a direct translation of "Islam"; an English-dubbed version of the movie may be seen here), for which her collaborator, Theo van Gogh, was assassinated by a Muslim extremist; she now lives under round-the-clock police protection. While her book chronicles some of her personal struggles with Islam, it's also a challenge to Muslims (and ultimately to the rest of us, as well), to consider the ideas of philosophers such as Voltaire, John Stuart Mill, and Bertrand Russell as superior alternatives to irrational dogmas and customs.

The Caged Virgin ... published April 25, 2006 by Free Press

American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers,
And the Making of a Nation by Jon Meacham

Bestselling author (Franklin and Winston; 2003) and Newsweek managing editor and Jon Meacham, popularly known for his Christian cover stories (such as this, this, and this), provides a fair-minded review of what America's founders thought about religion, what that meant in practical terms during their era, and what it might mean now, at over 200 years' remove. Says Meacham,

Of the Founders, Jefferson was the most eloquent advocate of keeping faith safe from the state and of protecting freedom of conscience -- a formula that has made America a haven for believer and nonbeliever alike. Complex, contradictory, endlessly curious, Jefferson once observed that "it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god." From the Founding to our own day, tolerance has set the United States apart from the Old World, creating and sustaining a culture that celebrates pluralism in politics and in the pew.

*Also available, unabridged, on Audio CD

American Gospel ... published April 4, 2006 by Random House

The Great Transformation:
The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions by Karen Armstrong

A sea change in world religions occurred during the Axial Age (ca. 900 BC - ca. 200 BC), says Karen Armstrong, who's made a career of explaining religion to the world. In geographically disparate cultures, she shows, ideals relating to justice and universal empathy began to replace earlier, more chauvinistic and exclusive principles. The former nun who built her reputation on works such as Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet (1992) and A History of God (1993) observes that the altruism arose in response to environments that were (like ours, she points out) very violent. Among the Axial Age (an era first so-designated by Karl Jaspers) figures she considers are Buddha, and Socrates, Confucius and Ezekiel.

Armstrong was featured on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

*Also available, in abridgement, on Audio CD

The Great Transformation ... published March 28, 2006 by Knopf Canada

The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country
From the Religious Right by Michael Lerner

Maybe because the Christian Right's inversion of Jesus' teaching is so mind-bogglingly utter -- and politically lethal -- it's easy for those of us who are unchurched to forget that there even is such a thing as a religious Left. A founder and the editor of the respected and dependably-Left magazine Tikkun here provides a most encouraging reminder. In a current Tikkun article, Lerner says of his latest offering,

The Left Hand of God promotes a view of the universe that emphasizes the possibility (not inevitability) of building a world with a New Bottom Line based on love, compassion, generosity, awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation, ecological sensitivity, social justice, peace, and nonviolence.

So what's not to like about that? Here's a related Web page that might be of interest: Leaders of the Religious Left, posted at beliefnet.com.

The Left Hand of God ... published February 7, 2006 by HarpersSanFrancisco

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
by Daniel Dennett

A renowned Darwinist philosopher contemplates the origins and evolution of religion. Dennett wants to break the spell that tends to hold religion above investigation and instead subject it to rigorous scientific scrutiny. Doing so, he says, will benefit religion by culling its weaker aspects and by revealing and acknowledging those of greater merit. Though this volume aims to persuade true believers to reflect on their beliefs, Dennett's perspectives seem much more likely to resonate with those who are already skeptical. He's an atheist, and some critics have taken him to task for presuming to study religion from an outsider's point of view, and for not giving proper due to Kierkegaard or other highly sophisticated theistic thinkers. It's hard to see how that's relevant, though; religion as it's actually practiced is not generally dominated by sublime philosophies or saintly exemplars.

Tom Ashbrook interviewed Dennett on NPR's On Point.

Breaking the Spell ... published February 2, 2006 by Viking Adult

A Knock at Midnight Martin Luther King sermons (Audio CD)

Not every minute of every sermon included in this fine collection is necessarily brilliant or especially soul stirring. But what is amazing is how much of King's religious oratory is intellectually superb and emotionally devastating. While his sermons and speeches are now remembered for their righteous passion, his erudition and intellectual excellence are often forgotten, and that's a pity. King's highly cultivated mind was at least as impressive and important as his righteous spirit and rhetorical technique. It's remarkable to hear him explaining in these recordings some of history's most august philosophers and theologians to his congregations in terms anyone can understand, but without the slightest trace of condescension.

*Also available in print (hardcover).

A Knock at Midnight ... released December 1, 2005 by Hachette Audio

The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists
by Khaled Abou El Fadl

A professor of law at UCLA and "one of the most important and influential Islamic thinkers of the modern age" (the back flap declares) explains how Islamic "puritans" came to mount what he sees as their heretical assault on Islam -- which he shows to have been a moderate and humanistic tradition through most of its history. Abou El Fadl says that contemporary moderate Muslims must first

become educated as much as possible about Islam and the Shari'a. Only then can moderates ... potentially attain the legitimate power to define Islam. Second, they must consider themselves in a state of defensive jihad to protect their religion from the onslaught of deformed interpretations and disinformation perpetuated by puritans. ... This is not a call for the shedding of blood; it is a call for matching the zeal of puritans through unrelenting intellectual activism.

The Great Theft ... published October 4, 2005 by HarperCollins

How the Republicans Stole Christmas by Bill Press

Maybe it would be apt (if a bit tricky for non-theists) simply to thank God that Bill Press has delivered a passable primer on the "Christian" Right's hijacking of Christianity. Press's book may suffer intermittently from the phoned-in glibness in which commercial talk show personalities must sometimes trade, but give him much credit: at least he placed the call, and as far as he goes he makes very good sense.

For Press (and many of the rest of us) the most frustrating aspect of the religious Right is its disregard for what Jesus had to say. For example, a quick reading of the Sermon on the Mount (which Press cites often) tends to leave one doubting that they're reading the same Bible. It's odd that beyond one or two books by Jim Wallis and a very few others more hasn't been successfully published lately in this vein. One hopes that Press has opened a little wider the door to a more fruitful dialog between secular liberals and the religious Left, and that those with meatier theological credentials weigh in soon to further advance the cause of 21st-century Christian liberalism.

How the Republicans Stole Christmas ... published October 11, 2005 by Doubleday

Jesus is Not a Republican by Clint Willis

The editor of The I Hate George W. Bush Reader here focuses his editorial skills and political ire on the Republicans' unholy alliance with the Christian Right. Willis presents a lively diversity of articles and authors, including those of such contributors as Helen Prejean, Frank Rich and Jim Wallis. Particularly satisfying is the robust Christian liberalism of writers such as Peter J. Gomes, who declares,

We have a duty to speak, to dissent, and to demand a better case for compromising our most fundamental principles as Christians and citizens than has thus far been made. As a citizen I demand a better excuse than revenge, or oil, for the prosecution of a war that is likely to do more harm than good, that will destabilize not only the region but the world for years to come, and that, worst of all, will confirm for all the world to see our country's reputation as an irrational and undisciplined bully who acts not because it ought, but because it can; we make up the rules, so it seems, as we please. I love my country too much to see it complicit in its own worst stereotype.

Jesus Is Not a Republican ... published October 10, 2005 by Thunder's Mouth Press

The Universe in a Single Atom by the Dalai Lama

Especially as America's "Christian" right wages war on science, it's a real joy to read Tenzin Gyatso's meditation on the tensions and affinities between Tibetan Buddhism and 21st-century science. How startling it is to see a religious leader say in print that "if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims."

Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of this wonderful little book is Gyatso's enthusiasm for new ideas, particularly those that enhance his appreciations for and understandings of the physical world. His weaving of ancient Buddhist teachings with modern science results in a fascinating, delightful tapestry, and one doubts that any credible scientist would object to his insistence that while science is an indispensable tool, it has its limitations. He concludes,

Today, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, science and spirituality have the potential to be closer than ever, and to embark upon a collaborative endeavor that has far-reaching potential to help humanity meet the challenges before us. May each of us, as a member of the human family, respond to the moral obligation to make this collaboration possible.

*Also available, unabridged, on Audio CD.

The Universe in a Single Atom ... published September 13, 2005 by Morgan Road Books

No god but God by Reza Aslan

A young Iranian-American writer with a master's in theology from Harvard and an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop produced this succinct and highly readable introduction to Islam. The book traces, with exceptional grace and lucidity, the historical development of Islam and many of its sects from the time of The Prophet to the present and beyond, concluding on a positive note:

It may be too early to know who will write the next chapter of Islam's story, but it is not too early to recognize who will ultimately win the war between reform and counterreform. ... It will take many more [years] to cleanse Islam of its new false idols -- bigotry and fanaticism -- worshipped by those who have replaced Muhammad's original vision of tolerance and unity with their own ideals of hatred and discord. But the cleansing is inevitable, and the tide of reform cannot be stopped. The Islamic Reformation is already here. We are all living in it.

No god but God ... first published September, 2005 by Random House

America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity by Robert Wuthnow

The director of Princeton's Center for the Study of Religion observes that America is spiritually diverse not only for its myriad Christian traditions, but also for its millions of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews (to say nothing of other non-mainstream religions, which are largely beyond the scope of this book). Unfortunately, Americans tend not to know much about religions other than their own. Wuthnow says that living in

homogenous enclaves with people from similar backgrounds may be the common experience of people throughout history, but it is no longer the reality of the world in which we live today. We can think of ourselves as Americans who share a great deal -- from our unifying governmental structures and laws to our exposure to common advertisements and forms of entertainment. But pluralism demands that we also come to terms with our differences, making choices about who we want to be and how to relate to those who do not share our beliefs and practices.

America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity ... published July 5, 2005 by Princeton University Press