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WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE

THE RISE OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT IN AMERICA

Published to coincide with a PBS series of the same title, this is a richly detailed, objective account of Christian fundamentalism in the last 50 years and its increasingly organized efforts at shaping public policy. With extensive interviews and research, sociologist Martin (Rice Univ.; A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham Story, not reviewed) sets out to track the transformation of Christian conservatives from quiet, God-fearing Americans into one of the most potent political forces of the 1990s. He starts by revisiting the career of Billy Graham, then traces the ideas and careers of Graham's successors, including Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed, and the major fights over public policy that their movements have been involved in. Weaving together revealing details and first-person accounts, Martin recreates a number of important conflicts, including the sex education battles in Anaheim, Calif.; the Kanawha County, W.Va., textbook wars; the debate over how to treat AIDS patients; and the fight concerning Amendment 2, Colorado's overturned anti-homosexual law. Martin provides thorough reports but rarely offers pointed morals. He does, however, skewer hypocrisy where he finds it, as in his tracing of the racism evident in Jerry Falwell's early career and his subsequent disingenuousness about it. He also strays repeatedly into political history, such as chronicling presidential races. But the digressions are so well rendered that the reader shouldn't mind. Overall, Martin leaves one with heightened concern for the future of religious tolerance in America. He warns that ``the level of religious conflict appears to be rising and the historically unprecedented extent of religious freedom may be in some danger.'' Both reformers and religious conservatives should find in this penetrating narrative some incentive to work to maintain ``the pluralism that has served us so well.'' (24 pages pohotos, not seen) (Author tour)

Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1996

ISBN: 0-553-06745-1

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Broadway

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955

ISBN: 0679733736

Page Count: 228

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955

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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.

“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0

Page Count: 200

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

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