A sound and spirited defense of the wall of separation between church and state. Cornell professors Kramnick (Government; The Rage of Edmund Burke, 1977, etc.) and Moore (History) offer both a history of American religious controversy and a polemic against those who contend that the Founding Fathers created a ``Christian nation'' that secular forces have recently corrupted. The thesis is that the Constitution's framers saw religion as a bulwark against immorality but believed that government had no business endorsing sectarian views; they did not want a godless America but did insist on a godless Constitution, which included a proscription of religious tests for public office, the First Amendment prohibition of established religion, and the protection of individual religious practice. The influences discussed include Roger Williams's fear that politicians acting in the name of religious values would appropriate religion to their own ``profane interests''; Locke's philosophy that government had no right to disturb private behavior that did not harm others; and the Virginia Statute drafted by Jefferson and Madison, which was a model for the Constitution's treatment of religion. The book follows the unending conflict between the founders' vision and those of their churchly critics, who opposed ratification precisely because the Constitution was godless, attempted unsuccessfully to ban Sunday mail delivery before the Civil War, and for decades tried to amend God into the Constitution. The last chapter firmly but courteously rebukes such contemporary figures as Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan and respectfully disagrees with more complex thinkers such as Robert Bellah and Stephen L. Carter. A timely reminder, as we enter a year of electoral politicking, that even the touchiest issues can be treated with intellectual honesty and a decent appreciation for opposing views.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-393-03961-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Old stories receive new translations in this mammoth but spotty anthology. Editor Swann (English/Cooper Union, Smoothing the Ground: Esssays on Native American Oral Literature, not reviewed) offers more than 50 fresh renderings of tales from the oral traditions of Indian tribes throughout the United States. Arranged by geographic region, the collection achieves good coverage of a variety of traditions and cultures, demonstrating the rich diversity too often hidden by the collective term ``Native American.'' Some of the stories and the tribal groupings from which they originate are familiar. Ridie Wilson Ghezzi offers an ``ethnopoetic'' translation of myths involving Nanabush, the cultural hero and trickster of the Ojibwe of the Great Lakes region. William Shipley uses the same technique (which involves taking prose translations and rendering them as poetry in order to capture the oral flavor of the telling) for the Californian Maidu creation myth, wherein the familiar Coyote acts as a demiurge and brings death into the world. Others are less well known. Michael Foster provides an Iroquois thanksgiving address involving Handsome Lake, the syncretic reformer of Iroquois religion. Both Native and non-Native translators are represented. Swann provides a lengthy and instructive introduction to the volume as a whole, while individual contributors introduce the stories they have translated and discuss not only their provenance but also their life setting and the critical translating choices made. Some translations are supple and well suited to their subject matter, but the collection is riddled with questionable critical judgments: the lumping together of southwestern and southeastern tribes (and then including only one southeastern tribe in the section); the absence of Raven, the dominant trickster figure in the tales of the Pacific Northwest; and the reliance on the often awkward ethnopoetic method. Still, this anthology of Native narratives is a valuable sourcebook that takes ample note of specificity among tribes and, in the process, tells some awfully good stories.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-41816-4
Page Count: 800
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
A compelling argument that over its history the South changed from a polyglot society into two homogeneous ones divided by race, but that in recent decades the region has been rapidly acquiring a new ethnic diversity. Tindall (History/Univ. of North Carolina; America, 1984) develops this thesis in three short pieces drawn from his 1992 Averitt lectures at Georgia Southern University. In the first, ``Natives and Newcomers,'' Tindall gives an overview of the surprisingly diverse social composition of the South from the time of the first European settlers through modern times. The pervasive presence of African-Americans and Indians, Scotch-Irish settlers, English colonists, Louisiana Cajuns, and German Protestants seeking religious freedom gave the 18th-century South, in Tindall's view, ``the most polyglot population in the English colonies.'' After the Revolution, Indians were expelled from the Southeastern states and far fewer new immigrants settled in the South than in the North. In ``Ethnic Southerners,'' Tindall traces the growth of a distinctive southern ethnicity from the colonial period to the 20th century. The regional identity of southern people, he asserts, grew both out of the ethnic traditions they brought with them and out of perceived contrasts with other regions of the country in lifestyle, custom, and outlook. In ``Southern Ethnics,'' Tindall looks at the modern phenomenon of foreign immigration to the South. He points out that, in recent decades, more people have moved into the region than have moved out: from Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the northern states. Tindall anticipates that the nativism, xenophobia, and political tension that met earlier waves of immigration to the US may occur in the modern South, but that the diverse cultures of the new southern ethnics will ultimately enrich their region. Tindall eruditely shatters stereotypes about the South, drawing a picture of a region that is at once distinctive and much like the rest of the US in its diversity.
Pub Date: Jan. 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-8203-1655-5
Page Count: 79
Publisher: Univ. of Georgia
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994
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