bookshelf

HOW TO BE SECULAR

Name: HOW TO BE SECULAR
Author: Jacques Berlinerblau
ISBN: 978-0-547-47334-5

A CALL TO ARMS FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

by Jacques Berlinerblau ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 11, 2012

An impassioned argument for “a firm and dignified defense of the imperiled secularish virtues and moderation, toleration,...

bookshelf

Berlinerblau (Jewish Civilization/Georgetown Univ.; The Vow and the ‘Popular Religious Groups’ of Ancient Israel, 2009, etc.) offers a solid history of secularism in America and a defense of its virtues at a time when conservative Christians attack it as a moral evil and advance the “flawed” idea that one cannot be both religious and secular.

Arguing that the revival of religion in the United States since the 1970s has led to the ascent of the Christian Right and the crackup of secularism, the author cites examples of ways in which traditional boundaries have been breached, including the creation of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships and frequent threats by elected officials to establish Christianity as the national religion. Berlinerblau calls for the strengthening of secularism to guarantee “both freedom of and freedom from religion in American life.” In tracing the roots of the American secular vision, the author points to the shared beliefs of Martin Luther, Roger Williams, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Despite their differences, each warned about mixing religion and governmental power, celebrated religious freedom, emphasized the need for social order and argued that all religious groups must be equal in the eyes of the state. The author recounts secularism’s rise and broad public support from the 18th century through the mid-20th century, when separatism became the preferred secular policy of the U.S. Supreme Court. Responding to the “signature” secular decade of the 1960s, conservative Christians began an attack that has left secularism in a state of exhaustion. To ensure the future of secularism and its “virtues of moderation and tolerance,” millions more Americans must declare themselves secularists, including followers of liberal faiths and religious minorities.

An impassioned argument for “a firm and dignified defense of the imperiled secularish virtues and moderation, toleration, and self-criticism.”

Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-547-47334-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012

Categories:

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

bookshelf

A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979

bookshelf

For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0061965588

Page Count: 772

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
A YOUNG PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
by Howard Zinn ; adapted by Rebecca Stefoff with by Ed Morales

- BOOK REVIEW
TRUTH HAS A POWER OF ITS OWN
by Howard Zinn with Ray Suarez

- BOOK REVIEW
THE HISTORIC UNFULFILLED PROMISE
by Howard Zinn

bookshelf

I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS

by Maya Angelou ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1969

However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.

bookshelf

Maya Angelou is a natural writer with an inordinate sense of life and she has written an exceptional autobiographical narrative which retrieves her first sixteen years from "the general darkness just beyond the great blinkers of childhood."

Her story is told in scenes, ineluctably moving scenes, from the time when she and her brother were sent by her fancy living parents to Stamps, Arkansas, and a grandmother who had the local Store. Displaced they were and "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat." But alternating with all the pain and terror (her rape at the age of eight when in St. Louis With her mother) and humiliation (a brief spell in the kitchen of a white woman who refused to remember her name) and fear (of a lynchingâ€”and the time they buried afflicted Uncle Willie under a blanket of vegetables) as well as all the unanswered and unanswerable questions, there are affirmative memories and moments: her charming brother Bailey; her own "unshakable God"; a revival meeting in a tent; her 8th grade graduation; and at the end, when she's sixteen, the birth of a baby. Times When as she says "It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect."

However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.