Religion in politics a major topic in fall books

[Dave Monroe]

Religion in politics a major topic in fall books
>From 'Faith and Politics' to 'The God Delusion,' a
range of views on topic
The Associated Press

Updated: 6:08 p.m. CT Aug 23, 2006

NEW YORK - This fall, former Sen. John C. Danforth
will tour the country in support of his new book,
"Faith and Politics," an attempt, he says, to start a
discussion about the role of religion in elections and
government.

Danforth will not be alone.

Religion in politics, a key topic of the 2004
presidential campaign and possibly again in 2008, is
the subject of numerous books coming out this fall,
including Mel White's "Religion Gone Bad," Dan
Gilgoff's "The Jesus Machine," Richard Dawkins' "The
God Delusion" and the Rev. Barry W. Lynn's "Piety &
Politics."

Most of the authors have harsh criticism for
religion's impact, with Dawkins writing in disgust
about "a system of morals which any civilized modern
person, whether religious or not, would find ...
obnoxious." Dawkins' book has an announced first
printing of 75,000 and his editor at Houghton Mifflin,
Eamon Dolan, says that "The God Delusion" reflects a
"rising unease with the current state of the world."

"I feel that there's a growing sentiment among
thoughtful people in general, whether they're
religious or not, that religious belief has gotten us
into many of the problems we now find ourselves in —
from 9/11 to the Israel-Lebanon conflict to the ban on
stem cell research," says Dolan, Houghton Mifflin's
vice president and editor in chief.

Others, such as Jonathan Miller, a Democrat and
Kentucky's state treasurer, see a positive, unifying
role for religion. His "The Compassionate Community"
advocates a "values-based policy agenda," based in
part on biblical writings, and includes an afterword
by former Vice President Al Gore, a Democrat, and a
blurb from Republican Christine Todd Whitman, the
former New Jersey governor and head of the
Environmental Protection Agency.

Danforth's book may remind readers of Whitman's "It's
My Party Too," published in 2005 and a call for GOP
moderation. Danforth, an Episcopal priest and former
Republican senator from Missouri, says he was inspired
to write "Faith and Politics" by the dispute over
Terry Schiavo, the irreversibly brain-damaged Florida
woman who became a favorite cause of the religious
right, and leading Republicans.

"That was the 2-by-4 that hit me over the head. I felt
that was totally inappropriate and out of hand," says
Danforth, whose book is being published by Viking with
a first printing of 100,000.

"The question is whether religion is a reconciling
participant in world affairs and American life, or
whether it's divisive. To the extent that there has
been a marriage of the Republican party with the
Christian right, I think religion has been a divisive
factor in political life."

Jonathan Karp, publisher of the Warner Twelve imprint
at Warner Books, notes a related trend among other new
books, what he calls the "feeling among blue state
writers that they are out of touch with America and
their need to go into that part of America
themselves."

Karp cites Brian Mann's "Welcome to the Homeland,"
coming from Steerforth Press and billed as an antidote
to "the condescending conclusion that supporters of
President Bush and the right wing Republicans who
control Congress are either dumb or mean." Similar
works include Peter Feuerhard's "HolyLand USA," Lauren
Sandler's "Righteous" and Jeffery L. Sheler's
"Believers."

"We keep hearing about the evangelical movement, but
many people don't know all that much about it," says
Carolyn Carlson: executive editor of Viking Penguin,
which is publishing Sheler and Sandler. "It's a much
more diverse movement than we're often led to
believe."

President Bush still has more than two years left in
office, but authors aren't waiting to write his
history. Two best sellers from the summer, Thomas
Ricks' "Fiasco" and Ron Suskind's "The One Percent
Doctrine," offered inside stories of the
administration's handling of the war on terror. That
continues in the fall with Bob Woodward's "Inside the
Bush White House, the Second Term" and Michael
Isikoff's and David Corn's "Hubris."

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell will have his
say in Karen DeYoung's "Soldier," an authorized
biography. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft looks
back in "Never Again" and John Yoo, the ex-Justice
Department lawyer who helped shape the Bush
administration's controversial legal guidelines for
its war on terror, presents his case in "War by Other
Means."

After a disappointing year for literary fiction in
2005, this fall offers many promising releases,
starting with "All Aunt Hagar's Children," a
collection of stories by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward
P. Jones, and continuing with Richard Ford's "The Lay
of the Land," Charles Frazier's "Thirteen Moons" and
Thomas Pynchon's epic, "Against the Day."

Other literary works include Cormac McCarthy's "The
Road," Alice McDermott's "After This," William Boyd's
"Restless," Margaret Atwood's "Moral Disorder," Alice
Munro's "The View From Castle Rock" and Edna O'Brien's
"The Light of Evening."

"The list looks much stronger than last year," says
Barnes & Noble, Inc., fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley.
"This is the most literary fall I've seen in a long
time."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14484312/

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