Religion and politics are never far from the headlines, but their relationship remains complex and often confusing. This book offers an engaging, accessible, and balanced treatment of religion in American politics. It explores the historical, cultural, and legal contexts that motivate religious political engagement and assesses the pragmatic and strategic political realities that religious organizations and people face. Incorporating the best and most current scholarship, the authors examine the evolving politics of Roman Catholics; evangelical and mainline Protestants; African-American and Latino traditions; Jews, Muslims, and other religious minorities; recent immigrants and religious "nones"; and other conventional and not-so-conventional American religious movements. New to the Sixth Edition * Covers the 2016 election and assesses the role of religion from Obama to Trump. * Expands substantially on religion's relationship to gender and sexuality, race, ethnicity, and class, and features the role of social media in religious mobilization. * Adds discussion questions at the end of every chapter, to help students gain deeper understanding of the subject. * Adds a new concluding chapter on the normative issues raised by religious political engagement, to stimulate lively discussions.

Religion and politics are never far from the headlines, but their relationship remains complex and often confusing. This book offers an engaging, accessible, and balanced treatment of religion in American politics. It explores the historical, cultural, and legal contexts that motivate religious political engagement and assesses the pragmatic and strategic political realities that religious organizations and people face. Incorporating the best and most current scholarship, the authors examine the evolving politics of Roman Catholics; evangelical and mainline Protestants; African-American and Latino traditions; Jews, Muslims, and other religious minorities; recent immigrants and religious "nones"; and other conventional and not-so-conventional American religious movements. New to the Sixth Edition * Covers the 2016 election and assesses the role of religion from Obama to Trump. * Expands substantially on religion's relationship to gender and sexuality, race, ethnicity, and class, and features the role of social media in religious mobilization. * Adds discussion questions at the end of every chapter, to help students gain deeper understanding of the subject. * Adds a new concluding chapter on the normative issues raised by religious political engagement, to stimulate lively discussions.

Has the United States become more pluribus than unum? In terms of the nation's political beliefs, Robert Booth Fowler answers both yes and no. While his study affirms significant diversity among an elite cadre of public intellectuals, it vigorously denies it in a general public that collectively adheres to the same set of liberal core values. Enduring Liberalism pursues two objectives. One, it explores the political thought of public intellectuals and the general public since the 1960s. Two, it assesses contemporary and classic interpretations of American political thought in light of the study's findings. Fowler interprets the writings of public intellectuals like Robert Bellah, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Michael Walzer, William Bennett, Seymour Martin Lipset, William Galston, and others, as well as survey data of American political attitudes, to spotlight this oft-ignored divide between citizens and high-profile commentators, whose contentious debates are mistakenly assumed to reflect countrywide rifts. Fowler's argument is straightforward, but the interpretation is controversial. He recounts how the consensus liberal view in post-World War II American political thought collapsed among public intellectuals during the tumult of the 1960s and remains so to this day. His book examines the resultant diversity among contemporary public intellectuals, focusing on three predominant themes: concern for community, worry about the environment, and interest in civil society. In marked contrast to these disputatious commentators, Fowler finds the realm of popular opinion to be characterized by much greater consensus. Indeed, there seems to be a trend toward an even more general embrace of the liberal values that characterize our attitudes toward the individual, individual liberty, political equality, economic opportunity, and consent of the governed. Liberal values-above all the celebration of the individual and individual rights-have revolutionized the so-called private realms of life like family and religious communities to an extent unimagined in the 1950s. From these conclusions, Fowler demonstrates that most interpretations of American political thinking have exaggerated the extent of conflict and diversity in our nation's often raucous policy disputes. But he also cautions us not to overstate the public's widely shared liberal values and, by doing so, miss opportunities to facilitate problem solving or to recognize the ways in which our reform efforts may be constrained.

"The Greening of Protestant Thought" traces the increasing influence of environmentalism on American Protestantism since the first Earth Day, which took place in 1970. Robert Booth Fowler explores the extent to which ecological concerns permeate Protestant thought and examines contemporary controversies within and between mainline and fundamentalist Protestantism over the Bible's teachings about the environment.

Fowler explores the historical roots of environmentalism in Protestant thought, including debates over God's relationship to nature and the significance of the current environmental crisis for the history of Christianity. Although he argues that mainline Protestantism is becoming increasingly 'green, ' he also examines the theological basis for many fundamentalists' hostility toward the environmental movement. In addition, Fowler considers Protestantism's policy agendas for environmental change, as well as the impact on mainline Protestant thinking of modern eco-theologies, process and creation theologies, and ecofeminism.

Contemporary intellectuals have rushed to embrace the concept of "community." What does this tell us about American political thought? Why are intellectuals uneasy with modern liberal individualism and its institutional policy results? Why is political intellectual discourse dominated today by complaint?

"In The Dance with Community" Robert Booth Fowler reflects upon these and related questions. "My goal," he writes, "is to present contemporary political thought about community for what it is--a conversation interactive, spirited, and sometimes tough."

There have been many interpretations of the much-discussed decline in community spirit. Rather than offer another, Fowler steps back to look at the debate itself. He examines from the perspective of an intellectual historian the attention to community in current American political thought and explores the setting of that attention.

He also identifies five alternative models of community integral to the current debates and sketches a clear image of each--its relationship to others, the logic of its appeal, and its emphases and problems. In each instance he places the model into the larger conversation over alternative communities and the value of community itself.

This is the first full history of voting in Wisconsin from statehood in 1848 to the present. Fowler both tells the story of voting in key elections across the years and investigates electoral trends and patterns over the course of Wisconsin's history. He explores the ways that ethnic and religious groups in the state have voted historically and how they vote today, and he looks at the successes and failures of the two major parties over the years. Highlighting important historical movements, Fowler discusses the great struggle for women's suffrage and the rich tales of many Wisconsin third parties--the Socialists, Progressives, the Prohibition Party, and others. Here, too, are the famous politicians in Wisconsin history, such as the La Follettes, William Proxmire, and Tommy Thompson. Winner, Award of Merit for Leadership in History, American Association for State and Local History

Everson Revisited explores the consequences and future implications of Everson v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court case that permitted the use of tax revenue to transport students to parochial schools while simultaneously calling for an impenetrable 'wall of separation' between religion and public schools.