God and Country: America in Red and Blue

by Sheila Kennedy

Americans increasingly think in terms of red and blue. God and Country examines the religious roots of these cultural divisions in American political life. But instead of pitting a people of faith against a secular humanist elite, God and Country helps Americans understand the religious differences that divide, appreciate the public agreements that allow us to live with religious differences, evaluate how existing democratic processes alleviate divisions, and identify ways Americans can agree to disagree.

Genres: Politics

264 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2007

About the author

Glenn Kenny's writings on the arts have appeared in a wide variety of publications, which include the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, Humanities, and others. From the mid-1990s to the magazine’s 2007 folding, he was a senior editor and the chief film critic for Premiere. There he commissioned and edited pieces by David Foster Wallace, Tony Kushner, Martin Amis and William Prochnau. He also wrote features on such soon-to-be-prominent motion picture figures as Paul Thomas Anderson and Billy Bob Thornton. He currently contributes film reviews and essays to RogerEbert.com and to Vanity Fair Online, Decider, the Criterion Collection and more. He has made numerous tv and radio appearances and appears as an actor in Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 film The Girlfriend Experience, and Preston Miller’s 2010 God’s Land. He was born in Fort Lee, NJ and has been a resident of Brooklyn since 1990; he lives in that borough with his wife.

Reviews

[Diane · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book looks at how liberal and conservative Americans view religion and politics. The author uses American religious history to explain the differences. While an interesting topic, I was disappointed in how the author handled it.

The historical part of the book, while interesting, did not provide any insights that are not available elsewhere. The author did not do a good job of explaining why certain parts of the country appear to have moved from one camp to the other (for example, why has New England, the home of the Puritans, become the most religiously liberal region of the country in the past century?). The book ends with the author's proposals for bringing together religious and non-religious Americans, but I felt that essentially she argued for a capitulation from the religious side.

[Polly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative exploration of the effect of religious beliefs on American public policy. I learned a great deal about the history of religion in the United States and the difference between our country's "Planting Fathers" and "Founding Fathers" - an important distinction to understand for anyone who is paying attention to the debate over whether our country was founded on Christian tenets.