Open AccessThe Real Western War of Religion
Author(s) -
Kenneth L. Grasso
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the catholic social science review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1944-6292
pISSN - 1091-0905
DOI - 10.5840/cssr20202524
Subject(s) - religiosity , argument (complex analysis) , politics , dimension (graph theory) , space (punctuation) , sociology , aesthetics , religious studies , environmental ethics , history , epistemology , political science , law , philosophy , biochemistry , chemistry , linguistics , mathematics , pure mathematics
Steven D. Smith’s Pagans and Christians in the City takes its place alongside James Davison Hunter’s Culture Wars as one of the two truly indispensable books on today’s Culture Wars. It advances our understanding of today’s conflict by situating it historically and focusing our attention on its religious dimension. Smith argues that today’s conflict is the latest episode in a longstanding conflict between immanent forms of religiosity which locate the sacred in the world of space and time, and transcendent forms of religiosity which locate the divine beyond space and time. As compelling as it is, the volume’s argument would have been strengthened by a more sustained treatment of the nature of the political community and the essential role played within it by the truths held in common by the members concerning God, man, nature, and history.