EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Next Religious Establishment: National Identity and Political Theology in Post-Protestant America. By Eldon J. Eisenach. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. 167 p. $75.00 cloth, $22.95 paper

Peter Dennis Bathory

American Political Science Review, 2002, vol. 96, issue 1, 178-179

Abstract: Animated by an “American identity crisis,” Eldon Eisenach seeks to comprehend a “deep disjunction in political culture and values between elite national institutions and the aggregate of local cultures and values.” National elites, in particular, many in the “American university,” offer America-in-crisis “a highly abstract democratic Universalism” which “denies American nationality.” At the same time national representatives of “local cultures and values” attempt to “ground national identity and national policy in a `conservative Restoration' by bringing back to prominence and honor the value-sustaining institutions of civil society” (p. 99). Both “Universalists” and “Restorationists” fail in their respective tasks, and American identity, Eisenach argues, is threatened in the process. While “Universalism,” often couched in the “neutral” language of “juridical democracy,” is in some ways built upon the New Deal “liberal establishment,” it has, he insists, not been able to articulate policies that speak to this “older, ruling coalition” and so poses “above the battle” (pp. 102–3). Restorationists suffer from another malady. Though winning elections, they have proved incapable of establishing “national authority” and so equally incapable of reestablishing an American national identity.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:96:y:2002:i:01:p:178-179_28

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:96:y:2002:i:01:p:178-179_28