Emerging Patterns in America's Political and Religious Self-Understanding

Extract

Parallel statements through the 1970s and 1980s can be found regarding study of the religious elements in early modern liberal political thought, notably that of Hobbes and Locke. By any measure, the study of religion in American politics, history, and culture, and in political philosophy today, is not only flourishing, it threatens to overwhelm us. This is true not only in the bureaucratic sense of the Religion and Politics Section of the APSA, but in the focus on religion across the discipline and in the use by these political scientists of the work of political, social, cultural, racial, and gender historians and literary critics. And where enough entrepreneurial academics go, grant-giving foundations are sure to follow.