Power of Religious Publics

Currently, public religion is in a time of flux and the notion of the common good—once associated with the Protestant voice in America—is openly contested by new religious coalitions seeking to communicate their version of the truth and plant their stake in the public domain. This edited volume reflects on the changing tone and form of the public voice of religion, on its function in American society, and on its relationship to the private world of religion. It proposes that public religion, when exercised in a civil and accountable way, can be a responsible and prophetic voice in public life and enrich the American experiment in liberal democracy. The contributors—first-rate scholars including Martin Marty and Robert Belah—focus on public religion's influence on controversial issues such as multiculturalism, economic inequality, abortion, and homosexuality.

WILLIAM H. SWATOS, JR. is Executive Officer of the Association for the Sociology of Religion and of the Religious Research Association. He is the editor-in-chief of The Encyclopedia of Religion and Society (1998) and the author or editor of numerous scholarly monographs, including Religious Sociology: Interfaces and Boundaries (Greenwood, 1987) and Religious Politics in Global and Comparative Perspective (Greenwood, 1989).

JAMES K. WELLMAN, JR. is a Lecturer in the Comparative Religion Program at the University of Washington. He is a Presbyterian minister and has served churches in Pennsylvania and most recently in Chicago, Illinois. His study of the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, The Gold Coast Church and the Ghetto: Christ and Culture in Mainline Protestantism, will be published in 1999.