Souled Out? Faith and Politics After the Religious Right

A Conversation with E.J. Dionne and Ray Suarez
Thursday April 3, 2008
7:00-8:30pm
ICC Auditorium
RSVP: berkleycenter@georgetown.edu

E.J. Dionne will be joined by Ray Suarez, a senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, to discuss Dionne's new book Souled Out and the future of religion's role in American public life.  President John J. DeGioia will introduce the speakers.

The religious and political winds are changing. Tens of millions of religious Americans are reclaiming faith from those who would abuse it for narrow, partisan, and ideological purposes. And more and more secular Americans are discovering common ground with believers on the great issues of social justice, peace, and the environment. In Souled Out, award-winning journalist and commentator E.J. Dionne explains why the era of the Religious Right--and the crude exploitation of faith for political advantage--is over.

Based on years of research and writing, Souled Out shows that the end of the Religious Right doesn't signal the decline of evangelical Christianity but rather its disentanglement from a political machine that sold it out to a narrow electoral agenda of such causes as opposition to gay marriage and abortion. With insightful portraits of leading contemporary religious figures from Rick Warren and Richard Cizik to John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Dionne shows that our great religions have always preached a broad message of hope for more just human arrangements and refused to be mere props for the powers that be. Dionne also argues that the new atheist writers should be seen as a gift to believers, a demand that they live up to their proclaimed values and embrace scientific and philosophical inquiry in a spirit of "intellectual solidarity."

Co-sponsored by the GPPI Forum on Faith & Policy.  This event is one in a series on Religion and the 2008 Election, which is part of the Berkley Center's project on Religion and US Politics in Global Perspective.

E.J. Dionne is University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at Georgetown University, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, and a syndicated columnist. His book Why Americans Hate Politics (1991), won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a National Book Award nominee. He is also author of Stand Up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge (2004), and They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate The Next Political Era (1996).  

Ray Suarez, a senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, has more than 30 years of journalism experience with news organizations including CNN, ABC Radio Network in New York, CBS Radio in Rome, WMAQ-TV in Chicago, and National Public Radio. His most recent book, The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America explores the attitudes and beliefs of the people behind the voting numbers and how the political divide is manifesting itself across the country. Prior to joining the NewsHour, he hosted the national call-in news program Talk of the Nation.