There is a Season

The spirituality of the two most recent superpowers is examined separately in Garry Wills' Under God: Religion and American Politics (Simon and Schuster, 1990, $24.95, cloth) and Religion in the New Russia: The Impact of Perestroika on the Varieties of Religious Life in the Soviet Union (Crossroad, 1990, $17.95, cloth) by Jim Forest. According to these respected authors, the people of both countries are deeply religious, though they do the darndest things.

Jim Forest, former general secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and author previously of Pilgrim to the Russian Church (Crossroad, 1988), has had ample opportunity to trace his way through much of the Soviet Union, both before and after the reforms implemented by Mikhail Gorbachev. The story he recounts concerns a faith unleashed, a spirit set free.

In his preface Forest suggests that a third word should be added to an American's Russian lexicon (the first two being perestroika and glasnost): dukhovnost -- "quality of Spirit," or the private, social, and ethical dimensions of the relationship between a person and God. In the remainder of the book, Forest demonstrates just how that quality of Spirit is played out in the lives of the Soviet people, and how the dormant form is given freedom. Forest's warm prose gives life to the centrality of ritual in the myriad forms of Soviet religious experience.

Garry Wills pens a remarkably thorough tome on the intersection of religion and politics in American history in his Under God. He points out, "The first nation to disestablish religion has been a marvel of religiosity, for good or ill. Religion has been at the center of our major political crises, which are always moral crises -- the supporting and opposing of wars, of slavery, of corporate power, of civil rights, of sexual codes, of 'the West,' of American separatism and claims to empire." Thus to understand America's history, and future, everyone must develop some degree of fluency in America's religious language.

Wills demonstrates his masterful grasp of American history by showing that cultural debates over such topics as evolution, abortion, pornography, and homosexuality influence public policy decisions. This glimpse of history then informs our understanding of current controversies, such as funding of the arts by the national endowments and the Smithsonian Institution. Those who wonder why fundamentalist censors hold so much sway will be enlightened by reviewing these pages.

Reading Wills' book provides us with meaningful context for the way we live our lives. Now how many authors can be credited with that?

Bob Hulteen was Under Review editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.