Taming the Gods
Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents
IAN BURUMA
Copyright Date: 2010
Published by: Princeton University Press
Pages: 142
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7spzw
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Book Info
Taming the Gods
Book Description:

For eight years the president of the United States was a born-again Christian, backed by well-organized evangelicals who often seemed intent on erasing the church-state divide. In Europe, the increasing number of radicalized Muslims is creating widespread fear that Islam is undermining Western-style liberal democracy. And even in polytheistic Asia, the development of democracy has been hindered in some countries, particularly China, by a long history in which religion was tightly linked to the state.

Ian Buruma is the first writer to provide a sharp-eyed look at the tensions between religion and politics on three continents. Drawing on many contemporary and historical examples, he argues that the violent passions inspired by religion must be tamed in order to make democracy work.

Comparing the United States and Europe, Buruma asks why so many Americans--and so few Europeans--see religion as a help to democracy. Turning to China and Japan, he disputes the notion that only monotheistic religions pose problems for secular politics. Finally, he reconsiders the story of radical Islam in contemporary Europe, from the case of Salman Rushdie to the murder of Theo van Gogh. Sparing no one, Buruma exposes the follies of the current culture war between defenders of "Western values" and "multiculturalists," and explains that the creation of a democratic European Islam is not only possible, but necessary.

Presenting a challenge to dogmatic believers and dogmatic secularists alike,Taming the Godspowerfully argues that religion and democracy can be compatible--but only if religious and secular authorities are kept firmly apart.

eISBN: 978-1-4008-3420-4
Subjects: Political Science, Religion, History
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. [i]-[vi])
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. [vii]-[x])
  3. INTRODUCTION
    INTRODUCTION (pp. 1-10)

    The fact that religion is back is more newsworthy in Europe than in the United States, where religion was never supposed to have been away. But even in the United States, for about half a century between the 1920s and the 1970s, organized religion had not been a major political force. It was always there, especially outside the urban areas, as a social phenomenon. And it impinged on politics. John F. Kennedy, not an especially pious man, had to reassure the voters that he would never take orders from the Vatican. It would have been impossible for a candidate who...

  4. ONE FULL TENTS AND EMPTY CATHEDRALS
    ONE FULL TENTS AND EMPTY CATHEDRALS (pp. 11-46)

    "Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk.” So goes the beginning of Sinclair Lewis’s novel about the evangelical preacher Elmer Gantry, a great American character, boundless in his greed, a sinner obsessed with the Devil, a salesman of astonishing energy who believes in the greater good of his own success, a man of great charm and destructive power. It is difficult to imagine Gantry as a European. He is too capacious, too full of enthusiasm, too careless about fate, class, and tradition. In short, Elmer “Hellcat” Gantry is way too optimistic to be anything but...

  5. TWO ORIENTAL WISDOM
    TWO ORIENTAL WISDOM (pp. 47-82)

    Matteo Ricci reached China in 1583. Dressed in mandarin robes of the finest silk, he and fellow Jesuit missionaries introduced the imperial court to astronomy, mathematics, and cartography, among other things. Teaching science to the Chinese as a way of converting them to the Christian faith was a remarkable enterprise with decidedly mixed results. Some were converted, but others, accustomed to thinking of China as the center of the world, regarded world maps that showed the fallacy of this idea as an insult. And back in Rome, there was a great deal of resistance to the Jesuit penchant for going...

  6. THREE ENLIGHTENMENT VALUES
    THREE ENLIGHTENMENT VALUES (pp. 83-126)

    Tocqueville took a view of Islam and democracy that is still the conventional one. Muhammed, he wrote, “brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy,...

  7. NOTES
    NOTES (pp. 127-132)
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