Political Culture
Democracy & Solidarity
On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis
Liberal democracy in America has always contained contradictions—most notably, a noble but abstract commitment to freedom, justice, and equality that, tragically, has seldom been realized in practice…
Culture Wars
The Struggle to Define America
In 1991, James Davison Hunter became the first to describe what now seems obvious to everyone: that America is deeply divided by a conflict of two moral visions, two tendencies he called “progressivist” and “traditionalist”…
Before the Shooting Begins
Searching for Democracy in America’s Culture Wars
Freedom of religion—protected in America for two hundred years by the Bill of Rights—has become more a source of divisiveness than the binding force it used to be in American life…
Is There a Culture War?
A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life
In the wake of a bitter presidential campaign and in the face of numerous divisive policy questions, many Americans wonder if their country has split in two…
See also…
Politics & Culture:
Edited by James Davison Hunter and John M. Owen IV
Ethics & Culture
Science and the Good
The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality
James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky trace the origins and development of the centuries-long, passionate, but ultimately failed quest to discover a scientific foundation for morality…
The Death of Character
Moral Education in an Age without Good or Evil
Hunter traces the death of character to the disintegration of the moral and social conditions that make character possible in the first place. The dilemma he uncovers is especially acute in the realm of moral education…
The Content of Their Character
Inquiries into the Varieties of Moral Formation
For most of America’s history, schools were established to furnish more than just academic training: They were founded to form young people of strong character and civic conscience. We rarely think of our schools that way now…
Religion & Late Modernity
To Change The World
The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
The call to make the world a better place is inherent in the Christian belief and practice. But why have efforts to change the world by Christians so often failed or gone tragically awry?…
Evangelicalism
The Coming Generation
In 1987, James Davison Hunter published Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation. Controversy surrounded this book’s premise that young intellectual evangelicals would probably be less doctrinaire than their forbears when they gained control of the movement…
American Evangelicalism
Conservative Religion and the Quandary of Modernity
In 1980, James Davison Hunter published his first book, American Evangelicalism. At the time, the book was considered as almost fringe literature because of its subject…
Theory & Culture
Making Sense of Modern Times
Peter L. Berger and the Vision of Interpretive Sociology
Peter Berger (1929-2017) was one of the pre-eminent sociologists of the twentieth century. His highly creative and controversial writing made a distinct impact not only in sociology but in such disciplines as political science, public policy, history, religious studies and theology…
Cultural Analysis
The Work of Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas
First published in 1984, Cultural Analysis is a systematic examination of the theories of culture contained in the writings of four contemporary social theorists. This study of their work clarifies their contributions to the analysis of culture…