The Case for Civility

October 29, 2007
Popular evangelical writer Guinness (The Call
) worries that the culture wars are destroying the United States. If Americans don’t find a way of living with “our deepest differences,” the republic will decline. He forcefully defends religious liberty, noting that it was crucial for the founding generation and should be just as crucial today. To that end, he calls Christians to rethink their enthusiasm for government-sponsored “faith-based initiatives,” and to remember that evangelicals “were the victims of earlier church-state establishments.” The religious right—whose discourse of victimization, says Guinness, is silly and “anti-Christian”—comes under fire. Nor is Guinness a fan of the nascent religious left—he prefers a depoliticized faith. For all Guinness’s rhetorical vim, his proposals ultimately feel anodyne: his boilerplate conclusion is that in order to restore civility we need “leadership” and “a remarkable articulation of vision.” Furthermore, although Guinness notes that he is a European, the book is oddly marked by the old rhetoric of American cultural imperialism. Echoing JFK, Guinness wants his essay to be taken as “one model for fostering civility around the world and helping make the world safe for diversity.” Many readers may prefer Charles Marsh’s lively, provocative manifesto Wayward Christian Soldiers
.