One Nation, Two Cultures by Gertrude Himmelfarb RELIGION BOOKS
Whitehead, Barbara Dafoe
as well as institutional authority...
...Yet even Wolfe's thesis...
...In One Nation, after ing, but not entirely reconcilable...
...These dissidents are far Gertrude Hiynrelfarb moral norms...
...Think Dr...
...It is not only conservcultural historians challenges this ar- Its leadership is concentrated among atives (religious and secular) who now gument...
...For examfeat of state gambling in Alabama...
...She points out flect the concerns of the middle-class tural outlook is secular, morally rela- that no one today celebrates the glories suburbanites he interviewed...
...Finally, she sees deeply rooted in American political and nominations and includes secularists little chance that the culture wars will religious tradition, and that they have who find their moral convictions at odds escalate into religious wars...
...In the meantime, this dazzling book gives us profound appreciation for our long tradition of moral Phone: (202) 687-5706...
...Commonweal 34 March 10, 2000 Perhaps because she surveys the cultural battlefield from Olympian heights, Himmelfarb sometimes makes cultural The most authentic Bible conflict seem rather more bloodless and dispassionate than it may be...
...Commonweal 3 5 March 10, 2000...
...Cultural dissent has tempered argued that such highly publicized con- tecting and expanding the legacy of the the socially utopian and culturally extroversies over cultural issues do not re- culturally liberationist agenda...
...that had a stabilizing, socializing, 74 percent of African-Americans favor rage over Minnesota Governor Jesse and moralizing effect on the society...
...attention on America's culture wars...
...The dent culture has been mainly a good All (Viking, 1998), sociologist Alan Wolfe dominant culture is dedicated to pro- thing...
...he implied, the outlook of most ordi- media and academy, but its followers Moreover, out of this clash of culnary Americans...
...It is probably up to the younger generation to • A schedule of evening and Saturday classes...
...as well as institutional authority are eroding...
...pit to scold and shame media executives, There is nothing like it in advertisers, screenwriters...
...And psychological-and together these rev- members of the dissident culture include olutions "fostered a growing disaffec- more traditional Democrats than people Barbara Dafoe Whitehead tion with established institutions and commonly think...
...Both elite grandeur and the precise meaning and popular opinion on the right and of the ancient texts-in easily left agree that television is too violent, accessible, yet still traditional, too sexually exploitative, too harmful to modern language...
...This revolution was "mag- more democratic, religiously pluralistic, Alfred A. Knopf, 523, 779 pp...
...the de- to liberate everyone from the stultifying family, and school vouchers...
...tures, she states, we have begun to forge In One Nation, Two Cultures, an ele- A smaller and weaker dissident cul- a consensus on such difficult and congant and beautifully economical essay, ture, arising more recently, stands in fit- tested issues as the breakdown of the one of the nation's most distinguished ful opposition to the dominant culture...
...nified by other concurrent ones"-racial, well-educated, and diffusely organized sexual, technological, demographic, and than their stereotype suggests...
...contradictions of liberation," gave rise Himmelfarb concludes that the conYet some question the very existence to two cultures, interacting and coexist- flict between a dominant and a dissiof the culture wars...
...on important cultural issues...
...decide this question...
...And I wonder whether Himmelfarb gEORcE T OW ,CNIVERSIT t might not underestimate the dominant culture's capacity to have it both ways: to submit to cultural challenge the way a LIBERAL STUDIES DEGREE PROGRAM big brother tolerates a tussle with a little brother, but then to reassert power offering and prevail in the fight...
...Its cul- tremist views of the Left...
...Think Terry of mind-expanding drugs or exploitaand tolerance for almost everything, Gross on NPR...
...Laura Schlessinger JUST SAY NO across the AM dial...
...Quiet faith, tivistic, and nonjudgmental...
...new grass- English, and I will not live long roots organizations have formed to boycott advertisers and lobby local televi- enough to see anything like it...
...parents have picketed and -F,.\iiF:a J. 1...
...Himmelfarb says that hood innocence, and respect for adult as it blurs and softens, cultural dissent though we are one nation, politically will continue to influence the mainindivisible, we are two cultures, divid- stream in myriad ways: "If there will ed over a set of fundamental beliefs on commonwealmagazine.org be no mass conversion," she observes, family, codes of sexual conduct, and the "there will be individual conversions role of religion in the public square...
...If today's cul- Religious and Catholic Studies with: tural dissent tends to lose its sharp and adversarial edge and to tilt away from • A wide range of courses leading to an intersectarian religious belief toward softer disciplinary bachelor's or master's degree...
...Its cultural the future, the dissident culture is likepact on the society...
...the popular out- ues...
...Liberation brought bene- who are left of center in their politics, are ecent events-such as last fits, especially for women and African- often in sympathy with cultural dissifall's furor over the publicly Americans, writes Himmelfarb, but its dents on matters like religious expresR funded exhibit of a portrait rewards were tempered by costs and ca- sion in the public square, premarital sexof a dung-daubed Virgin sualties: "The counterculture intended ual abstinence, the breakdown of the Mary at the Brooklyn Museum...
...5913 self-scrutiny and offers us a way to meas- Facsimile: (202) 687-8954 ure and, yes, judge today's culture wars E-mail: lsp@u.gunet.georgetown.edu against the record of the past...
...Its leadership is concen- tive sex and violence in the media, as characterize their cultural outlook and, trated in the cultural strongholds of the many did in the 1970s...
...Congressional critics on both sides of the aisle have used the bully pul- "Really monumental...
...Gertrude Himmelfarb says that conservative religious activists, but its deplore the breakdown of the family...
...vouchers, according to a recent survey Ventura's attack on religion-focus fresh What Himmelfarb calls "the cultural by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel...
...represent the majority of Americans...
...If Himmelfarb makes a persuasive case for the existence of culture wars, she Himmelfarb traces the origins of this nonetheless rejects the media portrait of cultural divide to the 1960s and the coun- cultural dissenters as members of a danOne Ration, Two tercultural revolution which challenged gerous, authoritarian, monolithic, ReliCultures and eventually overturned traditional gious Right...
...Indeed, in had a largely salutary, if modest, im- with the dominant culture...
...moral complaint, it is fair to ask whether it rises to the level of a Fourth Great • Courses taught by distinguished professors...
...sion stations...
...1•icKi:':'ii...
...children...
...pled for more wholesome shows...
...the culture wars do exist, that they are membership cuts across religious de- liberals do as well...
...Yet there is little evidence that inspiration or for scholarly study, organized protest or broad cultural con- you can rely on The Jerusalem Bible, sensus has had much impact, for exam- Reader's Edition to convey both the ple, on the television industry...
...And she fails to note at least one of the more ob- of our time vious exceptions to her argument: For now available in a beautiful new edition many conservatives, it is a matter of faith that the market responds to consumer Whether you read the Bible for pressures...
...the influence of 'bourgeois values,' also lib- ple, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one of the support for teaching creationism by the erated a good many people from the val- nation's laboratories for school choice, Kansas School Board...
...nuclear family...
...Media President, tincicn• of B!t,lical I.itcratuc moguls hang their heads in what has become a ritual of penitence, promise to do better, but then return to the business IDtwbleday of pushing the edge of the cultural en- Available wherever books are sold • www.doubleday.coi velope and generating more vulgarity, profanity, and raunchy sex with each new television season...
...outlook is rooted in religious faith and ly to become more ecumenical and less The title of her book, and some of its moral conviction as well as the concern sectarian, more moral and less religious, pointed criticism, are a rebuttal of that the traditional family, civility, child- more diffuse and less focused...
...11 Web Address: www.georgetorvn.edu/ssee/ls/ Barbara Dafoe Whitehead is the author of The Divorce Culture (Alfred A. Knopfl...
...Awakening, as some suggest, or whether • A degree program designed for part-time it will turn out to be nothing more than adult students...
...African-Americans, authorities...
...a modest midcourse correction...
Vol. 127 • March 2000 • No. 5
