Interruptions they will be remembered. We have about an hour long presentation and we are past the time given to the speaker and the other to your questions. We have one microphone on the side of it when you have a question you can go up to and use the microphone so we can all hear and it can be on the recording. Afterwards if you wouldnt mind holding up your chairs at the pillar, that would be helpful and then we will have a signing immediately following the presentation. Now it is my pleasure to welcome you. We have politics and prose love having events because where we can open up the discussion about things that perhaps are not often talked about that are taboo topics in the religion and politics. This evening we are going to talk about both of those things. The book is titled why liberals when the call to war even when they lose elections and the battles that define america from jefferson to marriage and in it he went about the reasons for this kind which generally is acknowledged by conservatives to be true. In the Political Climate today, the conservative group on congress and we both have this controlled by republicans and one has to wonder if sometimes the Progressive Social strides that have been made in the recent years. In his new book he offers a comprehensive look at the flashpoint in the flash points in the culture and religious device in the nations history to demonstrate the Current Situation is not unprecedented. Ultimately the analysis demonstrates that the grappling with divisions has been integral to the shaping of what it means to be an american. With a phd in the study of religion and currently in end of religion at boston university, he has authored other books and religious literacy. He has appeared on many Media Outlets including npr, cnn, cnbc and the daily show with jon stewart and the cold air report Colbert Partridge is no longer show but you know them. So please help me welcome steven to stephen to politics and prose. [applause] thank you all for coming. Im glad to know we are a subject here in town. Its lovely to be back in washington, d. C. This is where i get my first job after College Search was at a hotel in new hampshire. I think it is now called the Renaissance Hotel and let me start with that great question from the admiral at the Vice President ial debate of 1992. Why am i here . [laughter] and more to the point, why are you here . Havent you heard that the cultural wars are over . Just months after pat buchanan warned the delegates to the coachable war was being waged for the soul of america, the neoconservative remark i regrets to inform you that those words might be over. And the New York Times reporters that the cultural war has become as an anachronistic as a leisure suit. Some of you that are as old as i am will remember that. They had arrived and more recently in the book intellectual historian Andrew Harkin wrote the cultural war is history of the logic of the cultural war has been exhausted. The metaphor has run its course. A week ago i was in spain visiting my daughter and whenever anyone heard that i was from the United States, they asked me about donald trump. Or as one man called him, loco. [laughter] why is the business man so obsessed with mexicans, muslims and the administration, or to put it more broadly why in the midst of the runaway economic inequality and the threat of Global Warming are americans so obsessed with immigration and islam and abortions and sexuality . Y. Is the president ial election is shaping up . The controversy about whether a muslim gentleman that owned a skyscraper on the near ground zero could be rich rocha tipped rich rocketed to become an islamic cultural center. And i was sort of naively and foolishly surprised and disappointed that the mainstream political figures on the right were somehow opposed to this project when it seemed to me the two bedrock principles of conservatism, religious liberty and private Property Rights were arguing very forcefully for his ability to do just what he wanted with the building and so i started to look back on the history of these sorts of battles in this case the battle over islam and i looked back at what i now called the contemporary cultural war in the 70s and 80s and 90s and things like abortion and homosexuality. And then the historian diane, i decided i had to look back further still to make sense of the ground zero controversy and that is how the book came about and thats when i discovered one of the arguments of my book which is not the cultural war is perennial in American History as america is fact as apple pie. After the farewell address of 1796, and address we might remember when he warned us about the mischief of the spirit of Political Parties and after that date, americans turned on each other on the meanings and into the not so indivisible nation and on questions as varied as free thought and polygamy and, sexuality and the saloon as enemies of the state and also of god almighty. You might remember the cultural war along with the moral majority against activism of bad 60s as he called them. But these had an analog and a precursor in the attacks on the moral relativism of the 20s. The 1928 election featured in thai catholicism aimed at the new york governor al smith but that was the recycling of sorts punaro so expanding their footprint in recent years the modus operandi has spread from cultural to politics in general. The term cultural war hinges on the distinction between the cultural politics and ordinary politics where cultural politics is about religious and moral questions that stand on matters of absolute morality and biblical truth. So, negotiation and compromise are difficult or maybe impossible but ordinary politics is supposed to be the stuff of taxing and spending and first trading area in recent years as he may have you may have noticed, this distinction has broken down. As moderates were purged from both major parties we are left office disgusted of their own accord and as institutions that benefit from the Political Polarization became more influential. Those who were left behind false life and death battles now with their socalled enemies over matters that used to be resolved unanimously and without debate. The outrage that had long been reserved for disputes over the family values bled into the debates of marginal tax rates and president ial appointments and the debt ceiling. This expansion of the footprint of the cultural war college the cultural war if everything has been our politics even more polarized and and or politicians even more partisan and so why are liberals when it is an effort by historians of american religions to make some sense of this. So first things first, what is the cultural war . What do i mean by this term . The way that i see it, called churl war has four features. There are public disputes recorded in such sources as president ial speeches, the congressional congressional record, popular magazines and newspapers even though it isnt just a private argument you are having over your dinner table although they can extend that. The second of the disputes extend beyond economic questions of taxing and spending to the moral culture and religious concerns that are typically less amenable to the comp compromise. Third, they give rise to larger questions about the meaning of america and who is and is not a true americans of the country or as it is sometimes said the soul of the country is at stake in the cultural war and last, they are heated and fueled by the rhetoric of the war and is driven by the conviction that ones enemies are somehow also enemies of the nation. So the term and short refers to angry and even violent public disputes that are simultaneously moral, religious show and address the meaning of america. Thats what i mean by the term. So, my book looks at five episodes. I could have picked a lot more episodes. I think there are more in the United States history than this, but i look at five. The first is that election of 1800. And as we have had the last couple president ial elections, a lot of people have said these are the ugliest elections in American History of the most vicious in American History and you know, this is one john historians have come at the always raise their finger and say there was an uglier one and the life in 1800 was the uglier one. It pitted the john adams federalist against Thomas Jefferson and as they were called at the time the backdrop of the bogeyman of the election was the french revolution and the same way in the same way that the contemporary was the 60s what do you think about the 60s and hear the issue is what do you think about the french and the french revolution . This included the battle on the house floor that started with a spit of tobacco into the eye of another congressperson that led to the use of a hickory cane and fireplace tongs on the floor of the house and it happened at a time like your tone in which all newspapers were partisan newspapers. The federalist paper called the jeffersonians. The jeffersonian paper called adams blind bold, crippled and plus. And it went on to call him something that a put down that makes you wish donald trump was calling you lowenergy. And in this put down his coffee hideous character which kept me there before them and firmness of a man nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman. [laughter] meanwhile, jefferson called federalists enemies of our constitution after time and cover a rain of which is. Alexander hamilton, some of you may have heard of him and hes the star of a musical. [laughter] saving the United States from jefferson. But the key issue was his religion. Was he as a federalist opponent for massachusetts the great archpriest of infidelity or was he has to connecticut current federalist newspaper said a believer in the koran he was in the first president to be accused of being a secret muslim. [laughter] the second cultural war in the buck is anticatholicism of the early 19 and 20th centuries. The chapter starts with the burning of the content outside of boston in 1834 and moves on to the bible riots of 1844 in which dozens of people were killed and here protestants labeled catholics moral dilemmas, impostors and traitors to the nation in other words they have an ethical, theological and political critique of catholicism as a danger to the community and christianity. The third was antimormonism which occurs in the United States both before and after the civil war and this was initially a critique of the book of mormon which appeared in 1830 as a fake into someone whos a former gold digger who decided to dig up some fake gold plates and create a book that would make him rich but it extended overtime to questions of public polygamy and theocracy in the territory. They called it the critics unamerican for the war on religious liberty and channeling the constitution. They defended polygamy on social logical and biblical grounds. If you read the whole testament has anyone here read the hottest and . [laughter] a couple of you. Okay youll find that its in favor of polygamy. So this is something that was pointed out by mormons. Another person by the visit was in favor was Martin Luther some of you may have heard of him. He had something to do with the founding of protestantism. He was in favor also on the biblical grounds because he had read the old testament. It seemed like god was in favor of polygamy. The latterday saints was an latter day saints was an enemy of the state. They were perpetrating treason against the government and a total subversion of the republicanism. Some people even said it wasnt a religion at all, and eecho that we echo that we have in the debates of islam with a claim that it is and a religion at all it is a political demonstration. This cultural war involved all three branches of the government. Five president s delivered speeches and the speeches and the First Supreme Court opinion on the religious liberty was delivered against by the Supreme Court. The governor issued an extermination order ordering the death of all in the state and in the assassination killed the founder of the most successful new religious movement. The fourth cultural war in the and the book is the battle between wet and dry and drinkers and teetotalers in the 1920s and 1930s. Billy sunday who was famous as the former outfielder for the white sox when he would come to give his revival he would come running from the site of the side of the stage and sliding behind the podium. He was supposed to be the fastest in the major leagues before he quit his sporting and became an evangelist. He denounced as the mother of all sins. They famously performed what was called she would go in with a hatchet and break up the saloons and protest against that this wasnt just about booze, it was a wider cultural war about organized crime, the automobile and racial mixing into mixing in the 20s and 30s. The tension as i read it is diversity and how much and maybe homogeneity and the culture where they a culture where they were holding onto the unified past versus the multiculturalism in whose vision of culture was more central to cold and thrilled to have the increasing diversity of the country and the last culture that i look at is what i called the contemporary cultural war which started out as i read them in the 1970s and are still going today. These began with a 1978 tax ruling that decided the segregation academies that emerged in the south after brown v. Board of education in particular the civil rights act. They were no longer able to claim taxexempt status because they were designed to simply undermine the federal policy of educational desegregation. But, the issue at this time prevented from the issue of race and education to questions of gender and family in other words abortion and homosexuality and the defense of the patriarchal family with its breadwinner. But they also shifted from this beginning to religion and the accusations that the irs was discriminating against the unconstitutional attempt to proselytize. And in this way of cultural conservatives including many evangelicals cleverly redesigned themselves as victims of bigotry. And here again we see two different understandings of american culture. As the one sort of the American Family or many does an artwork like the infamous artwork by Andrew Serrano does have one meaning or many meanings and is the United States a christian nation were in the words of president obama first inaugural the nation of christians and jews, hindus and muslims and non believers is it a country that only one race is at home or in the words of Frederick Douglass a composite nation . So thats the form of the book that looks at these different episodes. Along the way, it makes a few arguments and i want to touch a little bit on these arguments and then i will open up to you all for comments and easy questions. The first argument i already mentioned is that they occur throughout American History. In the key compromise is meant to smooth things over between the original states in the United States the founders left unsettled the key questions in the discord and even the readability and in the decades to come one was slavery and another was the relationship between the church and state. The new england puritans the forebears for massachusetts where i live likely played a role by twisting god and governance tight and transforming to the land ever on the lookout. But whatever cultural wars were in the colonies were muted in the Early National period. They were free to start going at each other tooth and claw. My second argument is that cultural wars are conservative projects and here im going to read a little bit of the book because i understand in the book readings they are supposed to read a little bit from the book. So instead of sort of summarizing the argument i will read a little bit from the introduction of the cultural wars are conservative projects. So it goes like this. The cultural war are conservative projects instigated and waged by conservatives anxious about the loss of old orders and about the emergence of new ones. What they see as progress they see as a loss and they are willing to fight to defend what has already been passing away. Cultural wars are battles between conservatives and liberals over conflicting cultural and religious code that had a deeper level they are conservative in which liberals are merely props. Conservatives would have to invent them and truth be told, they often do. [laughter] theres much debate there is much debate about whether americas recent cultural war began on the left or the right over what the terms liberal and conservative theme three of many argue that the 60s liberation movement, the left broadly construed in the cultural war this argument is also a staple among the conservatives who blame the left for starting the war by banning of prayer from Public Schools and pushing for the multiculturalism and universities or agitating feminism or black power. They are defending their turf and i object to the suggestion and i see that i see everywhere that conservative christians started the cultural war. Say what you like me are the we are the indians, you are the settlers. A longer view revealed that the conservatives typically fired the first shots in the cultural war. Anticatholicism and mormonism were not backlash movements against revolutions from the left they were to the catholic immigrations and the invention of mormonism and to the theological, social and economic threats those communities posed to the protestant power. Similarly to the 20s and 30s they were conservative responses to the rise of the saloon and two mixed drinks and interracial mixing it up the cultural pluralism brought on by immigration. Many now view the culture of victimhood so visible on the socalled war on christmas for example as a pale limitation of the victimhood culture of the identity politics but this tradition goes back much further to the protestants but