Friday, February 23, 2007

Booknote: The Theocons

Linker, Damon. The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege. New York: Doubleday, 2006. ISBN: 0385516479. 288pgs.

Genre: Nonfiction
Subgenre: Current affairs, politics

This is a very dry book to read. Yet, it is a decent source to understand why the Christian Right holds so much sway in the Republican Party. Linker shows how much of what we think of the Christian Right has nothing to do with evangelicals. Actually, the movements today are shaped in large measure by a small group of Catholic activists who have managed to create alliances with evangelicals. The story looks at the philosophical roots of the theocon movement and then charts its progress showing that, in the end, they basically seek to remove the notion of the separation of church and state to impose their own apocalyptic view. Unfortunately, the narrative is extremely dry. It is not an engaging book, which is a pity because I think more people should be reading it. The book includes notes in the back.

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