You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
George Lundskow and Sarah MacMillen, the authors of this book are gifted sociologists who bring a unique perspective to the study of religion, Qanon and conspiracy theories in general. They are Christian humanists and socialists, whose counterparts in the psychoanalytic world include kindred spirits like Donald Carveth, Stanley Leavy, Karl Stern and Oscar Pfister (among others). While not a psychoanalytic book, psychoanalysts can learn much from it, as it deals with issues that loom large among analysts concerned with contemporary culture and politics - authoritarianism, conspiracy theories and the role played by religion in promoting or counteracting anti-democratic beliefs and norms of behavior. Their illuminating reflections are leavened with an excellent grasp of classical sociological theory - Tönnies, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel - and inspiration from more recent (Christian) thinkers, including Jacques Ellul and Charles Taylor, with frequent nods to C.S. Lewis, G.K Chesterton and early observers of American democracy like de Tocqueville and Thomas Paine. Alighting on a “middle way” between these two early and influential thinkers, whose pluralistic and non-dogmatic religious sensibility they celebrate, the authors argue that religion should furnish the “background hum” of purposeful civic engagement; that the best guarantee of religious liberty, diversity and fellowship is in fact a firm separation between Church and State; that in the absence of such, modern society tilts inevitably away from democracy and towards theocracy and authoritarianism.
There is also a distinctly Marxist dimension to some of their musings about contemporary American life. For example, they write:
… class configures one of the most dominant hierarchies in the United States - like in all modern capitalist countries - but in contrast to its peers, American social identity focuses much more strongly on race/ethnicity and gender, which are status rather than material hierarchies, but have mate