The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America » (Bargain)

Ray Suarez is a senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He came to the NewsHour from NPR's Talk of the Nation, and prior to that he spent seven years covering local, national, and international news for an NBC affiliate in Chicago.

Not since the Civil War has the United States been so polarized, politically and ideologically. At the heart of this fracture is a fascinating, paradoxical marriage between our country's politics and religions.

In The Holy Vote, Ray Suarez explores the advent of this polarization and how it is profoundly changing the way we live our lives. With hands-on reporting, Suarez explores the attitudes and beliefs of the people behind the voting numbers and how the political divide is manifesting itself across the country. The reader will come to a greater understanding of what Americans believe, and how this belief structure fuels the debates that dominate the issues on our evening news broadcasts.

Library Journal

Of the books reviewed here, this work by Suarez (senior correspondent, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer) offers the most balanced account of the issues in question. This is a journalist's journey worthy of comparison with Dan Wakefield's classic Supernation at Peace and War, written almost 40 years ago, which portrayed the mood of the country during the Vietnam era. Suarez examines an equally divisive era that pits conservative suburban votes of faith against urban secular liberals, with everyone trying to determine the proper place of religion in public life. In addition to interviewing politicians, religious leaders, and ordinary citizens, Suarez shares his personal religious experiences as an urban liberal Catholic and laments the demise of religious tolerance in current political discourse. He writes eloquently about the "Christian art of warfare," the "nasty battle" over marriage, the separation of church and state, and such issues as the Ten Commandments controversy and teaching evolution. What sets his book apart is his attention to changes in the Catholic Church and the impact of a rising Latino Catholic population. The book reads easily and is sure to provoke lively discussion, serving well as a companion to Garry Wills's more scholarly Under God: Religion and American Politics. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.