In recent decades, and in the 2000 presidential campaign, religion—meaning religious convictions, religious institutions, and religiously informed moral arguments—has become an ever more influential factor in our national debates. Faith-based institutions, ideas, and activities, to which tens of millions of Americans devote significant portions of their time and resources, are receiving increasing attention in the media. Whether covering a presidential candidate's speech to a fundamentalist Christian college in South Carolina, a visit by Pope John Paul II to the United States, or the work of inner-city churches serving the urban poor, many political journalists have sought to better understand the subtle theological distinctions and deep faith commitments that shape the lives of many Americans.

But often some of these religious communities have felt misrepresented and misunderstood. We want to help remedy this misunderstanding. This conference was designed provide reporters, commentators, and editors in the print and broadcast media an opportunity to deepen their comprehension of this crucial dimension of our public life. To that end, we arranged for presentations from four leading authorities on religion and American public life.

Speakers

James L. Guth is the William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor of Political Science at Furman University, where he has taught since 1973. He is the co-author of three books on religion and politics: The Bully Pulpit: The Politics of Protestant Clergy; Religion and the Culture Wars: Dispatches from the Front; and The Bible and the Ballot Box: Religion in the 1988 Election. He has written almost a hundred scholarly essays for academic journals on political mobilization and religious interest groups.

Jean Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago. She is the author and editor of seventeen books, including Augustine and the Limits of Politics; Meditations on Modern Political Thought; Democracy on Trial; The King Is Dead: Sovereignty at Century's End; Women and War; Real Politics: Politics and Everyday Life; Power Trips and Other Journeys; and Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought. She is also the author of over 200 essays in scholarly journals and journals of civic opinion.

Leo Ribuffo is Society of the Cincinnati George Washington Distinguished Professor of History at George Washington University. His books include Right Center Left: Essays in American History and The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War, which won the Organization of American Historians, Merle Curti Prize as the best book in American intellectual history for 1983-84. From 1973 to 1982 he was book review editor of the American Quarterly, the Journal of the American Studies Association. He has contributed reviews and essays to many journals, newspapers, and magazines, including Dissent, Christian Century, Nation, New York Newsday, The New Republic, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is the author of The Dissent of the Governed: A Meditation on Law, Religion, and Politics; Civility; Integrity; The Confirmation Mess: Cleaning Up the Federal Appointments Process; The Culture of Disbelief. How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion; and Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby. He served as a Law Clerk in the Supreme Court for the Honorable Thurgood Marshall. He has written numerous law review articles and has published essays in the New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, and Legal Times.