Redeeming culture

In this intriguing new work, James Gilbert examines the historical confrontation between modern science and religion as these disparate, sometimes hostile modes of thought have clashed in the arena of American culture. Beginning in 1925 with the infamous Scopes trial, Gilbert traces nearly forty years of competing American attitudes toward science and religion. From Harvard intellectuals to Hollywood, from UFOs to the USAF, from sci-fi thrillers to the nightly news, from liberal religion to Fundamentalism - American culture became a proving ground where the boundaries between science and religion were polemicized, propagandized, and contested. Ultimately, Gilbert argues, Catholics and Jews as well as Protestants were able to use the language of democracy to check the growing authority of science. They did this by appealing to American tolerance for contending views and by presenting a populist counterweight to what they portrayed as elitist claims to specialized knowledge. In the end, a kind of cultural paradox emerged in which conflicting systems of explanation were accepted, respected, and even encouraged. In Redeeming Culture, Gilbert has managed to convey not only the persistent ambiguities in American approaches to science and religion, but likewise the means by which these ambiguities continually reshape and invigorate our evolving experience.