Religion 50, Liberation and 20th Century Christian Thought	
Spring 2011

Reading questions for James Hunter, Culture Wars:  The Struggle to Define America

1)	Hunter appropriates from Wuthnow the notion of the polarization of American religion.  In what ways is Hunter’s view of this polarization different from Wuthnow’s?  

2)	According to Hunter, why had American public discouse become so severely polarized by the early 1990s?  What do you make of his diagnosis?

3)	What role does the technology of public discourse play in Hunter’s account of polarization?  How do his claims about these technologies relate to what we have read about the subject in Wuthnow, Falwell, and Dobson?

4)	Recall prominent attempts to motivate Christianity towards action in pursuit of social justice like the writings of Walter Rauschenbusch or the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr..  In circumstances like those described by Hunter, how successful do you think such attempts would be likely to be, and why?