Prophetic Politics: Christian Social Movements and American
Democracy. By David S. Gutterman. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2005. 236p. $34.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.
Are religion and democracy hopelessly incompatible forces in our time?
David Gutterman would like us to believe that they are not. In this book,
he examines both recent historical and contemporary examples to show how
religion can either thwart or support democratic politics, depending upon
how it is practiced. He looks at four Christian “social
movements”: the revivalism of Billy Sunday in the early twentieth
century, the ministry of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the
mid–twentieth century, and the Promise Keepers movement and Jim
Wallis's Call to Renewal in our own time. Gutterman shows that
whereas the movements of Billy Sunday and the Promise Keepers are
essentially antidemocratic (and also “antipolitical”) in
nature, the examples of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Call to Renewal
demonstrate that religious social movements can enhance pluralism, mutual
respect, and dialogue in American politics.