Crossing the Gods: World Religions and Worldly Politics

In the book's second part, the author focuses on the United States - the only nation founded specifically on the principle of a separation between religion and state - and examines the extent to which this principle actually holds and the consequences when it does not. By highlighting such issues as culture wars and religious violence, religion's different relations to politics versus the state, and the fluidity of individual religious identity, Demerath exposes the fallacies underlying many of our views on religion and politics worldwide."