The first is a book entitled "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" by Samuel Huntington. Sam Huntington is a high-level professor at Harvard, and probably best known as director of security planning when Jimmy Carter was president. He was founder and co-editor of the academic publication called "Foreign Policy". Back in 1996 he published his "Clash of Civilizations" book. Some of it, frankly, is way too deep for me, but some of it points out, almost country by country, some of the battles we are seeing played out in the United Nations. For instance, at one point he says: "Some Westerners, including President Bill Clinton (remember, this was in 1996), have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise." Huntington says the "real clash" here in America is between multicultural ists and the American creed from Western civilization ... which I read as between liberals and conservatives, although old Sam probably wouldn't put up with that.
The second book is by Robert William Fogel, of the University of Chicago. He is an economist, the 1993 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in fact. This time, however, he is writing about religion and its impact on our culture, and the book is entitled "The Fourth Great Awakening." He says America (the world, for that matter) is already in the fourth Great Awakening ... those cycles in history when religious or moral movements have a great impact on politics and civilization in general. In an age when membership in the mainline Christian churches is declining, Christianity is growing rapidly, especially in Third World countries and in the world's Southern hemisphere.
There's no way you can watch, or read, the news nowadays without thinking: "Hey. These guys may be on to something."
This is Gordon Sawyer, from a window on historic Green Street.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2003/3/181594