Modern Age - Fall 2016 - 87

REVIEW ESSAY

THE REASONABLENESS
OF FAITH AND THE
IRR ATIONALITY OF "REASON"
Gerald J. Russello
The Triumph of Faith: Why the World Is More Religious Than Ever
By Rodney Stark
(Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2015)
Taking Rites Seriously: Law, Politics, and the Reasonableness of Faith
By Francis J. Beckwith
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015)

P

resident Obama's now-infamous comment about people
clinging to their "guns and religion" betrayed a glimpse of a
worldview increasingly common among Western elites. People
must "cling" to religion because there is no rational reason to
believe; it is more like the "irritable mental gestures" Lionel Trilling famously described as conservatism in his book The Liberal
Imagination. Faith is the losing side of a centuries-old struggle
against superstition in favor of science or "reason." Sociological
evidence has appeared to give this worldview a patina of reality.
In the United States especially, recent years have witnessed the
emergence of the so-called nones, those who profess, or claim to
profess, no religion. A group of writers dubbed the New Atheists
Gerald J. Russello is editor of the University Bookman.
moder nagejour nal .com

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Modern Age - Fall 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Fall 2016

Contents
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