28 March 2008

U.S. SOCIETY & VALUES

Mead, Walter Russell BORN AGAIN (Atlantic Monthly, March 2008, pp. 21//24)

The evangelical Christian movement in the U.S. is showing signs of maturing, notes Mead. It is gaining more social and political influence, but as it broadens, it is becoming more pluralistic and less strident, and “less likely to be held hostage by a single issue or a single party”. The megachurches that are flourishing in the Midwest and Sun Belt are reaching audiences that are better educated, more urban and sophisticated than the rural Southern fundamentalists of an earlier era. Mead notes that the true story of the evangelical movement today is its “shift from insurgent to insider, with all of the moderating effects that transition implies.” [PUBS;GWB]

Richmond, Peter A BETTER WAY TO TRAVEL? (Parade, November 4, 2007, pp. 6-8)

Americans spent over 3 billion hours stuck in traffic last year, notes the author, and in the first eight months of 2007, almost a quarter of all plane flights arrived late. Says Richmond, “one solution is staring us in the face” -– U.S. passenger railroads, which have been allowed to atrophy for several decades, a victim of skewed transportation priorities which favored highway construction. The author believes that one reason the U.S. railroad system has fallen so far behind other countries is the long-standing aversion for government funding of the nation’s railroads, which have traditionally been private companies founded by nineteenth-century industrial barons. Although the best passenger rail service is along the Eastern seaboard, there are many regional urban areas around the country that would be well-served by a rail alternative to highway or air travel.