Reimagining America

Book excerpt: "'The American character," Charles Mabee writes, "is grounded in the metaphor of universal scientific and technological experiment," an experiment in which some may see God at work and others may not. Americans are a "religious" people, but they are also "scientific." Both theologicans and scientists must confront the antagonism between the "particularistic" world view inherited from the Judeo-Christian tradition and the "fundamentally universal orientation" of science. Modern study of the Bible, grounded in "scientific method," has liberated the text from the imperatives of ecclesiastical dogma; it's practitioners "have constructed elaborate safeguards against subjective interpretation." Yet the subjective component of biblical study remains - " only now the name of this component is science itself . . ." -- Book jacket.