American Awakening (Joshua Mitchell, Georgetown University)

America has always been committed to the idea that citizens can work together to build a common world. Prof. Mitchell will give a public talk on his recently published book, American Awakening, in which he argues that the chief barrier to this ideal is identity politics, which seeks to transform America by turning politics into a religious venue of sacrificial offering. America’s political crisis, he argues, has a religious origin, and that the extremes of identity politics are an expression of a dislodged Protestantism.