Will Politicians Matter?

Religion will increasingly replace electoral politics as the realm where battles for the national soul are fought

In the fall of 1995, Louis Farrakhan led the most celebrated African-American march in Washington since the 1963 March on Washington. A stone's throw from the spot where Martin Luther King declared, "We've come to our nation's capital to cash a check" for the "riches of freedom and the security of justice," Farrakhan voiced a new black generation's claim upon its still largely white government. And it was no claim at all.

"Freedom can't come from staying here and petitioning this great government," Farrakhan thundered. "Freedom cannot come from no one but the God who can liberate the soul from the...

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