The Divine Supermarket

This is an exploration of the influence of far-right preachers on the Reagan administration. In its analysis of the melting-pot of religious cults in America, the book covers high-mindedness and moral angst, sexual humbuggery and corruption. As the world's oldest secular state, America has proved uniquely adept at hatching new creeds and producing variations on more familiar themes from Latter-Day Saints to snake-handlers. Its citizens enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world and the country is undergoing a major religious revival. Fundamentalist groups in the South challenge the teaching of evolution in schools, television preachers such as Jerry Falwell are undermining the liberal reforms of postwar years, and cults such as the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh flourish. Part travel book, part history, part cultural analysis, this book follows Malise Ruthven from Puritan New England to the Reaganite right wing areas of the sun belt and middle America in what is intended to be a study of the soul of modern America. Malise Ruthven is also author of "Islam in the Modern World".