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Frederick Clarkson

Senior Research Analyst

he/him

Frederick Clarkson is a Senior Research Analyst at PRA and has written about politics and religion for more than four decades. His work has appeared in a wide range of publications from Mother Jones, Church & State, and Ms. Magazine to The Christian Science Monitor, Salon.com, and Religion Dispatches. He is the author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between In the classical definition, a system in which governmental leaders are clergy. Learn more and Democracy, and editor of Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America. He has worked as an investigative editor at Planned Parenthood Federation of America; as Communications Director at the Institute for Democracy Studies; and co-founded the group blog, Talk to Action. 

Articles

Political Research Associates
The Religious Right in the States and Beyond
In the wake of pre-election punditry that the Religious Right is dead and that the so called Culture Wars are over, I wrote a piece for The Public Eye: “The Culture Wars Are Not Over: The Institutionalization of the Christian Right.”1 The year was 2001, what many now consider to have been the high watermark of the power and influence of the Religious Right in American politics.
Article
Political Research Associates
Electoral Lessons from the Religious Right for the Religious Left
The main reason why the Religious Right became powerful is not what most people may think. Some would undoubtedly point to the powerful communications media. Others might identify charismatic leaders, the development of “wedge issues,” or even changes in evangelical theology in the latter part of the twentieth century that supported, and even demanded, political action.
Article
Political Research Associates
Jeff Sharlet’s new book The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, is in the best tradition of American investigative journalism. Sharlet, a scholar of religion based at New York University, writes with insight, verve and, thankfully, none of the bogus punditry and bad sociology that often passes for informed discourse about the contemporary role of religion in public life. His refreshing narrative style is as engaging as his groundbreaking information.
Article