• PART I:
  NO! AND YES!
• Preface
• Is God Necessary?
• The New Atheists
• Religion’s Worst Enemy
• The Church Outside the Church
• Where Is Reliable Power?
• What We Stand For
• Two Americas: Hemingway and Frost
• Beyond All Gods
• PART II:
  AMERICA’S NEW VISION OF GOD
• Preface
• Charles Sanders Peirce
• William James
• William Ernest Hocking
• Alfred North Whitehead
• Charles Hartshorne
• Conclusion to Part II and Recommended Reading
• PART III:
  GOD AND THE MODERN WORLD
• Preface
• The Struggle for Power and PeaceWilliam Ernest Hocking
• A Modern View of GodCharles Hartshorne
• God at the End of the CenturyJohn E. Smith
• A Common FaithJohn Dewey
• God and the WorldAlfred North Whitehead
• The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern WorldVaclav Havel

CONCLUSION

How shall we assess the contribution to human thought made by these five philosophers whose discovery has been described as America’s new vision of God? That term is used in order to stress the convergence of a new worldview shared by these thinkers’ evolving system of ideas. Although we are too close in time and space to be able to speak with truly reliable perspective, I suggest that it may not be inappropriate today to wonder if this both old and new vision of reality may not bear comparison with events which occurred in the axial age which gave birth to great civilizations of the Earth in both the East and the West.

Recommended Reading

Philosophers Speak of God
by Charles Hartshorne and William L. Reese (Amherst, N.Y., 2000).

The Rise of American Philosophy: Cambridge, Massachusetts 1860-1930
by Bruce Kuklick (New Haven: Yale University, 1977).

Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy: Peirce, James, Bergson, Whitehead and Hartshorne
by David Ray Griffin and others (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1993).