The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress “brings together scholars and researchers from around the world to stimulate and energize one another, to distill wisdom from the Library’s rich resources, and to interact with policymakers and the public.”
Every year the Kluge Center presents the John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity. The $1 million prize (this year is $1.5 million) “celebrates the importance of the study of humanity and recognizes individuals whose outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences has shaped both public affairs and civil society.”
Previous winners include Peter Brown, John Hope Franklin, Pail Ricoeur,and Jaroslav Pelikan.
This year’s winners are Jurgen Habermas and Charles Taylor:
Here is the awards ceremony:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obfVuKlwTWk]
“Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?”
Perhaps not the most probative formulation of the question. Habermas might answer that it already was one.
“Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct heir of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love.
This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.”
http://www.habermasforum.dk/index.php?type=news&text_id=451