Americans Confronting The Meeting in Rimini

"On August 25, 2000 I invited two prominent American liberals to participate in the Meeting in an 'Encounter with American Liberalism.' The two were Peter Beinart, at the time the editor of The New Republic, America’s most respected magazine of American liberal thought, and university professor Peter Berkowitz who was working on a book on Christianity and American liberalism. Both Beinart and Berkowitz are Jews. Beinart accepted the invitation to describe their experience at the Meeting in an article for Traces in which he explained why he thought it was difficult to imagine an 'American Meeting.'

According to Beinart, the Meeting had three dimensions that in America were in fact experienced as incompatible. The Rimini Meeting was like a meeting of the “Christian Coalition,:” whose approach to faith and culture was defined by evangelical Protestantism. Rimini was also an uncompromising expression of Christian faith, but unlike evangelical Protestantism, this was not a defensive faith, but one apparently not afraid to be open to all authentic human experiences. As Berkowitz had told me, this was a Christianity not seen in America." (Msgr Albacete on The Meeting in Rimini, 2009)

See also Peter Beinart on The Meeting in Rimini (2000)