Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious RightPrinceton University Press, 2008 - 251 pages The religious and political winds are changing. Tens of millions of religious Americans are reclaiming faith from those who would abuse it for narrow, partisan, and ideological purposes. And more and more secular Americans are discovering common ground with believers on the great issues of social justice, peace, and the environment. In Souled Out, award-winning journalist and commentator E. J. Dionne explains why the era of the Religious Right--and the crude exploitation of faith for political advantage--is over. Based on years of research and writing, Souled Out shows that the end of the Religious Right doesn't signal the decline of evangelical Christianity but rather its disentanglement from a political machine that sold it out to a narrow electoral agenda of such causes as opposition to gay marriage and abortion. With insightful portraits of leading contemporary religious figures from Rick Warren and Richard Cizik to John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Dionne shows that our great religions have always preached a broad message of hope for more just human arrangements and refused to be mere props for the powers that be. Dionne also argues that the new atheist writers should be seen as a gift to believers, a demand that they live up to their proclaimed values and embrace scientific and philosophical inquiry in a spirit of "intellectual solidarity." Written in the tradition of Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr, Souled Out will help change how we think and talk about religion and politics in the post-Bush era. |
From inside the book
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... United States . 2. Religious right — United States . 3. Christian conservatism - United States . I. Title . BR516.D56 2008 261.70973 - dc22 2007045172 British Library Cataloging - in - Publication Data is available This book has been ...
... United States , of religion selling out to political forces that use the votes of religious people for purposes having nothing to do with a religious agenda — and , often enough , for causes that may contradict the values such voters ...
... United States , the attention lav- ished on Pat Robertson , the late Jerry Falwell , and James Dobson suggested that to be religious was to cling to a rather restricted set of social and political views . The public voice of religion ...
... United States has created its own spiritual style , much as the urbanization celebrated by Harvey Cox in his influential 1965 book The Secular City created distinctive approaches to spirituality . Much of what is interpreted in ...
... largest single denomination in the United States — and one in which , as I've al- ready confessed , I have a personal interest . Chapter 5 is devoted to the papacies of John Paul and Benedict . John Paul is 20 INTRODUCTION.
Contents
Is Religion Conservative or Progressive? Or Both? | 25 |
Why the Culture War Is the Wrong War Religion Values and American Politics | 45 |
What Are the Values Issues? Economics Social Justice and the Struggle over Morality | 71 |
Selling Religion Short When Ideology Is Not Enough | 92 |
John Paul Benedict and the Catholic Future | 126 |
What Happened to the Seamless Garment? The Agony of Liberal Catholicism | 151 |
Other editions - View all
Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right E. J. Dionne Jr. Limited preview - 2009 |
Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right E. J. Dionne Jr. No preview available - 2009 |