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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... challenging injustices and uncon- cerned about how God's children are treated by their governments , by their employers , by their societies . Such a faith would reflexively support the status quo by offering its blessing to whatever ...
... challenge stereotypical views of religious faith . I refer here not only to Jim Wallis , Amy Sullivan , Bob Edgar ... challenged Chris- tians to stand up for the poor . And religious liberals who had spent much time reacting to the ...
... challenged conventional understand- ings , One Nation , After All and Moral Freedom , it is a style that resists being " judgmental , " that emphasizes personal choice— " the idea of people having the freedom to choose their own way of ...
... challenges from various forms of religious fundamentalism to sci- ence and religious pluralism . As a general proposition , I welcome the neo - atheists ' challenge . Theirs is an unsurprising response to what Ronald Aronson , writing ...
... challenging than oppressive . I offer these stories not because they are exceptional , but because I think they are rather typical . More than many believers usually want to admit , our attitude toward faith , as toward many other ...
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 |