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
Results 1-5 of 60
... Economics , Social Justice , and the Struggle over Morality 71 4 Selling Religion Short : When Ideology Is Not Enough 92 5 John Paul , Benedict , and the Catholic Future 126 6 What Happened to the Seamless Garment ? The Agony of Liberal ...
... economic privileges are distributed . They should also be mindful of how their own traditions have been used for narrow political purposes , and how some religious figures have manipu- lated faith to aggrandize their own power . The ...
... economic thinking . While I disagree with Novak , he usefully offers one side of an argument Christians should be having with each other . In the course of the chapter , I also argue that George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton represent two ...
... economic requirements for a decent family life will trump rhetorical appeals to " family values . " Evangelical Christians are increasingly restive and dissatisfied with narrowly ideological definitions of their public role ...
... economic issues , cultural questions from matters of social pol- icy . These divisions are artificial and misleading — and not just because inequality and social injustice relate no less to our " values " than do our views on abortion ...
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 |