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 46
... idea of a fallen side of human nature apply to people who are religious no less than to those who are not . Throughout history , our great religious traditions — this is especially obvious in the Christian and Jewish scriptures — have ...
... idea of people having the freedom to choose their own way of believing , " as Wolfe puts it — and insists that " any form of higher authority has to tailor its com- mandments to the needs of real people . " The best word for this style ...
... idea that religion is primarily destructive lies at the heart of the neo - atheist argu- ment , its critics have rightly insisted on detailing the sublime acts of hu- manity and generosity that religion has promoted through the ...
... idea that his offhand comment about his friend would affect my views for life on the matters of racism and anti - Semitism . Sister Gene- vieve probably did intend to affect our views on race . The monks who taught me definitely were ...
... ideas and commitments has been part of my own religious and political journeys . My specific interest in religion as a liberal arose from a concern devel- oped many years before the 2004 election that some of my fellow liberals harbored ...
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 |