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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... writing , Souled Out shows that the end of the Reli- gious Right doesn't signal the decline of evangelical Christianity but rather its dis- entanglement from a political machine that sold it out to a narrow electoral agenda of such ...
... write off reli- gious people as backward and reactionary busybodies obsessed with sex . This book insists that religious faith should not be seen as leading in- eluctably to conservative political convictions . In fact , religious ...
... write at a moment when the religious winds are changing . Over the last two decades , and especially the last several years , we have witnessed a great commotion over religion and politics . As I argue in chapter 1 , the commo- tion ...
... write that down . Now the four biggest reasons in my area why people didn't go to church — here's what they were : Number one , they said , " Sermons are boring and they don't relate to my life . " So I decided I had to say something on ...
... writing in the Nation in 2007 , called " the in - your - face religion that has come to mark our soci- ety . " The ... writer Michael Novak's 1965 book Belief and Unbelief is a classic in self - interrogation . " How does one know that ...
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 |