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 6-10 of 88
... Christian . Religion and politics were matters of constant discussion in our Catho- lic home when I was growing up . My parents were the sort of Christians who believed they should behave toward others in the ways their faith prescribed ...
... Christian and left - wing pacifists and pro - Nazi , pro - fascist forces when each side opposed American entry into World War II for rather different reasons . ( That paper may have been the beginning of my lifelong love for Reinhold ...
... Christian Left . They helped persuade me toward the views that I now hold , which in many , maybe most , areas are views both of them now reject . I remain grateful for what they taught me . None of these biographical reflections ...
... Christian faith , as I came to understand it , pushed me toward liberalism . I thus have no grounds for challenging the right of conservatives to root their own views in faith . " Faith , " St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Hebrews ...
... Christian writer Jacques Ellul , " he obvi- ously cannot be totally known or circumscribed or put into a human for- mula . There is always something more to know and understand and receive . " Accepting the " social context " of our ...
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 |