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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... religion as a right - wing force . This assumption shaped how religion was covered in the mass media . Once , the media paid much attention to a broad range of religious fig- ures — from Reinhold Niebuhr , Paul Tillich , and Karl Barth ...
... religious goods and services . " One may react to these developments in various ways , but this approach to spirituality is anything but authoritarian . The builders of the new megachurches , notably the most successful such as Rick ...
... religious future without taking Warren's testi- mony seriously . III My hope is that this book might contribute to broadening the conversa- tion about religion and politics . It is aimed at both the believer and the nonbeliever , and it ...
Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right E. J. Dionne. primarily a realm of cultural combat in which only abortion and gay mar- riage matter . All believers should be wary of reducing a religious tradition to the moral ...
... religion than to expel strictness of thought from it . " Wieseltier made clear by implication why it is easy for the nonbeliever to insist upon religious freedom and pluralism . Since the nonbeliever sees faith as an irrational ...
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 |