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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... is also intended to make the case to religious people that faith calls us to social as well as individual responsibility , and that politics is not primarily a realm of cultural combat in which only abortion IS GOD'S WORK OUR WORK ? 7.
... social teaching that privileges the poor , insists on eco- nomic justice , calls the death penalty into question , and puts a heavy moral burden on those who would advocate for war . It is , finally , a rationalist's argument with the ...
... social context " of our modern ( or , perhaps , post- modern ) condition , as Peter Berger wrote in A Far Glory , means " acknowl- edging the fact that the certainties of a traditional , pre - modern or non- modern society are not ...
... social ills . If the tradition that inspired Bush's view was dominant in the first years of the new millennium , the version of Christian social thought reflected by Clinton , Barack Obama , and other prominent progressives is now in ...
... - bly leads one into politics , since sin is social as well as individual . That is why my critique of the Christian Right is about the content of the move- ment's politics , not the fact that it is politically 22 222 INTRODUCTION.
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 |