Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) was an inner-city pastor, ethics professor, and author of the famous Serenity Prayer. Time magazine's 25th anniversary issue in March 1948 featured Niebuhr on its cover, and Time later eulogized him as "the greatest Protestant theologian in America since Jonathan Edwards." Cited as an influence by public figures ranging from Billy Graham to Barack Obama, Niebuhr was described by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as "the most influential American theologian of the twentieth century." In this companion volume to the forthcoming documentary film by Martin Doblmeier on the life and influence of Reinhold Niebuhr, Jeremy Sabella draws on an unprecedented set of exclusive interviews to explore how Niebuhr continues to compel minds and stir consciences in the twenty-first century. Interviews with leading voices such as Jimmy Carter, David Brooks, Cornel West, and Stanley Hauerwas as well as with people who knew Niebuhr personally, including his daughter Elisabeth, provide a rich trove of original material to help readers understand Niebuhr's enduring impact on American life and thought. CONTRIBUTORS (interviewees) Andrew J. Bacevich David Brooks Lisa Sowle Cahill Jimmy Carter Gary Dorrien Andrew Finstuen K. Healan Gaston Stanley Hauerwas Susannah Heschel William H. Hudnut III Robin W. Lovin Fr. Mark S. Massa, SJ Elisabeth Sifton Ronald H. Stone Cornel West Andrew Young
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) was an inner-city pastor, ethics professor, and author of the famous Serenity Prayer. Time magazine's 25th anniversary issue in March 1948 featured Niebuhr on its cover, and Time later eulogized him as "the greatest Protestant theologian in America since Jonathan Edwards." Cited as an influence by public figures ranging from Billy Graham to Barack Obama, Niebuhr was described by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as "the most influential American theologian of the twentieth century." In this companion volume to the forthcoming documentary film by Martin Doblmeier on the life and influence of Reinhold Niebuhr, Jeremy Sabella draws on an unprecedented set of exclusive interviews to explore how Niebuhr continues to compel minds and stir consciences in the twenty-first century. Interviews with leading voices such as Jimmy Carter, David Brooks, Cornel West, and Stanley Hauerwas as well as with people who knew Niebuhr personally, including his daughter Elisabeth, provide a rich trove of original material to help readers understand Niebuhr's enduring impact on American life and thought. CONTRIBUTORS (interviewees) Andrew J. Bacevich David Brooks Lisa Sowle Cahill Jimmy Carter Gary Dorrien Andrew Finstuen K. Healan Gaston Stanley Hauerwas Susannah Heschel William H. Hudnut III Robin W. Lovin Fr. Mark S. Massa, SJ Elisabeth Sifton Ronald H. Stone Cornel West Andrew Young
Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma (1944) influenced the attitudes of a generation of Americans on the race issue and established Myrdal as a major critic of American politics and culture. Walter Jackson explores how the Swedish Social Democratic scholar, policymaker, and activist came to shape a consensus on one of America's most explosive public issues.
In response to the massive bloodshed that defined the twentieth century, American religious radicals developed a modern form of nonviolent protest, one that combined Christian principles with new uses of mass media. Greatly influenced by the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi, these "acts of conscience" included sit-ins, boycotts, labor strikes, and conscientious objection to war. Beginning with World War I and ending with the ascendance of Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph Kip Kosek traces the impact of A. J. Muste, Richard Gregg, and other radical Christian pacifists on American democratic theory and practice. These dissenters found little hope in the secular ideologies of Wilsonian Progressivism, revolutionary Marxism, and Cold War liberalism, all of which embraced organized killing at one time or another. The example of Jesus, they believed, demonstrated the immorality and futility of such violence under any circumstance and for any cause. Yet the theories of Christian nonviolence are anything but fixed. For decades, followers have actively reinterpreted the nonviolent tradition, keeping pace with developments in politics, technology, and culture. Tracing the rise of militant nonviolence across a century of industrial conflict, imperialism, racial terror, and international warfare, Kosek recovers radical Christians' remarkable stance against the use of deadly force, even during World War II and other seemingly just causes. His research sheds new light on an interracial and transnational movement that posed a fundamental, and still relevant, challenge to the American political and religious mainstream.
From 1609 until well after the founding of the Republic, half of all the colonists who came to America did so under some form of involuntary labor. Author John van der Zee draws on original memoirs, newspapers, and pamphlets to re-create the life stories of a number of the remarkable men and women whose enshacklement and destitution paved the way for American freedom. From the narratives of convicts, redemptioners (who accepted servitude in exchange for transportation to America), and those who were "spirited away" (snatched against their will), van der Zee weaves a colorful "people's history" of colonial and Revolutionary times. In their own words and through their own eyes, we meet such men and women as the first labor organizer in America; the young nobleman whose memoirs inspired Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped; and a real-life Moll Flanders. The book also offers a surprising new interpretation of the Revolution as growing out of this widespread practice of servitude.--From publisher description.
Three voices. Three acts of defiance. One mass injustice. The story of camp as you’ve never seen it before. Japanese Americans complied when evicted from their homes in World War II -- but many refused to submit to imprisonment in American concentration camps without a fight. In this groundbreaking graphic novel, meet JIM AKUTSU, the inspiration for John Okada’s No-No Boy, who refuses to be drafted from the camp at Minidoka when classified as a non-citizen, an enemy alien; HIROSHI KASHIWAGI, who resists government pressure to sign a loyalty oath at Tule Lake, but yields to family pressure to renounce his U.S. citizenship; and MITSUYE ENDO, a reluctant recruit to a lawsuit contesting her imprisonment, who refuses a chance to leave the camp at Topaz so that her case could reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Based upon painstaking research, We Hereby Refuse presents an original vision of America’s past with disturbing links to the American present.
This book is about how we feel, how we understand, how we relate, and what we can do to improve ourselves. While all of us have a conscience, our consciences are not all-knowing nor always correct. However, our consciences help us sort out our values and philosophy, ethics and virtue, rights and responsibilities, and politics and relationships. Sentiments of an American Conscience: Showing society through many perspectives by Chris Arney provides ideas and reminders of the important elements of life in the forms of passages, snippets, quotes, and reflections. The book's topics range from liberty, equality, fairness, freedom, and democracy to technology, science, and mathematics and many subjects in between. Our world is in transition from its past focus on industrialization to a new emphasis on information. The central premise of the book is that as a nation in transition the US has become less capable in some ways and more competitive and greedy. Because of that, we need reminders on how we think and act to regain our competence and confidence with sufficient virtue and morality to take care of US citizens and to garner the cooperation and support from other countries in the world. The book's version of conscience considers formal institutions such as the military and education systems in the US along with American fascinations such as football, sports, religion, and politics. The reader will find an assortment of notions that at times confronts and embraces modern issues such as complexity, flatness, artificial intelligence, robots, networks, international relations, decision-making, and problem-solving. The book's conscience also reminds the reader of foundational issues and values embedded in the humanism of US democracy like freedom, liberty, equality, altruism, morality, diversity, tolerance, and other basic principles within American culture and society. As is the case with consciences, some ideas are farfetched, and others are more mundane and obvious. The sentiments and opinions are presented to make us think and reflect on ourselves and our country. Given the author's experiences in the military and teaching at the United States Military Academy, these topics are ones that capture the sentiments of the conscience and are used as examples of American culture, government, and organization. The author's perspectives as a mathematician and interdisciplinary scientist also affect the presentation, which is sometimes empirical and sometimes emotional. The author sees American democracy in need of modernization and human society in need of more cooperation and toleration As a former teacher of cadets who have opportunities to change and hopefully improve the world, Chris Arney is both idealistic and optimistic about the future trajectory of the United States and the world. Chris sees himself as a member of the once hopeful and now disappointing Woodstock Generation. He and the conscience reflect on the lost opportunities of his Baby Boomer generation and put their faith in the Millennials for the revitalization of the Woodstock spirit. The one American pastime that is a prime target of the conscience's wrath is big-time college football. The conscience warns of football's dangers and reveals the misguided emphasis of American education institutions on football's role in the educational demise of American students.
