God and the Welfare State

God and the Welfare State

Author: Lew Daly

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2006-09-08

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0262262509

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Can religion cure poverty? The first book to explore the ideas about God and government behind the faith-based initiative. When the Bush administration's faith-based initiative was introduced in 2001 as the next stage of the "war on poverty," it provoked a flurry of protest for violating the church-state divide. Most critics didn't ask whether it could work. God and the Welfare State is the first book to trace the ideas behind George W. Bush's faith-based initiative from their roots in Catholic natural law theory and Dutch Calvinism to an American think tank, the Center for Public Justice. Comparing Bush's plan with the ways the same ideas have played out in Christian Democratic welfare policies in Europe, the author is skeptical that it will be an effective new way to fight poverty. But he takes the animating ideas very seriously, as they go to the heart of the relationship among religion, government, and social welfare. In the end Daly argues that these ideas—which are now entrenched in federal and state politics—are a truly radical departure from American traditions of governance. Although Bush's initiative roughly overlaps with more conventional conservative efforts to strengthen private power in economic life, it promises an unprecedented shift in the balance of power between secular and religious approaches to social problems and suggests a broader template for "faith-based governance," in which the state would have a much more limited role in social policy.


Claiming Society for God

Claiming Society for God

Author: Nancy Jean Davis

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 0253002346

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Claiming Society for God focuses on common strategies employed by religiously orthodox, fundamentalist movements around the world. Rather than employing terrorism, as much of post-9/11 thinking suggests, these movements use a patient, under-the-radar strategy of infiltrating and subtly transforming civil society. Nancy J. Davis and Robert V. Robinson tell the story of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Shas in Israel, Comunione e Liberazione in Italy, and the Salvation Army in the United States. They show how these movements build massive grassroots networks of religiously based social service agencies, hospitals, schools, and businesses to bring their own brand of faith to popular and political fronts.


For Good

For Good

Author: Samuel Wells

Publisher: Canterbury Press

Published: 2017-12-05

Total Pages: 111

ISBN-13: 1786220253

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It is often claimed that local churches provide a significant proportion of social care today. This important new study considers the reality of the church's involvement to offer compelling and concrete recommendations for the future. It proposes a transformational model of welfare that breaks free from the default approach of ‘eradicating the five giant evils – squalor, ignorance, want, idleness, and disease’. Instead the authors focus on fostering five assets – relationship, creativity, partnership, compassion, and joy – and empowering people to regain control of their lives.


God's Economy

God's Economy

Author: Lew Daly

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com

Published: 2010-10

Total Pages: 666

ISBN-13: 145960587X

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President Obama has signaled a sharp break from many Bush Administration policies, but he remains committed to federal support for religious social service providers. Like George W. Bush's faith-based initiative, though, Obama's version of the policy has generated loud criticism - from both sides of the aisle - even as the communities that stand...


The New Christian Right

The New Christian Right

Author: Robert C. Liebman

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published:

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780202367484

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This book of original essays provides an objective and enlightening analysis of the emergence and changing forms of the New Christian Right. The subject is in itself important in contemporary American life, but in addition The New Christian Right reexamines standard theories of social movements and the relationship between religion and politics in America today. The book presents findings from original research, including surveys, personal interviews with elites, analysis of financial documents, reanalysis of existing data, and analysis of direct-mail solicitations and other primary literature. The New Christian Right is balanced and objective rather than partisan and evaluative. Using non-technical and non-jargonistic language, the authors raise questions concerning the nature of religion, the role of status groups, and contemporary directions in American culture.


How the West Really Lost God

How the West Really Lost God

Author: Mary Eberstadt

Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press

Published: 2013-04-24

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1599473798

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In this magisterial work, leading cultural critic Mary Eberstadt delivers an influential new theory about the decline of religion in the Western world. The conventional wisdom is that the West first experienced religious decline, followed by the decline of the family. Eberstadt turns this standard account on its head. Marshaling an impressive array of research, from fascinating historical data on family decline in pre-Revolutionary France to contemporary popular culture both in the United States and Europe, Eberstadt shows the reverse is also true: the undermining of the family has further undermined Christianity itself. Drawing on sociology, history, demography, theology, literature, and many other sources, Eberstadt shows that family decline and religious decline have gone hand in hand in the Western world in a way that has not been understood before—that they are, as she puts it in a striking new image summarizing the book’s thesis, “the double helix of society, each dependent on the strength of the other for successful reproduction.” In sobering final chapters, Eberstadt then lays out the enormous ramifications of the mutual demise of family and faith in the West. While it is fashionable in some circles to applaud the decline of both religion and the nuclear family, there are, as Eberstadt reveals, enormous social, economic, civic, and other costs attendant on both declines. Her conclusion considers this compelling question: whether the economic and demographic crisis now roiling Europe and spreading to America will have the unintentional result of reviving the family as the most viable alternative to the failed welfare state—fallout that could also lay the groundwork for a religious revival as well. How the West Really Lost God is a startlingly original account of how secularization happens and a sweeping brief about why everyone should care. A book written for agnostics as well as believers, atheists as well as “none of the above,” it will permanently change the way every reader understands the two institutions that have hitherto undergirded Western civilization as we know it—family and faith—and the fundamental nature of the relationship between those two pillars of history.


God and the State

God and the State

Author: Michael Bakunin

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2012-09-19

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 0486119653

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A founder of modern philosophical anarchism presents a clear introduction to anarchist thought and a manifesto of atheism. This influential work offers a mind-opening experience for even the most skeptical readers.


God is Back

God is Back

Author: John Micklethwait

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 9781594202131

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On the street and in the corridors of power, religion is surging worldwide. From Russia to Turkey to India, nations that swore off faith in the last century--or even tried to stamp it out--are now run by avowedly religious leaders. This book examines this new world, from exorcisms in São Paulo to religious skirmishing in Nigeria, to televangelism in California and house churches in China. Since the Enlightenment, intellectuals have assumed that modernization would kill religion--and that religious America is an oddity. As these authors argue, religion and modernity can thrive together, and America is becoming the norm. The failure of communism and the rise of globalism helped spark the global revival, but, above all, 21st century religion is being fueled by a very American emphasis on competition and a customer-driven approach to salvation, and its destabilizing effects can already be seen far from Iraq or the World Trade Center.--From publisher description.


A Life of One's Own

A Life of One's Own

Author: David Kelley

Publisher: Cato Institute

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 9781882577712

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The welfare state rests on the assumption that people have rights to food, shelter, health care, retirement income, and other goods provided by the government. David Kelley examines the historical origins of that assumption, and the rationale used to support it today.