New York Times bestseller God's Politics struck a chord with Americans disenchanted with how the Right had co-opted all talk about integrating religious values into our politics, and with the Left, who were mute on the subject. Jim Wallis argues that America's separation of church and state does not require banishing moral and religious values from the public square. God's Politics offers a vision for how to convert spiritual values into real social change and has started a grassroots movement to hold our political leaders accountable by incorporating our deepest convictions about war, poverty, racism, abortion, capital punishment, and other moral issues into our nation's public life. Who can change the political wind? Only we can.
A faith that changed history: this is the story of William Wilberforce's struggle to abolish the Slave Trade and reform the morals of Great Britain. In God's Politician, Garth Lean provides an insightful and stirring account of how Wilberforce and his colleagues in the Clapham circle put their faith into action and changed the course of history. Their legacy was one of far-reaching moral renewal as well as testimony to the power of the individual to effect change in his world. Foreword by Charles W. Colson
This classic that has been inspiring and challenging readers to a spiritual adventure for over a century now gets an updated look for a new generation.
An incisive look at how evangelical Christians shaped—and were shaped by—the American criminal justice system. America incarcerates on a massive scale. Despite recent reforms, the United States locks up large numbers of people—disproportionately poor and nonwhite—for long periods and offers little opportunity for restoration. Aaron Griffith reveals a key component in the origins of American mass incarceration: evangelical Christianity. Evangelicals in the postwar era made crime concern a major religious issue and found new platforms for shaping public life through punitive politics. Religious leaders like Billy Graham and David Wilkerson mobilized fears of lawbreaking and concern for offenders to sharpen appeals for Christian conversion, setting the stage for evangelicals who began advocating tough-on-crime politics in the 1960s. Building on religious campaigns for public safety earlier in the twentieth century, some preachers and politicians pushed for “law and order,” urging support for harsh sentences and expanded policing. Other evangelicals saw crime as a missionary opportunity, launching innovative ministries that reshaped the practice of religion in prisons. From the 1980s on, evangelicals were instrumental in popularizing criminal justice reform, making it a central cause in the compassionate conservative movement. At every stage in their work, evangelicals framed their efforts as colorblind, which only masked racial inequality in incarceration and delayed real change. Today evangelicals play an ambiguous role in reform, pressing for reduced imprisonment while backing law-and-order politicians. God’s Law and Order shows that we cannot understand the criminal justice system without accounting for evangelicalism’s impact on its historical development.
In the 1960s liberation theology addressed itself to the problems of a continent racked by poverty and oppression. Comprising a network of localized communities and pastoral organizations, it soon became something much more than a doctrinal current. Liberationist Christianity defined itself in a multitude of social struggles, particularly in Brazil and Central America.
A brilliant account of religion's role in the political thinking of the West, from the Enlightenment to the close of World War II.The wish to bring political life under God's authority is nothing new, and it's clear that today religious passions are again driving world politics, confounding expectations of a secular future. In this major book, Mark Lilla reveals the sources of this age-old quest-and its surprising role in shaping Western thought. Making us look deeper into our beliefs about religion, politics, and the fate of civilizations, Lilla reminds us of the modern West's unique trajectory and how to remain on it. Illuminating and challenging, The Stillborn God is a watershed in the history of ideas.
In God's Own Party, Daniel K. Williams presents the first comprehensive history of the Christian Right, uncovering how evangelicals came to see the Republican Party as the vehicle through which they could reclaim America as a Christian nation.
Now includes discussion questions and contemplation exercises for individual study and reading groups. Ana Levy-Lyons, a public theologian who is equally at home in secular and religious worlds, offers a deeply perceptive reinterpretation of the Ten Commandments for our modern lives. The Ten Commandments are a spiritual resource for social justice. A politically and spiritually brazen prescription for living, the Ten Commandments would turn our world upside down if we actually followed them. Far from being only ethical norms on which everyone already agrees or a remnant of a bygone oppressive era, the Commandments are actually countercultural practices. Today the Ten Commandments are a divisive part of American culture. Religious conservatives champion them, even if they don't always practice them. Religious liberals and the nonreligious may bristle at what they perceive as antiquated moral restrictions. But, this ancient code still has vital contemporary relevance. Rev. Levy-Lyons explores ways the Commandments bring us meaning, illuminate our values, and help us navigate through the turbulent waters of social injustice, environmental crises, and societal inequity. No Other Gods looks at each Commandment in new ways, moving beyond interpersonal morality to the global economy and our hyper-connected age. From the first, You Shall Have No Other Gods Besides Me (Dethrone the Modern Deities of Political, Social, and Corporate Power), to the tenth Do Not Covet (Practice Your Liberation-You Have Enough, You Are Enough)-and all those in between-she underscores how the Commandments can produce a bold spiritual consciousness. Whether you are deeply religious or spiritual-but-not-religious, learn how the Ten Commandments can guide you to resist injustice, heal our earth, and find personal dignity amid the free-for-alls of modern life. "We don't have to invent a bunch of new practices for a meaningful way to live out our spirituality and social justice politics," says Levy-Lyons. "There is a perfectly good set of ten of them, all ready to go, with as much progressive firepower as any of us can handle, that has existed for some three thousand years."
The religious imagination of the Greeks, Robert Garland observes, was populated by divine beings whose goodwill could not be counted upon, and worshipers faced a heavy burden of choice among innumerable deities to whom they might offer their devotion. These deities--and Athenian polytheism itself--remained in constant flux as cults successively came into favor and waned. Examining the means through which the Athenians established and marketed cults, this handsomely illustrated book is the first to illuminate the full range of motives--political and economic, as well as spiritual--that prompted them to introduce new gods.