Religion and Progressive Activism

Religion and Progressive Activism PDF Author: Ruth Braunstein
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479823821
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
New stories about religiously motivated progressive activism challenge common understandings of the American political landscape. To many mainstream-media saturated Americans, the terms “progressive” and “religious” may not seem to go hand-in-hand. As religion is usually tied to conservatism, an important way in which religion and politics intersect is being overlooked. Religion and Progressive Activism focuses on this significant intersection, revealing that progressive religious activists are a driving force in American public life, involved in almost every political issue or area of public concern. This volume brings together leading experts who dissect and analyze the inner worlds and public strategies of progressive religious activists from the local to the transnational level. It provides insight into documented trends, reviews overlooked case studies, and assesses the varied ways in which progressive religion forces us to deconstruct common political binaries such as right/left and progress/tradition. In a coherent and accessible way, this book engages and rethinks long accepted theories of religion, of social movements, and of the role of faith in democratic politics and civic life. Moreover, by challenging common perceptions of religiously motivated activism, it offers a more grounded and nuanced understanding of religion and the American political landscape.

Religion and Progressive Activism

Religion and Progressive Activism PDF Author: Ruth Braunstein
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479823821
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Get Book Here

Book Description
New stories about religiously motivated progressive activism challenge common understandings of the American political landscape. To many mainstream-media saturated Americans, the terms “progressive” and “religious” may not seem to go hand-in-hand. As religion is usually tied to conservatism, an important way in which religion and politics intersect is being overlooked. Religion and Progressive Activism focuses on this significant intersection, revealing that progressive religious activists are a driving force in American public life, involved in almost every political issue or area of public concern. This volume brings together leading experts who dissect and analyze the inner worlds and public strategies of progressive religious activists from the local to the transnational level. It provides insight into documented trends, reviews overlooked case studies, and assesses the varied ways in which progressive religion forces us to deconstruct common political binaries such as right/left and progress/tradition. In a coherent and accessible way, this book engages and rethinks long accepted theories of religion, of social movements, and of the role of faith in democratic politics and civic life. Moreover, by challenging common perceptions of religiously motivated activism, it offers a more grounded and nuanced understanding of religion and the American political landscape.

Prophetic Activism

Prophetic Activism PDF Author: Helene Slessarev-Jamir
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 081474124X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
While the links between conservative Christians and politics have been drawn strongly in recent years, coming to embody what many think of as religious activism, the profoundly religious nature of community organizing and other more left-leaning justice work has been largely overlooked. Prophetic Activism is the first broad comparative examination of progressive religious activism in the United States. Set up as a counter-narrative to religious conservatism, the book offers readers a deeper understanding of the richness and diversity of contemporary religious activism. Helene Slessarev-Jamir offers five case studies of major progressive religious justice movements that have their roots in liberative interpretations of Scripture: congregational community organizing; worker justice; immigrant rights work; peace-making and reconciliation; and global anti-poverty and debt relief. Drawing on intensive interviews with activists at all levels of this work—from pastors and congregational leaders to local organizers and the executive directors of the national networks—she uncovers the ways in which they construct an ethical framework for their work. In addition to looking at predominantly Christian organizations, the book also highlights the growth of progressive activism among Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists who are engaged in reinterpreting their religious texts to support new forms of activism. Religion and Social Transformation series

Catholic Social Activism

Catholic Social Activism PDF Author: Sharon Erickson Nepstad
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479879223
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
A history of Catholic social thought Many Americans assume that the Catholic Church is inherently conservative, based on its stances on abortion, contraception, and divorce. Yet there is a longstanding tradition of progressive Catholic movements in the United States that have addressed a variety of issues from labor, war, immigration, and environmental protection, to human rights, women’s rights, exploitive development practices, and bellicose foreign policies. These Catholic social movements have helped to shift the Church from an institution that had historically supported incumbent governments and political elites to a Church that has increasingly sided with the vulnerable and oppressed. This book provides a concise history of progressively oriented Catholic Social Thought, which conveys the Catholic Church’s position on a variety of social justice concerns. Sharon Erickson Nepstad introduces key papal encyclicals and other church documents, showing how lay Catholics in the United States have put these ideas into practice through a creative and sometimes provocative political engagement. Nepstad also explores how these progressive movements have pressured the religious hierarchy to respond to pressing social issues, such as women’s ordination, conscription, and the morality of nuclear deterrence policies. Catholic Social Activism vividly depicts how these progressive movements have helped to shape the religious landscape of the United States, and how they have provoked controversy and debate among Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Progressive Evangelicals and the Pursuit of Social Justice

Progressive Evangelicals and the Pursuit of Social Justice PDF Author: Brantley W. Gasaway
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469617722
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Progressive Evangelicals and the Pursuit of Social Justice

Progressive & Religious

Progressive & Religious PDF Author: Robert Patrick Jones
Publisher: Robert P. Jones
ISBN: 0742562301
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
"In recent years, Americans have become frustrated with the troubled relationship between religion and politics: an exclusive claim on faith and values from the right and a radical divorce of faith from politics on the left. Now a new group of religious leaders is re-envisioning religion in public life and blazing a trail that goes beyond partisan politics to work for a more just and inclusive society. Progressive & Religious draws on nearly one hundred in-depth interviews with Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist leaders to tell the story of this dynamic, emerging movement." "Robert P. Jones explains how progressive religious leaders are tapping the deep connections between religion and social justice to work on issues like poverty and workers' rights, the environment, health care, pluralism, and human rights."--BOOK JACKET.

American Prophets

American Prophets PDF Author: Jack Jenkins
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 006293600X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
From one of the country’s most respected religion reporters, a paradigm-shifting discussion of how the Religious Left is actually the moral compass that has long steered America’s political debates, including today. Since the ascendancy of the Religious Right in the 1970s, common wisdom holds that it is a coalition of fundamentalist powerbrokers who are the “moral majority,” setting the standard for conservative Christian values and working to preserve the status quo. But, as national religion reporter Jack Jenkins contends, the country is also driven by a vibrant, long-standing moral force from the left. Constituting an amorphous group of interfaith activists that goes by many names and takes many forms, this coalition has operated since America’s founding — praying, protesting, and marching for common goals that have moved society forward. Throughout our history, the Religious Left has embodied and championed the progressive values at the heart of American democracy—abolition, labor reform, civil rights, environmental preservation. Drawing on his years of reporting, Jenkins examines the re-emergence of progressive faith-based activism, detailing its origins and contrasting its goals with those of the Religious Right. Today’s rapidly expanding interfaith coalition — which includes Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and other faiths — has become a force within the larger “resistance” movement. Jenkins profiles Washington political insiders—including former White House staffers and faith outreach directors for the campaigns of Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton—as well as a new generation of progressive faith leaders at the forefront today, including: Rev. William Barber II, leader of North Carolina’s Moral Mondays and co-chair of the nationwide Poor People’s campaign Linda Sarsour, co-chair of the Women’s March Rev. Traci Blackmon, a pastor near Ferguson, Missouri who works to lift up black liberation efforts across the country Sister Simone Campbell, head of the Catholic social justice lobby and the “Nuns on the Bus” tour organizer Native American “water protectors” who demonstrated against the Dakota Access Pipeline in Standing Rock Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop An exciting reevaluation of America’s moral center and an inspiring portrait of progressive faith-in-action, American Prophets will change the way we think about the intersection of politics and religion.

Religion, Humility, and Democracy in a Divided America

Religion, Humility, and Democracy in a Divided America PDF Author: Ruth Braunstein
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1789739519
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Strong religious convictions motivate citizens to engage in American public life, and are viewed as a source of closed-mindedness and a driver of political polarization. This book combines theoretical reflections on this tension, empirical studies examine how a range of religious actors balance conviction with humility in their political work.

Building a Heaven on Earth

Building a Heaven on Earth PDF Author: Albert L. Park
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082485327X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Why and how did Korean religious groups respond to growing rural poverty, social dislocation, and the corrosion of culture caused by forces of modernization under strict Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945)? Questions about religion's relationship and response to capitalism, industrialization, urbanization, and secularization lie at the heart of understanding the intersection between colonialism, religion, and modernity in Korea. Yet, getting answers to these questions has been a challenge because of narrow historical investigations that fail to study religious processes in relation to political, economic, social, and cultural developments. In Building a Heaven on Earth, Albert L. Park studies the progressive drives by religious groups to contest standard conceptions of modernity and forge a heavenly kingdom on the Korean peninsula to relieve people from fierce ruptures in their everyday lives. The results of his study will reconfigure the debates on colonial modernity, the origins of faith-based social activism in Korea, and the role of religion in a modern world. Building a Heaven on Earth, in particular, presents a compelling story about the determination of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), the Presbyterian Church, and the Ch'ŏndogyo to carry out large-scale rural movements to form a paradise on earth anchored in religion, agriculture, and a pastoral life. It is a transnational story of leaders from these three groups leaning on ideas and systems from countries, such as Denmark, France, Japan, and the United States, to help them reform political, economic, social, and cultural structures in colonial Korea. This book shows that these religious institutions provided discursive and material frameworks that allowed for an alternative form of modernity that featured new forms of agency, social organization, and the nation. In so doing, Building a Heaven on Earth repositions our understandings of modern Korean history.

Moral Minority

Moral Minority PDF Author: David R. Swartz
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812207688
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
In 1973, nearly a decade before the height of the Moral Majority, a group of progressive activists assembled in a Chicago YMCA to strategize about how to move the nation in a more evangelical direction through political action. When they emerged, the Washington Post predicted that the new evangelical left could "shake both political and religious life in America." The following decades proved the Post both right and wrong—evangelical participation in the political sphere was intensifying, but in the end it was the religious right, not the left, that built a viable movement and mobilized electorally. How did the evangelical right gain a moral monopoly and why were evangelical progressives, who had shown such promise, left behind? In Moral Minority, the first comprehensive history of the evangelical left, David R. Swartz sets out to answer these questions, charting the rise, decline, and political legacy of this forgotten movement. Though vibrant in the late nineteenth century, progressive evangelicals were in eclipse following religious controversies of the early twentieth century, only to reemerge in the 1960s and 1970s. They stood for antiwar, civil rights, and anticonsumer principles, even as they stressed doctrinal and sexual fidelity. Politically progressive and theologically conservative, the evangelical left was also remarkably diverse, encompassing groups such as Sojourners, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Evangelicals for Social Action, and the Association for Public Justice. Swartz chronicles the efforts of evangelical progressives who expanded the concept of morality from the personal to the social and showed the way—organizationally and through political activism—to what would become the much larger and more influential evangelical right. By the 1980s, although they had witnessed the election of Jimmy Carter, the nation's first born-again president, progressive evangelicals found themselves in the political wilderness, riven by identity politics and alienated by a skeptical Democratic Party and a hostile religious right. In the twenty-first century, evangelicals of nearly all political and denominational persuasions view social engagement as a fundamental responsibility of the faithful. This most dramatic of transformations is an important legacy of the evangelical left.

One Family Under God

One Family Under God PDF Author: Grace Yukich
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199988676
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
What does progressive religion reveal about American ''family values?'' Grace Yukich shows how, in an anti-immigrant climate, religious activists in the New Sanctuary Movement call on Americans to keep immigrant families together by ending deportation.