Saving Souls, Serving Society

Saving Souls, Serving Society PDF Author: Heidi Rolland Unruh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198036574
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Recent years have seen unprecedented attention to faith-based institutions as agents of social change, spurred in part by cuts in public funding for social services and accompanied by controversy about the separation of church and state. The debate over faith-based initiatives has highlighted a small but growing segment of churches committed to both saving souls and serving society. What distinguishes faith-based from secular activism? How do religious organizations express their religious identity in the context of social services? How do faith-based service providers interpret the connection between spiritual methodologies and socioeconomic outcomes? How does faith motivate and give meaning to social ministry? Drawing on case studies of fifteen Philadelphia-area Protestant churches with active outreach, Saving Souls, Serving Society seeks to answer these and other pressing questions surrounding the religious dynamics of social ministry. While church-based programs often look similar to secular ones in terms of goods or services rendered, they may show significant differences in terms of motivations, desired outcomes, and interpretations of meaning. Church-based programs also differ from one another in terms of how they relate evangelism to their social outreach agenda. Heidi Rolland Unruh and Ronald J. Sider explore how churches navigate the tension between their spiritual mission and the constraints on evangelism in the context of social services. The authors examine the potential contribution of religious dynamics to social outcomes as well as the relationship between mission orientations and social capital. Unruh and Sider introduce a new vocabulary for describing the religious components and spiritual meanings embedded in social action, and provide a typology of faith-based organizations and programs. Their analysis yields a framework for Protestant mission orientations that makes room for the diverse ways that churches interrelate spiritual witness and social compassion. Based on their observations, the authors offer a constructive approach to church-state partnerships and provide a far more objective understanding of faith-based social services than previously available.

Saving Souls, Serving Society

Saving Souls, Serving Society PDF Author: Heidi Rolland Unruh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198036574
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book Here

Book Description
Recent years have seen unprecedented attention to faith-based institutions as agents of social change, spurred in part by cuts in public funding for social services and accompanied by controversy about the separation of church and state. The debate over faith-based initiatives has highlighted a small but growing segment of churches committed to both saving souls and serving society. What distinguishes faith-based from secular activism? How do religious organizations express their religious identity in the context of social services? How do faith-based service providers interpret the connection between spiritual methodologies and socioeconomic outcomes? How does faith motivate and give meaning to social ministry? Drawing on case studies of fifteen Philadelphia-area Protestant churches with active outreach, Saving Souls, Serving Society seeks to answer these and other pressing questions surrounding the religious dynamics of social ministry. While church-based programs often look similar to secular ones in terms of goods or services rendered, they may show significant differences in terms of motivations, desired outcomes, and interpretations of meaning. Church-based programs also differ from one another in terms of how they relate evangelism to their social outreach agenda. Heidi Rolland Unruh and Ronald J. Sider explore how churches navigate the tension between their spiritual mission and the constraints on evangelism in the context of social services. The authors examine the potential contribution of religious dynamics to social outcomes as well as the relationship between mission orientations and social capital. Unruh and Sider introduce a new vocabulary for describing the religious components and spiritual meanings embedded in social action, and provide a typology of faith-based organizations and programs. Their analysis yields a framework for Protestant mission orientations that makes room for the diverse ways that churches interrelate spiritual witness and social compassion. Based on their observations, the authors offer a constructive approach to church-state partnerships and provide a far more objective understanding of faith-based social services than previously available.

Saving Souls, Serving Society

Saving Souls, Serving Society PDF Author: Heidi Rolland Unruh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195161556
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
As public funding for social services has been slashed, there has arisen an unprecedented interest in the potential (and dangers) of faith-based institutions as agents of social change. This text seeks to answer pressing questions surrounding this important and controversial issue.

Religiously Affiliated Agencies: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide

Religiously Affiliated Agencies: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide PDF Author: Oxford University Press
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199802599
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 22

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Book Description
This ebook is a selective guide designed to help scholars and students of social work find reliable sources of information by directing them to the best available scholarly materials in whatever form or format they appear from books, chapters, and journal articles to online archives, electronic data sets, and blogs. Written by a leading international authority on the subject, the ebook provides bibliographic information supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult and editorial commentary to make it clear how the cited sources are interrelated related. A reader will discover, for instance, the most reliable introductions and overviews to the topic, and the most important publications on various areas of scholarly interest within this topic. In social work, as in other disciplines, researchers at all levels are drowning in potentially useful scholarly information, and this guide has been created as a tool for cutting through that material to find the exact source you need. This ebook is a static version of an article from Oxford Bibliographies Online: Social Work, a dynamic, continuously updated, online resource designed to provide authoritative guidance through scholarship and other materials relevant to the study and practice of social work. Oxford Bibliographies Online covers most subject disciplines within the social science and humanities, for more information visit www.aboutobo.com.

Air Force Chaplains, 1971-1980

Air Force Chaplains, 1971-1980 PDF Author: John Eliot Groh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chaplains
Languages : en
Pages : 776

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Book Description


Religion and Social Development in Post-apartheid South Africa

Religion and Social Development in Post-apartheid South Africa PDF Author: Ignatius Swart
Publisher: AFRICAN SUN MeDIA
ISBN: 1920338314
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 541

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Book Description
ÿ ?[It] reflects original research and contributes to new developments in the field of theology and religion with regard to its developmental role within a transformation context. The book may easily stand out in future as seminal in the way that it promoted the social development debate of the church and its organisational structures from an interdisciplinary focus.? ? Prof Antoinette Lombard Department of Social Work and Criminology University of Pretoria

Not by Faith Alone

Not by Faith Alone PDF Author: Julie Adkins
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739146580
Category : Faith-based human services
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
This volume builds on the existing ethnographic literature on faith-based development internationally to offer a fresh and sophisticated analysis of faith-based organizations in the United States. The case studies included offer starting points for expanded discussions on the meaning of 'faith-based' development, the differences between faith-based and secular development approaches, the influence of faith-orientation on program formulation and delivery, and whether faith-based organizations can offer more efficient and effective solutions to structural inequality and poverty alleviation.

Air Force Chaplains: Air Force chaplains, 1971-1980, by John E. Groh

Air Force Chaplains: Air Force chaplains, 1971-1980, by John E. Groh PDF Author: United States. Air Force. Office of the Chief of Chaplains
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Government publications
Languages : en
Pages : 774

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Book Description


Religion

Religion PDF Author: Christian Smith
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191646
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
A groundbreaking new theory of religion Religion remains an important influence in the world today, yet the social sciences are still not adequately equipped to understand and explain it. This book advances an innovative theory of religion that goes beyond the problematic theoretical paradigms of the past. Drawing on the philosophy of critical realism and personalist social theory, Christian Smith explores why humans are religious in the first place—uniquely so as a species—and offers an account of secularization and religious innovation and persistence that breaks the logjam in which religious scholarship has been stuck for so long. Certain to stimulate debate and inspire promising new avenues of scholarship, Religion features a wealth of illustrations and examples that help to make its concepts accessible to readers. This superbly written book brings sound theoretical thinking to a perennially thorny subject, and a new vitality and focus to its study.

Faith-Based Organizations and Social Welfare

Faith-Based Organizations and Social Welfare PDF Author: Paul Christopher Manuel
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331977297X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This volume examines the role and function of religious-based organizations in strengthening associational life in a representative sample of West European countries: newly democratized and long-established democracies, societies with and without a dominant religious tradition, and welfare states with different levels and types of state-provided social services. It asks how faith-based organizations, in a time of economic crisis, and with declining numbers of adherents, might contribute to the deepening of democracy. Throughout, the volume invites social scientists to consider the on-going role of faith-based organizations in Western European civil society, and investigates whether the concept of muted vibrancy aids our theoretical understanding.

Religion and Intimate Partner Violence

Religion and Intimate Partner Violence PDF Author: Nancy Nason-Clark
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190607211
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Intimate partner violence is a complex, ugly, fear-inducing reality for large numbers of women around the world. When violence exists in a relationship, safety is compromised, shame abounds, and peace evaporates. Violence is learned behavior and it flourishes most when it is ignored, minimized, or misunderstood. When it strikes the homes of deeply religious women, they are: more vulnerable; more likely to believe that their abusive partners can, and will, change; less likely to leave a violent home, temporarily or forever; often reluctant to seek outside sources of assistance; and frequently disappointed by the response of the religious leader to their call for help. These women often believe they are called by God to endure the suffering, to forgive (and to keep on forgiving) their abuser, and to fulfill their marital vows until death do us part. Concurrently, many batterers employ explicitly religious language to justify the violence towards their partners, and sometime they manipulate spiritual leaders who try to offer them help. Religion and Intimate Partner Violence seeks to navigate the relatively unchartered waters of intimate partner violence in families of deep faith. The program of research on which it is based spans over twenty-five years, and includes a wide variety of specific studies involving religious leaders, congregations, battered women, men in batterer intervention programs, and the army of workers who assist families impacted by abuse, including criminal justice workers, therapeutic staff, advocacy workers, and religious leaders. The authors provide a rich and colorful portrayal of the intersection of intimate partner violence and religious beliefs and practices that inform and interweave throughout daily life. Such a focus on lived religion enables readers to isolate, examine, and evaluate ways in which religion both augments and thwarts the journey towards justice, accountability, healing and wholeness for women and men caught in the web of intimate partner violence.