The Political Origins of Religious Liberty

The Political Origins of Religious Liberty PDF Author: Anthony Gill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521848145
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Throughout history, governments have attempted to control religious organizations and limit religious freedom. However, over the past two hundred years the world has witnessed an expansion of religious liberty. What explains this rise in religious freedom? Anthony Gill argues that political leaders are more likely to allow religious freedom when such laws affect their ability to stay in power, and/or when religious freedoms are seen to enhance the economic well-being of their country.

The Political Origins of Religious Liberty

The Political Origins of Religious Liberty PDF Author: Anthony Gill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521848145
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book

Book Description
Throughout history, governments have attempted to control religious organizations and limit religious freedom. However, over the past two hundred years the world has witnessed an expansion of religious liberty. What explains this rise in religious freedom? Anthony Gill argues that political leaders are more likely to allow religious freedom when such laws affect their ability to stay in power, and/or when religious freedoms are seen to enhance the economic well-being of their country.

Political Religion and Religious Politics

Political Religion and Religious Politics PDF Author: David S. Gutterman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136339272
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
Profound demographic and cultural changes in American society over the last half century have unsettled conventional understandings of the relationship between religious and political identity. The "Protestant mainline" continues to shrink in numbers, as well as in cultural and political influence. The growing population of American Muslims seek both acceptance and a firmer footing within the nation’s cultural and political imagination. Debates over contraception, same-sex relationships, and "prosperity" preaching continue to roil the waters of American cultural politics. Perhaps most remarkably, the fastest-rising religious demographic in most public opinion surveys is "none," giving rise to a new demographic that Gutterman and Murphy name "Religious Independents." Even the evangelical movement, which powerfully re-entered American politics during the 1970s and 1980s and retains a strong foothold in the Republican Party, has undergone generational turnover and no longer represents a monolithic political bloc. Political Religion and Religious Politics:Navigating Identities in the United States explores the multifaceted implications of these developments by examining a series of contentious issues in contemporary American politics. Gutterman and Murphy take up the controversy over the "Ground Zero Mosque," the political and legal battles over the contraception mandate in the Affordable Health Care Act and the ensuing Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision, the national response to the Great Recession and the rise in economic inequality, and battles over the public school curricula, seizing on these divisive challenges as opportunities to illuminate the changing role of religion in American public life. Placing the current moment into historical perspective, and reflecting on the possible future of religion, politics, and cultural conflict in the United States, Gutterman and Murphy explore the cultural and political dynamics of evolving notions of national and religious identity. They argue that questions of religion are questions of identity -- personal, social, and political identity -- and that they function in many of the same ways as race, sex, gender, and ethnicity in the construction of personal meaning, the fostering of solidarity with others, and the conflict they can occasion in the political arena.

Religious Convictions and Political Choice

Religious Convictions and Political Choice PDF Author: Kent Greenawalt
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195067797
Category : Religion and politics
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
How far may Americans properly rely on their religious beliefs when they make and defend political decisions? For example, are ordinary citizens or legislators doing something wrong when they consciously allow their decisions respecting abortion laws to be determined by their religious views? Despite its intense contemporary relevance, the full dimensions of this issue have until now not been thoroughly examined. Religious Convictions and Political Choice represents the first attempt to fill this gap. Beginning with an account of the basic premises of our liberal democracy, Greenawalt moves to a comparison between rational secular grounds of decision and grounds based on religious convictions. He discusses particular issues such as animal rights and abortion, showing how religious convictions can bear on an individual's decisions about them, and inquires whether reliance on such convictions is compatible with liberal democratic premises. In conclusion, he argues that citizens cannot be expected to rely exclusively on rational, secular grounds.

Politics in a Religious World

Politics in a Religious World PDF Author: Eric Patterson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441108653
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
The book discusses the lack of religious understanding in US foreign policy, examining why the US chooses to avoid the religious aspects of international affairs.

Climate Politics and the Power of Religion

Climate Politics and the Power of Religion PDF Author: Evan Berry
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253059070
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
How does our faith affect how we think about and respond to climate change? Climate Politics and the Power of Religion is an edited collection that explores the diverse ways that religion shapes climate politics at the local, national, and international levels. Drawing on case studies from across the globe, it stands at the intersection of religious studies, environment policy, and global politics. From small island nations confronting sea-level rise and intensifying tropical storms to high-elevation communities in the Andes and Himalayas wrestling with accelerating glacial melt, there is tremendous variation in the ways that societies draw on religion to understand and contend with climate change. Climate Politics and the Power of Religion offers 10 timely case studies that demonstrate how different communities render climate change within their own moral vocabularies and how such moral claims find purchase in activism and public debates about climate policy. Whether it be Hindutva policymakers in India, curanderos in Peru, or working-class people's concerns about the transgressions of petroleum extraction in Trinidad—religion affects how they all are making sense of and responding to this escalating global catastrophe.

From Politics to the Pews

From Politics to the Pews PDF Author: Michele F. Margolis
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022655581X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
One of the most substantial divides in American politics is the “God gap.” Religious voters tend to identify with and support the Republican Party, while secular voters generally support the Democratic Party. Conventional wisdom suggests that religious differences between Republicans and Democrats have produced this gap, with voters sorting themselves into the party that best represents their religious views. Michele F. Margolis offers a bold challenge to the conventional wisdom, arguing that the relationship between religion and politics is far from a one-way street that starts in the church and ends at the ballot box. Margolis contends that political identity has a profound effect on social identity, including religion. Whether a person chooses to identify as religious and the extent of their involvement in a religious community are, in part, a response to political surroundings. In today’s climate of political polarization, partisan actors also help reinforce the relationship between religion and politics, as Democratic and Republican elites stake out divergent positions on moral issues and use religious faith to varying degrees when reaching out to voters.

The Rise and Fall of the Religious Left

The Rise and Fall of the Religious Left PDF Author: L. Benjamin Rolsky
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231550421
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
For decades now, Americans have believed that their country is deeply divided by “culture wars” waged between religious conservatives and secular liberals. In most instances, Protestant conservatives have been cast as the instigators of such warfare, while religious liberals have been largely ignored. In this book, L. Benjamin Rolsky examines the ways in which American liberalism has helped shape cultural conflict since the 1970s through the story of how television writer and producer Norman Lear galvanized the religious left into action. The creator of comedies such as All in the Family and Maude, Lear was spurred to found the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way in response to the rise of the religious right. Rolsky offers engaged readings of Lear’s iconic sitcoms and published writings, considering them as an expression of what he calls the spiritual politics of the religious left. He shows how prime-time television became a focus of political dispute and demonstrates how Lear’s emergence as an interfaith activist catalyzed ecumenical Protestants, Catholics, and Jews who were determined to push back against conservatism’s ascent. Rolsky concludes that Lear’s political involvement exemplified religious liberals’ commitment to engaging politics on explicitly moral grounds in defense of what they saw as the public interest. An interdisciplinary analysis of the definitive cultural clashes of our fractious times, The Rise and Fall of the Religious Left foregrounds the foundational roles played by popular culture, television, and media in America’s religious history.

Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? PDF Author: Eric Kaufmann
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847651941
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Dawkins and Hitchens have convinced many western intellectuals that secularism is the way forward. But most people don't read their books before deciding whether to be religious. Instead, they inherit their faith from their parents, who often innoculate them against the elegant arguments of secularists. And what no one has noticed is that far from declining, the religious are expanding their share of the population: in fact, the more religious people are, the more children they have. The cumulative effect of immigration from religious countries, and religious fertility will be to reverse the secularisation process in the West. Not only will the religious eventually triumph over the non-religious, but it is those who are the most extreme in their beliefs who have the largest families. Within Judaism, the Ultra-Orthodox may achieve majority status over their liberal counterparts by mid-century. Islamist Muslims have won the culture war in much of the Muslim world, and their success provides a glimpse of what awaits the Christian West and Israel. Based on a wealth of demographic research, considering questions of multiculturalism and terrorism, Kaufmann examines the implications of the decline in liberal secularism as religious conservatism rises - and what this means for the future of western modernity.

The Righteous Mind

The Righteous Mind PDF Author: Jonathan Haidt
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307455777
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The acclaimed social psychologist challenges conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to conservatives and liberals alike—a “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself” (The New York Times Book Review). Drawing on his twenty-five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, Jonathan Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns. In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind.

Religious Politics and Secular States

Religious Politics and Secular States PDF Author: Scott W. Hibbard
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801899206
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
2011 Winner of the Charles H. Levine Memorial Book Prize of the International Political Science Association This comparative analysis probes why conservative renderings of religious tradition in the United States, India, and Egypt remain so influential in the politics of these three ostensibly secular societies. The United States, Egypt, and India were quintessential models of secular modernity in the 1950s and 1960s. By the 1980s and 1990s, conservative Islamists challenged the Egyptian government, India witnessed a surge in Hindu nationalism, and the Christian right in the United States rose to dominate the Republican Party and large swaths of the public discourse. Using a nuanced theoretical framework that emphasizes the interaction of religion and politics, Scott W. Hibbard argues that three interrelated issues led to this state of affairs. First, as an essential part of the construction of collective identities, religion serves as a basis for social solidarity and political mobilization. Second, in providing a moral framework, religion's traditional elements make it relevant to modern political life. Third, and most significant, in manipulating religion for political gain, political elites undermined the secular consensus of the modern state that had been in place since the end of World War II. Together, these factors sparked a new era of right-wing religious populism in the three nations. Although much has been written about the resurgence of religious politics, scholars have paid less attention to the role of state actors in promoting new visions of religion and society. Religious Politics and Secular States fills this gap by situating this trend within long-standing debates over the proper role of religion in public life.