Christian Clergy in American Politics

Christian Clergy in American Politics PDF Author: Sue E. S. Crawford
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801875137
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
In recent decades, Christian clergy have ever more frequently had to decide whether to become involved in politics. When they do become involved, their influence can be substantial. In this book Sue E. S. Crawford, Laura R. Olson, and their coauthors explore the political choices clergy make and the consequences of these choices. Drawing on personal interviews and statistical data to place the actions of clergy in both their religious and secular contexts, the authors study mainline and evangelical Protestant, Catholic, and Mennonite communities. They examine the role of white, African American, and female religious leaders. And they address issues of local development, city government, and national and international politics. Contributors: Christi J. Braun, Boston University School of Law • Timothy A. Byrnes, Colgate University • James C. Cavendish, University of South Florida • Sue E. S. Crawford, Creighton University • Katie Day, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia • Melissa M. Deckman, Washington College • Paul A. Djupe, Denison University • Joel S. Fetzer, Central Michigan University • James L. Guth, Furman University • Ted G. Jelen, University of Nevada-Las Vegas • Laura R. Olson, Clemson University • James M. Penning, Calvin College • Mary R. Sawyer, Iowa State University • Corwin E. Smidt, Calvin College

Christian Clergy in American Politics

Christian Clergy in American Politics PDF Author: Sue E. S. Crawford
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801875137
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book Here

Book Description
In recent decades, Christian clergy have ever more frequently had to decide whether to become involved in politics. When they do become involved, their influence can be substantial. In this book Sue E. S. Crawford, Laura R. Olson, and their coauthors explore the political choices clergy make and the consequences of these choices. Drawing on personal interviews and statistical data to place the actions of clergy in both their religious and secular contexts, the authors study mainline and evangelical Protestant, Catholic, and Mennonite communities. They examine the role of white, African American, and female religious leaders. And they address issues of local development, city government, and national and international politics. Contributors: Christi J. Braun, Boston University School of Law • Timothy A. Byrnes, Colgate University • James C. Cavendish, University of South Florida • Sue E. S. Crawford, Creighton University • Katie Day, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia • Melissa M. Deckman, Washington College • Paul A. Djupe, Denison University • Joel S. Fetzer, Central Michigan University • James L. Guth, Furman University • Ted G. Jelen, University of Nevada-Las Vegas • Laura R. Olson, Clemson University • James M. Penning, Calvin College • Mary R. Sawyer, Iowa State University • Corwin E. Smidt, Calvin College

The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics

The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics PDF Author: Andrew R. Lewis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108417701
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Explains how abortion politics influenced a fundamental shift in conservative Christian politics, teaching conservatives to embrace rights arguments.

Pulpit and Politics

Pulpit and Politics PDF Author: Corwin E. Smidt
Publisher: Baylor University Press
ISBN: 1932792139
Category : Clergy
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Pulpit and Politics presents the most current and comprehensive examination of the religious beliefs and political behavior of American clergy at the advent of the new millennium. Based on data gathered during the 2000 Presidential election, this study examines the relationship between belief and behavior, theology and politics, religious commitments and social activism from African-American, Baptist, Jewish, Mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic and other religious groups. Pulpit and Politics is a treasure trove of historical, comparative and statistical information about the political behavior of America's clergy.

The Christian Right in American Politics

The Christian Right in American Politics PDF Author: John C. Green
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9781589014299
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
From the first rumblings of the Moral Majority over twenty years ago, the Christian Right has been marshalling its forces and maneuvering its troops in an effort to re-shape the landscape of American politics. It has fascinated social scientists and journalists as the first right-wing social movement in postwar America to achieve significant political and popular support, and it has repeatedly defied those who would step up to write its obituary. In 2000, while many touted the demise of the Christian Coalition, the broader undercurrents of the movement were instrumental in helping George W. Bush win the GOP nomination and the White House. Bush repaid that swell of support by choosing Senator John Ashcroft, once the movement's favored presidential candidate, as attorney general. The Christian Right in American Politics, under the direction of three of the nation's leading scholars in the field of religion and politics, recognizing the movement as a force still to be reckoned with, undertakes the important task of making an historical analysis of the Christian Right in state politics during its heyday, 1980 to the millennium. Its twelve chapters, written by outstanding scholars, review the impact and influence of the Christian Right in those states where it has had its most significant presence: South Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Maine, and Oregon and Washington. Since 1980, scholars have learned a good deal about the social characteristics, religious doctrine, and political beliefs of activists in and supporters of the Christian Right in these states, and each contribution is based on rigorous, dispassionate scholarship. The writers explore the gains and losses of the movement as it attempts to re-shape political landscapes. More precisely, they provide in-depth descriptions of the resources, organizations, and the group ecologies in which the Christian Right operates-the distinct elements that drove the movement forward. As the editors state, "the Christian Right has been engaged in a long and torturous 'march toward the millennium,' from outsider status into the thick of American politics." Those formative years, 1980-2000, are essential for any understanding of this uniquely American social movement. This rigorous analysis over many states and many elections provides the clearest picture yet of the goals, tactics, and hopes of the Christian Right in America.

Christianity and American Democracy

Christianity and American Democracy PDF Author: Hugh Heclo
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674027051
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Exploring the tension at the heart of America’s culture wars, this is “a very fine book on a very important subject” (Mark A. Noll, author of The Civil War as a Theological Crisis). Christianity, not religion in general, has been important for American democracy. With this bold thesis, Hugh Heclo offers a panoramic view of how Christianity and democracy have shaped each other. Heclo shows that amid deeply felt religious differences, a Protestant colonial society gradually convinced itself of the truly Christian reasons for, as well as the enlightened political advantages of, religious liberty. By the mid-twentieth century, American democracy and Christianity appeared locked in a mutual embrace. But it was a problematic union vulnerable to fundamental challenge in the Sixties. Despite the subsequent rise of the religious right and glib talk of a conservative Republican theocracy, Heclo sees a longer-term, reciprocal estrangement between Christianity and American democracy. Responding to his challenging argument, Mary Jo Bane, Michael Kazin, and Alan Wolfe criticize, qualify, and amend it. Heclo’s rejoinder suggests why both secularists and Christians should worry about a coming rupture between the Christian and democratic faiths. The result is a lively debate about a momentous tension in American public life.

Moral Combat

Moral Combat PDF Author: R. Marie Griffith
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465094767
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
From an esteemed scholar of American religion and sexuality, a sweeping account of the century of religious conflict that produced our culture wars Gay marriage, transgender rights, birth control -- sex is at the heart of many of the most divisive political issues of our age. The origins of these conflicts, historian R. Marie Griffith argues, lie in sharp disagreements that emerged among American Christians a century ago. From the 1920s onward, a once-solid Christian consensus regarding gender roles and sexual morality began to crumble, as liberal Protestants sparred with fundamentalists and Catholics over questions of obscenity, sex education, and abortion. Both those who advocated for greater openness in sexual matters and those who resisted new sexual norms turned to politics to pursue their moral visions for the nation. Moral Combat is a history of how the Christian consensus on sex unraveled, and how this unraveling has made our political battles over sex so ferocious and so intractable.

The Evangelicals

The Evangelicals PDF Author: Frances FitzGerald
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439143153
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 607

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Book Description
* Winner of the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award * National Book Award Finalist * Time magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of the Year * New York Times Notable Book * Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2017 This “epic history” (The Boston Globe) from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Frances FitzGerald is the first to tell the powerful, dramatic story of the Evangelical movement in America—from the Puritan era to the 2016 election. “We have long needed a fair-minded overview of this vitally important religious sensibility, and FitzGerald has now provided it” (The New York Times Book Review). The evangelical movement began in the revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, known in America as the Great Awakenings. A populist rebellion against the established churches, it became the dominant religious force in the country. During the nineteenth century white evangelicals split apart, first North versus South, and then, modernist versus fundamentalist. After World War II, Billy Graham attracted enormous crowds and tried to gather all Protestants under his big tent, but the civil rights movement and the social revolution of the sixties drove them apart again. By the 1980s Jerry Falwell and other southern televangelists, such as Pat Robertson, had formed the Christian right. Protesting abortion and gay rights, they led the South into the Republican Party, and for thirty-five years they were the sole voice of evangelicals to be heard nationally. Eventually a younger generation proposed a broader agenda of issues, such as climate change, gender equality, and immigration reform. Evangelicals now constitute twenty-five percent of the American population, but they are no longer monolithic in their politics. They range from Tea Party supporters to social reformers. Still, with the decline of religious faith generally, FitzGerald suggests that evangelical churches must embrace ethnic minorities if they are to survive. “A well-written, thought-provoking, and deeply researched history that is impressive for its scope and level of detail” (The Wall Street Journal). Her “brilliant book could not have been more timely, more well-researched, more well-written, or more necessary” (The American Scholar).

Religion and Politics in the United States

Religion and Politics in the United States PDF Author: Kenneth D. Wald
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442225556
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
From marriage equality, to gun control, to immigration reform and the threat of war, religion plays a fascinating and crucial part in our nation's political process and in our culture at large. Now in its seventh edition, Religion and Politics in the United States includes analyses of the nation's most pressing political matters regarding religious freedom, and the ways in which that essential constitutional freedom situates itself within modern America. The book also explores the ways that religion has affected the orientation of partisan politics in the United States. Through a detailed review of the political attitudes and behaviors of major religious and minority faith traditions, the book establishes that religion continues to be a major part of the American cultural and political milieu while explaining that it must interact with many other factors to influence political outcomes in the United States.

Power Politics and the Missouri Synod

Power Politics and the Missouri Synod PDF Author: James C. Burkee
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451465389
Category : Conservatism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Power, Politics, and the Missouri Synod follows the rise of two Lutheran clergymen - Herman Otten and J. A. O. Preus - who led different wings of a conservative movement that seized control of a theologically conservative but socially and politically moderate church denomination (LCMS) and drove "moderates" from the church in the 1970s. The schism within what was then one of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States ultimately reshaped the landscape of American Lutheranism and fostered the polarization that characterizes today's Lutheran churches.

Kingdoms in Conflict

Kingdoms in Conflict PDF Author: Charles W. Colson
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 9780310397717
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
" ...Definitely worth reading" -Billy Graham "Colson's criticisms of the Religious Right are especially noteworthy...Colson's warnings echo a concern that religious conservatives would be reckless to ignore." -Richard N. Ostling, Religion Editor, Time "The timing could hardly be better for an author with a new book." -Newsweek "Kingdoms in Conflict speaks with wisdom and "guts" to the major issues of our day." -Charles R. Swindoll "Kingdoms in Conflict is a classic that belongs on every Christian's bookshelf." -Dr. James C. Dobson "This was a book waiting for Chuck Colson to write. As no other evangelical author can, Colson brings his political experience, thoroughly changed life, and lucid writing together at just the right time..." -Moody Monthly "The arguments- church-state, the correct admixture between the two- are familiar grist for controversial mills, but Colson does wonderful theatrical instruction in his book..." - William F. Buckley, Jr. "In Kingdoms in Conflict Charles W. Colson masterfully weds the two subjects he knows best- politics and Christian faith." -Russell Chandler "Kingdoms in Conflict offers a welcomed new insight into an age-old question." - Jack Anderson "One cannot be a passive reader of Chuck Colson's Kingdoms in Conflict." -Mark O. Hatfield