Postwar Evangelical Social Concern

Postwar Evangelical Social Concern PDF Author: Miles S. Mullin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Christianity and politics
Languages : en
Pages : 1006

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Book Description

Postwar Evangelical Social Concern

Postwar Evangelical Social Concern PDF Author: Miles S. Mullin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Christianity and politics
Languages : en
Pages : 1006

Get Book Here

Book Description


Countercultural Conservatives

Countercultural Conservatives PDF Author: Axel R. Schäfer
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299285235
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
In the mid-twentieth century, far more evangelicals supported such “liberal” causes as peace, social justice, and environmental protection. Only gradually did the conservative evangelical faction win dominance, allying with the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and, eventually, George W. Bush. In Countercultural Conservatives Axel Schäfer traces the evolution of a diffuse and pluralistic movement into the political force of the New Christian Right. In forging its complex theological and political identity, evangelicalism did not simply reject the ideas of 1960s counterculture, Schäfer argues. For all their strict Biblicism and uncompromising morality, evangelicals absorbed and extended key aspects of the countercultural worldview. Carefully examining evangelicalism’s internal dynamics, fissures, and coalitions, this book offers an intriguing reinterpretation of the most important development in American religion and politics since World War II.

Apostles of Reason

Apostles of Reason PDF Author: Molly Worthen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190630515
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
In Apostles of Reason, Molly Worthen offers a sweeping history of modern American evangelicalism, arguing that the faith has been shaped not by shared beliefs but by battles over the relationship between faith and reason.

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.

God’s Law and Order

God’s Law and Order PDF Author: Aaron Griffith
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674249755
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Winner of a Christianity Today Book Award 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.

The Other Evangelicals

The Other Evangelicals PDF Author: Isaac B. Sharp
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 1467464090
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear “evangelical”? For many, the answer is “white,” “patriarchal,” “conservative,” or “fundamentalist”—but as Isaac B. Sharp reveals, the “big tent” of evangelicalism has historically been much bigger than we’ve been led to believe. In The Other Evangelicals, Sharp brings to light the stories of those twentieth-century evangelicals who didn’t fit the mold, including Black, feminist, progressive, and gay Christians. Though the binary of fundamentalist evangelicals and modernist mainline Protestants is taken for granted today, Sharp demonstrates that fundamentalists and modernists battled over the title of “evangelical” in post–World War II America. In fact, many ideologies characteristic of evangelicalism today, such as “biblical womanhood” and political conservatism, arose only in reaction to the popularity of evangelical feminism and progressivism. Eventually, history was written by the “winners”—the Billy Grahams of American religion—while the “losers” were expelled from the movement via the establishment of institutions such as the National Association of Evangelicals. Carefully researched and deftly written, The Other Evangelicals offers a breath of fresh air for scholars seeking a more inclusive history of religion in America.

American Evangelicals and the 1960s

American Evangelicals and the 1960s PDF Author: Axel R. Schäfer
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299293637
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
In the late 1970s, the New Christian Right emerged as a formidable political force, boldly announcing itself as a unified movement representing the views of a "moral majority." But that movement did not spring fully formed from its predecessors. American Evangelicals and the 1960s refutes the thesis that evangelical politics were a purely inflammatory backlash against the cultural and political upheaval of the decade. Bringing together fresh research and innovative interpretations, this book demonstrates that evangelicals actually participated in broader American developments during "the long 1960s," that the evangelical constituency was more diverse than often noted, and that the notion of right-wing evangelical politics as a backlash was a later creation serving the interests of both Republican-conservative alliances and their critics. Evangelicalism's involvement with—rather than its reaction against—the main social movements, public policy initiatives, and cultural transformations of the 1960s proved significant in its 1970s political ascendance. Twelve essays that range thematically from the oil industry to prison ministry and from American counterculture to the Second Vatican Council depict modern evangelicalism both as a religious movement with its own internal dynamics and as one fully integrated into general American history.

Facing West

Facing West PDF Author: David R. Swartz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019025081X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
In 1974 nearly 3,000 evangelicals from 150 nations met at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. Amidst this cosmopolitan setting and in front of the most important white evangelical leaders of the United States members of the Latin American Theological Fraternity spoke out against the American Church. Fiery speeches by Ecuadorian René Padilla and Peruvian Samuel Escobar revealed a global weariness with what they described as an American style of coldly efficient mission wedded to a myopic, right-leaning politics. Their bold critiques electrified Christians from around the world. The dramatic growth of Christianity around the world in the last century has shifted the balance of power within the faith away from traditional strongholds in Europe and the United States. To be sure, evangelical populists who voted for Donald Trump have resisted certain global pressures, and Western missionaries have carried Christian Americanism abroad. But the line of influence has also run the other way. David R. Swartz demonstrates that evangelicals in the Global South spoke back to American evangelicals on matters of race, imperialism, theology, sexuality, and social justice. From the left, they pushed for racial egalitarianism, ecumenism, and more substantial development efforts. From the right, they advocated for a conservative sexual ethic grounded in postcolonial logic. As Christian immigration to the United States burgeoned in the wake of the Immigration Act of 1965, global evangelicals forced many American Christians to think more critically about their own assumptions. The United States is just one node of a sprawling global network that includes Korea, India, Switzerland, the Philippines, Guatemala, Uganda, and Thailand. Telling stories of resistance, accommodation, and cooperation, Swartz shows that evangelical networks not only go out to, but also come from, the ends of the earth.

Evangelical Social Concern

Evangelical Social Concern PDF Author: George C. Hoffman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Church and social problems
Languages : en
Pages : 39

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Evangelicals and American Foreign Policy

Evangelicals and American Foreign Policy PDF Author: Mark R. Amstutz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199987653
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Gallons of ink have been spilled in examining the influence of Evangelicals on American politics. Yet the conversation--among pundits, politicians, and scholars--has focused overwhelmingly on hot-button domestic issues, such as abortion and gay marriage. In Evangelicals and American Foreign Policy, Mark Amstutz looks beyond our shores at Evangelicals' role in American foreign affairs. Writers have generally traced Evangelicals' political awakening to the 1970s or, at the earliest, to World War II. But Amstutz digs deeper, arguing that Evangelicals were active in foreign affairs since at least the nineteenth century, when Protestant missionaries spread throughout the world, gaining fluency in foreign languages and developing knowledge of distant lands. They were on the front lines of American global engagement--serving as agents of humanitarianism and cultural transformation. Indeed, long before anyone had heard of Woodrow Wilson, Evangelicals were America's first internationalists. In the postwar period, that expertise was put to more organized and sophisticated use, as Evangelicals sought to translate their belief that humans were created in God's image into a core principle of American foreign policy. Amstutz explores how this principle has been put into practice on issues ranging from global poverty to foreign policy towards Israel, paying close attention to Evangelicals' triumphs and failures on the global stage.