Download or read book Religion Politics and the Christian Right written by Mark Lewis Taylor and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Princeton theologian Mark Taylor here looks at the influence and stance of the right-wing Christian movement in the U.S. He questions its religious authenticity, its claim to be called Christian, and the ethical stands it has taken in national politics of the last ten years. The heart of Taylor's argument is Jesus himself. Using the latest New Testament scholarship on the historical Jesus and his tactic in relation to the Roman Empire, Taylor argues that Jesus' life and work and message are inherently political and driven by the need to show God's love for the poor, condemnation of the oppressor, and search for a reign of justice. These Christian hallmarks, Taylor asserts, stand as a critical corrective to a distorted Christianity that often dominates the U.S. political scene today.
Download or read book Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right written by Seth Dowland and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the last three decades of the twentieth century, evangelical leaders and conservative politicians developed a political agenda that thrust "family values" onto the nation's consciousness. Ministers, legislators, and laypeople came together to fight abortion, gay rights, and major feminist objectives. They supported private Christian schools, home schooling, and a strong military. Family values leaders like Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Bryant, and James Dobson became increasingly supportive of the Republican Party, which accommodated the language of family values in its platforms and campaigns. The family values agenda created a bond between evangelicalism and political conservatism. Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right chronicles how the family values agenda became so powerful in American political life and why it appealed to conservative evangelical Christians. Conservative evangelicals saw traditional gender norms as crucial in cultivating morality. They thought these gender norms would reaffirm the importance of clear lines of authority that the social revolutions of the 1960s had undermined. In the 1970s and 1980s, then, evangelicals founded Christian academies and developed homeschooling curricula that put conservative ideas about gender and authority front and center. Campaigns against abortion and feminism coalesced around a belief that God created women as wives and mothers—a belief that conservative evangelicals thought feminists and pro-choice advocates threatened. Likewise, Christian right leaders championed a particular vision of masculinity in their campaigns against gay rights and nuclear disarmament. Movements like the Promise Keepers called men to take responsibility for leading their families. Christian right political campaigns and pro-family organizations drew on conservative evangelical beliefs about men, women, children, and authority. These beliefs—known collectively as family values—became the most important religious agenda in late twentieth-century American politics.
Download or read book The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics written by Andrew R. Lewis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains how abortion politics influenced a fundamental shift in conservative Christian politics, teaching conservatives to embrace rights arguments.
Download or read book School Board Battles written by Melissa M. Deckman and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2004-02-27 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If there is a "culture war" taking place in the United States, one of the most interesting, if under-the-radar, battlegrounds is in local school board elections. Rarely does the pitch of this battle reach national attention, as it did in Kansas when the state school board—led by several outspoken conservative Christians—voted to delete evolution from the state's science curriculum and its standardized tests in August 1999. That action rattled not only the educational and scientific communities, but concerned citizens around the nation as well. While the movement of the Christian Right into national and state politics has been well documented, this is the first book to examine their impact on local school board politics. While the Kansas decision was short-lived, during the past decade in school districts around the country, conservative Christian majorities have voted to place limits on sex education, to restrict library books, to remove references to gays and lesbians in the classroom, and to promote American culture as superior to other cultures. School Board Battles studies the motivation, strategies, and electoral success of Christian Right school board candidates. Based on interviews, and using an extensive national survey of candidates as well as case studies of two school districts in which conservative Christians ran and served on local boards, Melissa M. Deckman gives us a surprisingly complex picture of these candidates. She reveals weaker ties to national Christian Right organizations—and more similarities between these conservative candidates and their more secular counterparts than might be expected. Deckman examines important questions: Why do conservative Christians run for school boards? How much influence has the Christian Right actually had on school boards? How do conservative Christians govern? School Board Battles is an in-depth and in-the-trenches look at an important encounter in the "culture war"—one that may well determine the future of our nation's youth.
Download or read book The New Christian Right written by Robert C. Liebman and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book of original essays provides an objective and enlightening analysis of the emergence and changing forms of the New Christian Right. The subject is in itself important in contemporary American life, but in addition The New Christian Right reexamines standard theories of social movements and the relationship between religion and politics in America today. The book presents findings from original research, including surveys, personal interviews with elites, analysis of financial documents, reanalysis of existing data, and analysis of direct-mail solicitations and other primary literature. The New Christian Right is balanced and objective rather than partisan and evaluative. Using non-technical and non-jargonistic language, the authors raise questions concerning the nature of religion, the role of status groups, and contemporary directions in American culture.
Download or read book If God Meant to Interfere written by Christopher Douglas and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-12 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of the Christian Right took many writers and literary critics by surprise, trained as we were to think that religions waned as societies became modern. In If God Meant to Interfere, Christopher Douglas shows that American writers struggled to understand and respond to this new social and political force. Religiously inflected literature since the 1970s must be understood in the context of this unforeseen resurgence of conservative Christianity, he argues, a resurgence that realigned the literary and cultural fields. Among the writers Douglas considers are Marilynne Robinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, N. Scott Momaday, Gloria Anzaldúa, Philip Roth, Carl Sagan, and Dan Brown. Their fictions engaged a wide range of topics: religious conspiracies, faith and wonder, slavery and imperialism, evolution and extraterrestrial contact, alternate histories and ancestral spiritualities. But this is only part of the story. Liberal-leaning literary writers responding to the resurgence were sometimes confused by the Christian Right’s strange entanglement with the contemporary paradigms of multiculturalism and postmodernism —leading to complex emergent phenomena that Douglas terms "Christian multiculturalism" and "Christian postmodernism." Ultimately, If God Meant to Interfere shows the value of listening to our literature for its sometimes subterranean attention to the religious and social upheavals going on around it.
Download or read book God s Own Party written by Daniel K. Williams and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2012-07-12 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In God's Own Party, Daniel K. Williams presents the first comprehensive history of the Christian Right, uncovering how evangelicals came to see the Republican Party as the vehicle through which they could reclaim America as a Christian nation.
Download or read book The Christian Left written by Lucas Miles and published by BroadStreet Publishing Group LLC. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The church has been invaded. The Christian Left unveils how liberal thought has entered America's sanctuaries, exchanging the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for the trinity of diversity, acceptance, and social justice. This in-depth look at church history, world politics, and pop culture masterfully exposes the rise and agenda of the Christian Left. Readers will learn how to: Identify and refute the lies of the Christian Left Uncover the meaning of love as Jesus defined it Navigate controversial subjects such as abortion, gender identity, and the doctrine of hell Gain confidence in upholding biblical values Come face-to-face with the person of Jesus, who is neither left nor right but the embodiment of truth and grace Be equipped with a strong understanding of issues facing the church today and empowered to elevate God's truth, justice, and wisdom.
Download or read book Piety Politics written by Reverend Barry W. Lynn and published by Forum Books. This book was released on 2006-10-03 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reverend Barry Lynn explains why the Religious Right has it all wrong. In the wake of the 2004 presidential election, the Religious Right insisted that George Bush had been handed a mandate for an ideology-based social agenda, including the passage of a “marriage amendment” to ban same-sex unions, diversion of tax money to religious groups through “faith-based initiatives,” the teaching of creationism in public schools, and restrictions on abortion. Led by an aggressive band of television preachers and extremist radio personalities, the Religious Right set its sights on demolishing the wall of separation between church and state. The Reverend Barry Lynn is a devout Christian, but this propaganda effort disturbs him deeply. He argues that politicians need to stop looking to the Bible to justify their actions and should consult another source instead: the U.S. Constitution. When the Founding Fathers of our great nation created the Constitution, they had seen firsthand the dangers of an injudicious mix of religion and government. They knew what it was like to live under the yoke of state-imposed faith. They drew up a model for the new nation that would allow absolute freedom of religion. They knew that religion, united with the raw power of government, spawns tyranny. Yet the Religious Right now seems distrustful of those principles inherent in the Constitution, viewing the separation of church and state only as a dangerous anti-Christian principle imposed upon our nation. In reality, the separation between church and state has been an important ally to religion: with the state out of the picture, hundreds of religions have grown and prospered. Religion doesn’t need the government’s assistance, any more than it is practical or appropriate for religious doctrine to be fostered in the government or taught in public schools. As an explicitly religious figure speaking out against the Religious Right, Lynn has incurred the wrath of such personalities as Pat Buchanan, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson, who once said Lynn was “lower than a child molester.” Lynn has continuously taken on these radicals of the Religious Right calmly and rationally, using their own statements and religious fervor to prove that when they attack the constitutionally mandated separation, they’re actually attacking freedom of religion. In Piety & Politics, the Reverend Barry Lynn continues the fight—educating Americans about what is at stake, explaining why it is crucial that we maintain the separation of church and state, and galvanizing us to defend the honor of our religious freedom.
Download or read book Native Americans and the Christian Right written by Andrea Smith and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2008-04 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVArgues that previous accounts of religious and political activism in the Native American community fail to account for the variety of positions held by this community./div
Download or read book Redeeming America written by Michael Lienesch and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 1993 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of Christian conservative religious and political beliefs as aspects of constructing and maintaining a world view. Considering a series of spheres from the self to the family, the economy, the polity and the world, analyzes published writings by a diversity of people adhering to the movement to reveal the overarching structure of the reality they inhabit. Paper edition (unseen), $17.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Not by Politics Alone written by Sara Diamond and published by Guilford Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this incisive work, Sara Diamond expands our understanding of the Christian Right beyond what is commonly known about its electoral clout, shedding light on the rarely seen boundaries and intersections where politics and culture converge. The book examines the web of grassroots cultural institutions, including publishing houses, law firms, broadcast stations, and church-centered community programs, that have helped conservative evangelical groups maintain their influence for over two decades. Highlighting the movement's complex alliance with the Republican Party, Diamond provides a rare behind-the-scenes look at the formation, organizing strategies, and heated internal debates of such powerful national organizations as Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition. She offers a richly textured analysis of how the rubric of "family values" has been used to infuse evangelical beliefs into local and national discussions around such disparate issues as childrearing, gay rights, abortion, public education, and funding for the arts.
Download or read book Religion and Politics Beyond the Culture Wars written by Darren Dochuk and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume reframes the narrative that has too often dominated the field of historical study of religion and politics: the culture wars. Influenced by culture war theories first introduced in the 1990s, much of the recent history of modern American religion and politics is written in a mode that takes for granted the enduring partisan divides that can blind us to the complex and dynamic intersections of faith and politics. The contributors to Religion and Politics Beyond the Culture Wars argue that such narratives do not tell the whole story of religion and politics in the modern age. This collection of essays, authored by leading scholars in American religious and political history, challenges readers to look past familiar clashes over social issues to appreciate the ways in which faith has fueled twentieth-century U.S. politics beyond predictable partisan divides and across a spectrum of debates ranging from environment to labor, immigration to civil rights, domestic legislation to foreign policy. Offering fresh illustrations drawn from a range of innovative primary sources, theories, and methods, these essays emphasize that our rendering of religion and politics in the twentieth century must appreciate the intersectionality of identities, interests, and motivations that transpire and exist outside an unbending dualistic paradigm. Contributors: Darren Dochuk, Janine Giordano Drake, Joseph Kip Kosek, Josef Sorett, Patrick Q. Mason, Wendy L. Wall, Mark Brilliant, Andrew Preston, Matthew Avery Sutton, Kathleen Sprows Cummings, Benjamin Francis-Fallon, Michelle Nickerson, Keith Makoto Woodhouse, Kate Bowler, and James T. Kloppenberg.
Download or read book Religion of Fear written by Jason C Bivins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-29 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conservative evangelicalism has transformed American politics, disseminating a sometimes fearful message not just through conventional channels, but through subcultures and alternate modes of communication. Within this world is a "Religion of Fear," a critical impulse that dramatizes cultural and political conflicts and issues in frightening ways that serve to contrast "orthodox" behaviors and beliefs with those linked to darkness, fear, and demonology. Jason Bivins offers close examinations of several popular evangelical cultural creations including the Left Behind novels, church-sponsored Halloween "Hell Houses," sensational comic books, especially those disseminated by Jack Chick, and anti-rock and -rap rhetoric and censorship. Bivins depicts these fascinating and often troubling phenomena in vivid (sometimes lurid) detail and shows how they seek to shape evangelical cultural identity. As the "Religion of Fear" has developed since the 1960s, Bivins sees its message moving from a place of relative marginality to one of prominence. What does it say about American public life that such ideas of fearful religion and violent politics have become normalized? Addressing this question, Bivins establishes links and resonances between the cultural politics of evangelical pop, the activism of the New Christian Right, and the political exhaustion facing American democracy. Religion of Fear is a significant contribution to our understanding of the new shapes of political religion in the United States, of American evangelicalism, of the relation of religion and the media, and the link between religious pop culture and politics.
Download or read book The Christian Right in American Politics written by John C. Green and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2003-05-06 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book With God on Our Side written by William Curtis Martin and published by Broadway. This book was released on 2005 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of the Religious Right is one of the most important political and cultural stories of our time. To many, this controversial movement threatens to upset the nation's delicate balance of religious and secular interests. To others, the Religious Right is valiantly struggling to preserve religious liberty and to prove itself as the last, best hope to save America's soul. In With God on Our Side --the first balanced account of conservative Christians' impact on post-war politics--William Martin paints a vivid and authoritative portrait of America's most powerful political interest group. Although its members now number between forty and sixty million people, the Religious Right has not always carried the tremendous--and growing--political clout it enjoys today. A hundred years ago, scattered groups of conservative Christians worked fervently to spread the Gospel, but their involvement in politics was marginal. Early in this century, however, a series of charismatic and ambitious leaders began transforming the movement; by the election of John F. Kennedy as our first Catholic president, the Religious Right had found its voice. Politics and religion began mixing as never before. From Richard Nixon's strategic manipulation of Graham's religious influence in the 1970s, to Ronald Reagan's association with Falwell's Moral Majority in the 1980s, to the Christian Coalition's emergence as a slick, sophisticated political machine, the line separating the pulpit from the presidency became increasingly blurred. Now, preachers such as Graham, Falwell, and Pat Robertson preside over ministries so vast and well organized that most politicians can ill afford to ignore their views--or lose their votes. In recent years, the Religious Right's political influence has propelled it into spheres beyond pure politics. Race relations, abortion and reproductive rights, school curricula, the nature and role of the family--conservative Christians have embraced all of these socially charged issues, and their activism has irrevocably altered the way America confronts its thorniest problems. How does a free society draw the line between Church and State without removing religious conviction from public life? What motivates individual Americans to do battle in the culture wars? Most importantly, when politicians and religiously motivated activists join forces, who holds the reins? Drawing on over 100 new interviews with key figures in the movement, William Martin brilliantly captures the spirit of the age as he explores both sides of this dramatic debate. Written in conjunction with the producers of the public television series of the same name, this landmark book is essential reading for all Americans--conservative and liberal, fundamentalist and atheist--who care about the spiritual health and political future of our country. From the Hardcover edition.
Download or read book God s Warriors written by Clyde Wilcox and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
