Download or read book The Theocons written by Damon Linker and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-09-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential history of the influential men who have spearheaded the movement to erode the wall separating church and state.Beginning as far-left radicals during the 1960s, the theocons in Damon Linker’s book (including Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and George Weigel) gradually transitioned to conservatism when they grew frustrated with the failures of the decade’s revolutionary goals. Linker shows how, starting during the Reagan administration, they worked to forge a Christian alliance between Evangelical Protestants and Conservative Catholics. By injecting the language of faith into political life, this movement appealed to a wide swath of voters and ultimately played a central role in the election of George W. Bush. The Theocons is an absorbing and revelatory look at an ideological crusade that every American needs to know about.
Download or read book False Prophets written by Richard Bonney and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2008 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After 9/11, the US response to Al-Qaeda - the Global War on Terror - was heavily influenced by the 'clash of civilizations' theory. This book identifies the twenty-first century proponents of the thesis, such as Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes, their links to the Bush government and their roles in exploiting hostility between the West and Islam.
Download or read book American Theocracy written by Kevin Phillips and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-03-21 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An explosive examination of the coalition of forces that threatens the nation, from the bestselling author of American Dynasty In his two most recent bestselling books, American Dynasty and Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips established himself as a powerful critic of the political and economic forces that rule—and imperil—the United States, tracing the ever more alarming path of the emerging Republican majority’s rise to power. Now Phillips takes an uncompromising view of the current age of global overreach, fundamentalist religion, diminishing resources, and ballooning debt under the GOP majority. With an eye to the past and a searing vision of the future, Phillips confirms what too many Americans are still unwilling to admit about the depth of our misgovernment.
Download or read book God is Back written by John Micklethwait and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the street and in the corridors of power, religion is surging worldwide. From Russia to Turkey to India, nations that swore off faith in the last century--or even tried to stamp it out--are now run by avowedly religious leaders. This book examines this new world, from exorcisms in São Paulo to religious skirmishing in Nigeria, to televangelism in California and house churches in China. Since the Enlightenment, intellectuals have assumed that modernization would kill religion--and that religious America is an oddity. As these authors argue, religion and modernity can thrive together, and America is becoming the norm. The failure of communism and the rise of globalism helped spark the global revival, but, above all, 21st century religion is being fueled by a very American emphasis on competition and a customer-driven approach to salvation, and its destabilizing effects can already be seen far from Iraq or the World Trade Center.--From publisher description.
Download or read book Richard John Neuhaus written by Randy Boyagoda and published by Image. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant biography of one of the intellectual mavericks of 20th Century Catholicism. Richard John Neuhaus (1936-2009) was one of the most influential figures in American public life from the Civil Rights era to the War on Terror. His writing, activism, and connections to people of power in religion, politics, and culture secured a place for himself and his ideas at the center of recent American history. William F. Buckley, Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith are comparable -- willing controversialists and prodigious writers adept at cultivating or castigating the powerful, while advancing lively arguments for the virtues and vices of the ongoing American experiment. But unlike Buckley and Galbraith, who have always been identified with singular political positions on the right and left, respectively, Neuhaus' life and ideas placed him at the vanguard of events and debates across the political and cultural spectrum. For instance, alongside Abraham Heschel and Daniel Berrigan, Neuhaus co-founded Clergy Concerned About Vietnam, in 1965. Forty years later, Neuhaus was the subject of a New York Review of Books article by Garry Wills, which cast him as a Rasputin of the far right, exerting dangerous influence in both the Vatican and the Bush White House. This book looks to examine Neuhaus's multi-faceted life and reveal to the public what made him tick and why.
Download or read book Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-04-26 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture: Between Cultural Memory and Transmediality analyzes the presence and function of traces of religious narratives in contemporary western culture, from the perspective of cultural memory studies and the transmedial study of narrative and art.
Download or read book A World Ignited written by Martin Tolchin and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2007-10-30 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War. Torture. Humiliation. Exploitation. Fear. Futility. The daily news is bleak. And it's not reserved to just one corner of the globe. World wide we are bombarded with graphic, emotionally-laden examples of inhumanity. These challenges to peace and freedom have become so commonplace that public and government responses are sedate or self-righteous. Meanwhile in more malevolent countries, manipulative politicians and sadistic terrorists have become skilled at exploiting this state of affairs. And we ignore it at our own peril. A World Ignited is about the surge of hatred that has swept the world in the last decade, its myriad causes, its toll in lives and human misery. This condition is amplified by modern communications technology, especially television and the Internet, and made more lethal by modern weaponry, including assault rifles and rocket launchers, and unprecedented tactics that strive for mass death and anguish. Anger is fed by economic disparities, religious and cultural wars that go back centuries, and deep-seated feelings of defeat and humiliation. The book takes aim at the Bush administration for its penchant for provocative and unilateral policies that have inspired unprecedented waves of anti-Americanism, but it also breaks new ground on both Bush's unsung role in combating worldwide anti-Semitism, and the role of the United States as the fount of hate on the Internet. The authors conclude this important and timely book in a positive manner with a look at the politics of hope and what can be done to halt, and even reverse, this cacophony of hate.
Download or read book The Great Transformation written by Karen Armstrong and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the world’s leading writers on religion and the highly acclaimed author of the bestselling A History of God, The Battle for God and The Spiral Staircase, comes a major new work: a chronicle of one of the most important intellectual revolutions in world history and its relevance to our own time. In one astonishing, short period – the ninth century BCE – the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity into the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China; Hinduism and Buddhism in India; monotheism in Israel; and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Historians call this the Axial Age because of its central importance to humanity’s spiritual development. Now, Karen Armstrong traces the rise and development of this transformative moment in history, examining the brilliant contributions to these traditions made by such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Ezekiel. Armstrong makes clear that despite some differences of emphasis, there was remarkable consensus among these religions and philosophies: each insisted on the primacy of compassion over hatred and violence. She illuminates what this “family” resemblance reveals about the religious impulse and quest of humankind. And she goes beyond spiritual archaeology, delving into the ways in which these Axial Age beliefs can present an instructive and thought-provoking challenge to the ways we think about and practice religion today. A revelation of humankind’s early shared imperatives, yearnings and inspired solutions – as salutary as it is fascinating. Excerpt from The Great Transformation: In our global world, we can no longer afford a parochial or exclusive vision. We must learn to live and behave as though people in remote parts of the globe were as important as ourselves. The sages of the Axial Age did not create their compassionate ethic in idyllic circumstances. Each tradition developed in societies like our own that were torn apart by violence and warfare as never before; indeed, the first catalyst of religious change was usually a visceral rejection of the aggression that the sages witnessed all around them. . . . All the great traditions that were created at this time are in agreement about the supreme importance of charity and benevolence, and this tells us something important about our humanity.
Download or read book The New Atheism written by Victor J. Stenger and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2009-12-04 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years a number of bestselling books have forcefully argued that belief in God can no longer be defended on rational or empirical grounds, and that the scientific worldview has rendered obsolete the traditional beliefs held by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The authors of these books—Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Victor J. Stenger—have come to be known as the "New Atheists." Predictably, their works have been controversial and attracted a good deal of critical reaction. In this new book, Victor J. Stenger, whose God: The Failed Hypothesis was on the New York Times bestseller list in 2007, reviews and expands upon the principles of New Atheism and answers many of its critics. He demonstrates in detail that naturalism—the view that all of reality is reducible to matter and nothing else—is sufficient to explain everything we observe in the universe, from the most distant galaxies to the inner workings of the brain that result in the phenomenon of mind. Stenger disputes the claim of many critics that the question of whether God exists is beyond the ken of science. On the contrary, he argues that absence of evidence for God is, indeed, evidence of absence when the evidence should be there and is not. Turning from scientific to historical evidence, Stenger then points out the many examples of evil perpetrated in the name of religion. He also notes that the Bible, which is still taken to be divine revelation by millions, fails as a basis for morality and is unable to account for the problem of unnecessary suffering throughout the world. Finally, he discusses the teachings of ancient nontheist sages such as Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Confucius, whose guidelines for coping with the problems of life and death did not depend upon a supernatural metaphysics. Stenger argues that this "way of nature" is far superior to the traditional supernatural monotheisms, which history shows can lead to a host of evils. The New Atheism is a well-argued defense of the atheist position and a strong rebuttal of its critics.
Download or read book Faith Based War written by T. Walter Herbert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American invasion of Iraq was largely governed by faith-based policy. The "shock and Awe" strategy, alongside a grossly mismanaged occupation, led to the loss of American lives. Faith-Based War presents an analysis of the imperialist Christian militarism behind the Bush Administration. America’s self-perception as God’s Chosen is examined and its catastrophic results detailed. The book offers an ethical, political and theological perspective on the perversion of Christian teaching behind the war in Iraq and the moral culpability of the American empire.
Download or read book Enlightenment Now written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Download or read book Blackwater written by Jeremy Scahill and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2011-05-26 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet Blackwater USA, the private army that the US government has quietly hired to operate in international war zones and on American soil. Its contacts run from military and intelligence agencies to the upper echelons of the White House; it has a military base, a fleet of aircraft and 20,000 troops, but since September 2007 the firm has been hit by a series of scandals that, far from damaging the company, have led to an unprecedented period of expansion. This revised and updated edition includes Scahill's continued investigative work into one of the outrages of our time: the privatisation of war.
Download or read book Orchestrating the Instruments of Power written by D. Robert Worley and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Orchestrating the Instruments of Power, Worley presents the theories underlying choices in grand strategy, the instruments of power spread across the departments and agencies of government, the mechanisms for orchestrating the instruments, the major reforms proposed, and the political instabilities that make the reforms either necessary or unwise.
Download or read book Political Ideologies written by Leon P. Baradat and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-25 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive yet accessible, this classic text, now in its thirteenth edition follows the evolution of political thought over 300 years. Organized chronologically, this text examines each ideology within a political, historical, economic, and social context. In addition to a thorough updating of examples and data, here’s what you’ll find in the new edition: Analyses of President Trump’s rollback of Obamacare, trade war with China, and changes to immigration, taxation, and environmental policy. Conservative justifications for supply-side economics and liberal rationale for drug legalization and "trigger-word" bans. Brexit’s effects on the Scottish independence movement. Resurgence of feminist protest, including the Me Too movement, alongside anarchist protest, following Trump’s election, including groups like Black Bloc and Antifa. China’s rising environmental and social problems, including unrest among its heavily controlled Uighur population. Cuba’s transfer of power from the Castros to President Díaz-Canel, and their fraught rapprochement with the U.S. Russia’s disinformation campaigns, and alternating brinksmanship and détente between Trump and North Korea’s Chairman Kim Jong-un. The ascent of the Alt-right in the U.S., and white supremacist influence on parties in the U.S. and Europe. The continuing salience of Islamism, the teetering Iran deal, and ongoing degeneration of the Arab Spring to the Islamist Winter.
Download or read book Liberation Theology written by Phillip Berryman and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the chaos that is Latin American politics, what role does the Catholic church play with regard to its clergy and its members? How does the church function in Latin America on an everyday, practical level? And how successful has the church been intervening in political matters despite the fact that Latin American countries are essentially Catholic nations? Philip Berryman addresses these timely and challenging issues in this comprehensive.Unlike journalistic accounts, which all too frequently portray liberation theology as an exotic brew of Marxism and Christianity or as a movement of rebel priests bent on challenging church authority, this book aims to get beyond these cliches, to explain exactly what liberation theology is, how it arose, how it works in practice, and its implications. The book also examines how liberation theology functions at the village or barrio level, the political impact of liberation theology, and the major objections to it posed by critics, concluding with a tentative assessment of the future of liberation theology. Author note: Phillip Berryman was a pastoral worker in a barrio in Panama during 1965-73. From 1976 to 1980, he served as a representative for the American Friends Service Committee in Central America. In 1980, he returned from Guatemala to the United States and now lives in Philadelphia.
Download or read book A Partisan Church written by Todd Scribner and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2015-03-26 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of Vatican II and the political and social upheavals of the 1960s, disruption and disagreement rent the Catholic Church in America. Since then a diversity of opinions on a variety of political and religious questions found expression in the church, leading to a fragmented understanding of Catholic identity. Liberal, conservative, neoconservative and traditionalist Catholics competed to define what constituted an authentic Catholic worldview, thus making it nearly impossible to pinpoint a unique "Catholic position" on any given topic. A Partisan Church examines these controversies during the Reagan era and explores the way in which one group of intellectuals - well-known neoconservative Catholics such as George Weigel, Michael Novak, and Richard John Neuhaus - sought to reestablish a coherent and unified Catholic identity.
Download or read book Christ s Subversive Body written by Olga V. Solovieva and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christ's Subversive Body offers a fascinating exploration of six historical examples of politically or culturally subversive usages of the body of Christ. Shining a light on the enabling potential of religious rhetoric, Solovieva examines how in moments of crisis or transition throughout Western history the body of Christ has been deployed in a variety of discourses, including recent neo- and theoconservative movements in the United States. Solovieva’s survey includes the iconoclastic polemics of Epiphanius at the moment of struggles for supremacy between the Roman state and the Christian church, the mystical theologico-political alchemy of an anonymous treatise circulated at the Council of Constance, Lavater’s counter-Enlightenment visions of the afterlife expressd through physiognomy, Dostoevsky’s refashioning of ethical communities, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s attempts to provoke the “scandal” of Jesus’s mission once more in the modern world, and the elaboration of a political theology subordinating democratic dissent to the higher unity of a corporately conceived “unitary executive” in early twenty-first-century America. Solovieva presents her findings not as an entry into theological or Christological debates but rather as a study in comparative discourse analysis. She demonstrates how these uses of Christ’s body are triggered by moments of epistemological, political, and representational crisis in the history of Western civilization.
