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 Religious Right written by A.F. Alexander and published by A.F. Alexander. This book was released on 2012-04-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a deceptive movement to take over the government, courts, education system, media outlets, and American culture with stealth – and it's true. How is this possible? Find out in the pages of this expose, written by an insider who left the Religious Right fold, and now shares why they believe they are mandated to have dominion over every aspect of life in the United States. It reveals how their vision for America is not a democracy at all. – Understand the Religious Right network’s blueprint for America. – Meet the Christian Reconstructionists and Dominionists. – Understand the Seven Mountains Mandate, which provides the strategy for a successful takeover. – See why Quiverfull is the template for a proper, traditional family. – Finally, understand the attacks on public schools and teachers. – Find out who the leaders of the movement really are and their successful tactics. – This book explains the rewriting of our nation’s history. – Complete with interviews, research, and bibliography included. – Presentation is organized and systematic, while in plain English. – Shares how to get involved and make a difference in your community to protect your rights and preserve democracy.

Download or read book In Defense of the Religious Right written by Patrick Hynes and published by Thomas Nelson Inc. This book was released on 2006-07-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political consultant and commentator Patrick Hynes dispels common stereotypes and misapprehensions about the most powerful political constituency in the country while undertaking the most exhaustive effort yet to define what the Religious Right is, what its members believe, and why they are right.

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 In Defense of Faith written by David Brog and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious faith is under assault. In books and movies and on television, militant secular critics attack religion with a renewed vigor. These “new atheists” repeat a two-part mantra: that religious faith is hopelessly irrational and that those possessed of such faith are responsible for the hatred and bloodshed that has plagued humanity. Abandon religion, they urge us, and the world will at last live in peace. In Defense of Faith examines this proposition in the context of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian tradition and asserts that, far from encouraging hatred and violence, the Judeo-Christian tradition has easily been the most effective curb upon the dark defects of human nature and our best tool in the struggle for humanity. From the Christian activists who fought to stop the genocide of Indians in South America and their ethnic cleansing in North America, to the abolition of African slavery on both sides of the Atlantic, and on to modern human rights activists from Martin Luther King Jr. to the rock star Bono—In Defense of Faith rebuts the fashionable arguments against religion and presents the strong and lasting record of the Judeo-Christian idea. History has not been as kind to the atheist model: every time it is put to the test, we have reverted to the most base, violent instincts of our selfish genes.

Download or read book In Defense of Kant s Religion written by Chris L. Firestone and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-09 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chris L. Firestone and Nathan Jacobs integrate and interpret the work of leading Kant scholars to come to a new and deeper understanding of Kant's difficult book, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. In this text, Kant's vocabulary and language are especially tortured and convoluted. Readers have often lost sight of the thinker's deep ties to Christianity and questioned the viability of the work as serious philosophy of religion. Firestone and Jacobs provide strong and cogent grounds for taking Kant's religion seriously and defend him against the charges of incoherence. In their reading, Christian essentials are incorporated into the confines of reason, and they argue that Kant establishes a rational religious faith in accord with religious conviction as it is elaborated in his mature philosophy. For readers at all levels, this book articulates a way to ground religion and theology in a fully fledged defense of Religion which is linked to the larger corpus of Kant's philosophical enterprise.

Download or read book Redeemer written by Randall Balmer and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A religious biography of Jimmy Carter, the controversial president whose political rise and fall coincided with the eclipse of Christian progressivism and the emergence of the Religious Right. Evangelical Christianity and conservative politics are today seen as inseparable. But when Jimmy Carter, a Democrat and a born-again Christian, won the presidency in 1976, he owed his victory in part to American evangelicals, who responded to his open religiosity and his rejection of the moral bankruptcy of the Nixon Administration. Carter, running as a representative of the New South, articulated a progressive strand of American Christianity that championed liberal ideals, racial equality, and social justice -- one that has almost been forgotten since. In Redeemer, acclaimed religious historian Randall Balmer reveals how the rise and fall of Jimmy Carter's political fortunes mirrored the transformation of American religious politics. From his beginnings as a humble peanut farmer to the galvanizing politician who rode a reenergized religious movement into the White House, Carter's life and career mark him as the last great figure in America's long and venerable history of progressive evangelicalism. Although he stumbled early in his career-courting segregationists during his second campaign for Georgia governor -- Carter's run for president marked a return to the progressive principles of his faith and helped reenergize the evangelical movement. Responding to his message of racial justice, women's rights, and concern for the plight of the poor, evangelicals across the country helped propel Carter to office. Yet four years later, those very same voters abandoned him for Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party. Carter's defeat signaled the eclipse of progressive evangelicalism and the rise of the Religious Right, which popularized a dramatically different understanding of the faith, one rooted in nationalism, individualism, and free-market capitalism. An illuminating biography of our 39th president, Redeemer presents Jimmy Carter as the last great standard-bearer of an important strand of American Christianity, and provides an original and riveting account of the moments that transformed our political landscape in the 1970s and 1980s.

Download or read book Christians Against Christianity written by Obery M. Hendricks, Jr. and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely and galvanizing work that examines how right-wing evangelical Christians have veered from an admirable faith to a pernicious, destructive ideology. Today’s right-wing Evangelical Christianity stands as the very antithesis of the message of Jesus Christ. In his new book, Christians Against Christianity, best-selling author and religious scholar Obery M. Hendricks Jr. challenges right-wing evangelicals on the terrain of their own religious claims, exposing the falsehoods, contradictions, and misuses of the Bible that are embedded in their rabid homophobia, their poorly veiled racism and demonizing of immigrants and Muslims, and their ungodly alliance with big business against the interests of American workers. He scathingly indicts the religious leaders who helped facilitate the rise of the notoriously unchristian Donald Trump, likening them to the “court jesters” and hypocritical priestly sycophants of bygone eras who unquestioningly supported their sovereigns’ every act, no matter how hateful or destructive to those they were supposed to serve. In the wake of the deadly insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol, Christians Against Christianity is a clarion call to stand up to the hypocrisy of the evangelical Right, as well as a guide for Christians to return their faith to the life-affirming message that Jesus brought and died for. What Hendricks offers is a provocative diagnosis, an urgent warning that right-wing evangelicals’ aspirations for Christian nationalist supremacy are a looming threat, not only to Christian decency but to democracy itself. What they offer to America is anything but good news.

Download or read book We Gather Together written by Neil J. Young and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the interactions among evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons from the 1950s to the present day, We Gather Together recasts the story of the emergence of the Religious Right, showing that it was not a brilliant political strategy of compromise and coalition-building hatched on the eve of a history-altering election. Rather, it was the latest iteration of a much-longer religious debate that had been going on for decades. Evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons found common cause and pursued similar ends in debates about abortion, school prayer, the Equal Rights Amendment, and tax exemptions for religious schools, but they were far from a unified bloc, cracks in the alliance shaped the movement from the very beginning. This provocative book will reshape our understanding of the most important religious and political movement of the last 30 years.

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 In Defense of Human Rights written by Ari Kohen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-03-06 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The argument that religion provides the only compelling foundation for human rights is both challenging and thought-provoking and answering it is of fundamental importance to the furthering of the human rights agenda. This book establishes an equally compelling non-religious foundation for the idea of human rights, engaging with the writings of many key thinkers in the field, including Michael J. Perry, Alan Gewirth, Ronald Dworkin and Richard Rorty. Ari Kohen draws on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a political consensus of overlapping ideas from cultures and communities around the world that establishes the dignity of humans and argues that this dignity gives rise to collective human rights. In constructing this consensus, we have succeeded in establishing a practical non-religious foundation upon which the idea of human rights can rest. In Defense of Human Rights will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, philosophy, religious studies and human rights.

Download or read book The Rise and Fall of the Religious Left written by L. Benjamin Rolsky and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Fundamentals of Extremism written by Kimberley Blaker and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The politics, educational policies, and social values perpetuated by Christian fundamentalists are exposed in this critical perspective on the religious right's role in American society. Statistics and studies of the movement are offered that provide insight into the causes and characteristics of fundamentalism and its effects on minority groups including women, children, African Americans, gays, and lesbians. Essays from a variety of authors consider the path to theocracy, the effect of the theology of inerrancy on politics, and the state of fundamentalism in the United States after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Download or read book Whatever Happened to the Human Race written by Francis A. Schaeffer and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2021-08-16 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why Should Christians Care About the Dignity of Human Life? What determines whether a life has value? Does age, ability, or health? Scripture tells us that we are all created in the image and likeness of God, and Christians are called to defend the dignity of his creation. But as debates rage around issues from abortion to euthanasia, it can be difficult to speak up against opposing viewpoints. In Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, renowned theologian Francis A. Schaeffer and former US surgeon general C. Everett Koop, MD argue that society's view of life quickly deteriorates when we devalue God's creation through "anti-life" and "anti-God" practices. First written forty years ago, their perspectives are still relevant today as secular humanist issues, including euthanasia and infanticide, increasingly take hold in our culture. Their medical, historical, and theological insights empower readers to affirm a pro-life worldview and defend it confidently.

Download or read book Liberty for All written by Andrew T. Walker and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christians are often thought of as defending only their own religious interests in the public square. They are viewed as worrying exclusively about the erosion of their freedom to assemble and to follow their convictions, while not seeming as concerned about publicly defending the rights of Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and atheists to do the same. Andrew T. Walker, an emerging Southern Baptist public theologian, argues for a robust Christian ethic of religious liberty that helps the church defend religious freedom for everyone in a pluralistic society. Whether explicitly religious or not, says Walker, every person is striving to make sense of his or her life. The Christian foundations of religious freedom provide a framework for how Christians can navigate deep religious difference in a secular age. As we practice religious liberty for our neighbors, we can find civility and commonality amid disagreement, further the church's engagement in the public square, and become the strongest defenders of religious liberty for all. Foreword by noted Princeton scholar Robert P. George.

Download or read book To Change the Church written by Ross Douthat and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times columnist and one of America’s leading conservative thinkers considers Pope Francis’s efforts to change the church he governs in a book that is “must reading for every Christian who cares about the fate of the West and the future of global Christianity” (Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option). Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936, today Pope Francis is the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis’s stewardship of the Church, while perceived as a revelation by many, has provoked division throughout the world. “If a conclave were to be held today,” one Roman source told The New Yorker, “Francis would be lucky to get ten votes.” In his “concise, rhetorically agile…adroit, perceptive, gripping account (The New York Times Book Review), Ross Douthat explains why the particular debate Francis has opened—over communion for the divorced and the remarried—is so dangerous: How it cuts to the heart of the larger argument over how Christianity should respond to the sexual revolution and modernity itself, how it promises or threatens to separate the church from its own deep past, and how it divides Catholicism along geographical and cultural lines. Douthat argues that the Francis era is a crucial experiment for all of Western civilization, which is facing resurgent external enemies (from ISIS to Putin) even as it struggles with its own internal divisions, its decadence, and self-doubt. Whether Francis or his critics are right won’t just determine whether he ends up as a hero or a tragic figure for Catholics. It will determine whether he’s a hero, or a gambler who’s betraying both his church and his civilization into the hands of its enemies. “A balanced look at the struggle for the future of Catholicism…To Change the Church is a fascinating look at the church under Pope Francis” (Kirkus Reviews). Engaging and provocative, this is “a pot-boiler of a history that examines a growing ecclesial crisis” (Washington Independent Review of Books).

Download or read book Attack of the Theocrats written by Sean Faircloth and published by Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA). This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At no time in history has the United States had such a high percentage of theocratic members of Congress—those who expressly endorse religious bias in law. Just as ominously, especially for those who share the values and views of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, at no other time have religious fundamentalists effectively had veto power over one of the country's two major political parties. As Sean Faircloth argues in this deeply sobering yet highly engaging book, this has led to the crumbling of the country's most cherished founding principle—the wall of separation between church and state. While much of the public debate in the United States over church-state issues has focused on the construction of nativity scenes in town squares and the addition of "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, former politician and lobbyist Faircloth moves beyond the symbolism to explore the many ways federal and state legal codes privilege religion in law. He demonstrates in vivid detail how religious bias in law harms all Americans—financially, militarily, physically, socially, and educationally—and directs special attention to the outlandish words, views, and policy proposals of the most theocratic politicians. Sounding a much-needed alarm for all who care about the future direction of the country, Faircloth concludes by offering an inspiring 10-point vision of an America returned to its secular roots and by providing a specific and sensible plan for realizing this vision.