Religion and Progressive Activism: New Stories About Faith and Politics
Ruth Braunstein, Todd Nicholas Fuist, and Rhys H. Williams
Abstract
This volume focuses on an important, if often overlooked, way that religion and politics intersect in the United States. Within almost every community, and involved with almost every possible issue or area of public concern, progressive religious activists are a driving force in American public life. Their presence complicates the prevailing wisdom that religion is necessarily conservative and political progressivism is necessarily secular. Yet little is known about these activists, either among the public or within academia. This book brings together a group of leading experts who describe an ... More
This volume focuses on an important, if often overlooked, way that religion and politics intersect in the United States. Within almost every community, and involved with almost every possible issue or area of public concern, progressive religious activists are a driving force in American public life. Their presence complicates the prevailing wisdom that religion is necessarily conservative and political progressivism is necessarily secular. Yet little is known about these activists, either among the public or within academia. This book brings together a group of leading experts who describe and analyze the inner worlds and public activities of the progressive religious activist field, including chapters on faith-based community organizing, immigrant rights activism, the Plowshares movement, the New Left, and the Nuns on the Bus, among others. Other chapters consider the political engagement of various religious communities, including Mainline Protestants, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Catholics. Finally, authors consider connections between these activists and the Democratic Party, examine what factors lead congregations to mobilize for progressive causes, and trace the revival of civil religious rhetoric. Taken together, this book challenges common perceptions of religiously motivated social action, and offers new ways of thinking about the American religio-political landscape as a whole.
Keywords:
religion,
politics,
progressive,
activism,
United States,
civil religious rhetoric,
Democratic Party,
faith-based community organizing,
congregations,
immigrant rights
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781479854769 |
Published to NYU Press Scholarship Online: January 2018 |
DOI:10.18574/nyu/9781479854769.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Ruth Braunstein, editor
University of Connecticut
Todd Nicholas Fuist, editor
Arkansas State University
Rhys H. Williams, editor
Loyola University Chicago
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