How Moral Talk Connects Faith and Social Justice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Nicholas Fuist
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Community Model ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Moral Talk ◽  
Teacher Model

Todd Nicholas Fuist’s chapter examines the complicated ways in which participants in progressive religious communities use religious language to talk about politics. The chapter shows that the communities Fuist studies use three models for understanding the connection between faith and politics: the Teacher Model, where religious exemplars are understood as promoting progressive action; the Community Model, where groups promote specific, progressive understandings of what it means to be a community; and the Theological Model, where existing beliefs are creatively applied to contemporary politics. Through the combination of these three models, these communities create pathways to understanding and action by sacralizing progressive ideologies and practices about social justice.

scholarly journals Sacred Spaces and Civic Action

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-129
Author(s):  
Melissa L. Caldwell
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Key Sites

This article examines several key sites where Russia’s civic and religious bodies intersect in pursuit of social justice goals. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among religious communities and social justice organizations in Moscow, the article focuses on the physical, social, and legal spaces where church and state, secular and sacred, civic and personal intersect and the consequences of these intersections for how Russians understand new configurations of church and state, private and public, religious and political. Of particular concern is the emergence of new forms of religious and political pluralism that transcend any one particular space, such as for worship, community life, or political support or protest, and instead reveal shifting practices and ethics of social justice that are more pluralist, progressive, and tolerant than they may appear to be to outside observers.

A Tribute to Gary Bouma

2021 ◽  
pp. 144078332110588
Author(s):  
Pete Lentini ◽  
Anna Halafoff ◽  
Andrew Singleton ◽  
Greg Barton ◽  
Marion Maddox ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Interfaith Dialogue ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Spiritual Support ◽  
Emeritus Professor ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Eminent Scholar ◽  
Interreligious Relations

Emeritus Professor Gary Bouma was many things to many people. He was Australia's pre-eminent scholar of the sociology of religion. As an ordained Anglican priest, Gary was noted for his pastoral care of his parishioners and others who sought his counsel and spiritual support. He was a loving husband, father and grandfather. Moreover, his deep commitment to social justice and harmony greatly influenced Gary's participation in interfaith dialogue. Gary contributed so much to scholarship and building bridges between religious communities that he was justly rewarded with an Order of Australia as a Member (AM) in recognition for his services to sociology, to the Anglican Church of Australia, and to interreligious relations in the 2013 Australia Day Honours.

The Public Role of Religion in Modern Ghanaian Society

Pneuma ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 71-90
Author(s):  
Comfort Max-Wirth
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Role ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Role Of Religion

Abstract This article lends its voice to the discussion on Charles Taylor’s Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited, which critiques William James’s view that the public dimensions of religion will be less real and less necessary and, therefore, will decrease in modern societies. The article uses Ghana as a case study to show that religion is still a public phenomenon in modern African societies. Religion has always been a crucial part of Ghanaian public life, including politics, although today it finds expression in the context of pentecostal Christianity. As the religious phenomenon with the strongest presence in contemporary Ghana, Pentecostalism informs the lives of many. Nowadays, during political elections, voters would consider whether or not a candidate exhibits pentecostal religious qualities in deciding to vote him or her into office. Likewise, politicians use religious communities and leaders for the purposes of mobilizing voters or organizing constituencies. Furthermore, religious language has come to dominate political discourse and debates with politicians casting their messages and visions in religious (mostly biblical) imagery and allusions to appeal to worshipping populations both imaginatively and emotionally. In demonstrating the increasing public quality of religion in modern societies, this article identifies some of the strategies Ghanaian politicians use to play on the pentecostal imaginations of the Ghanaian populace, all in a bid to secure political power. This article argues that while religion is a private experience in modern Western societies, it is public and mainstream and influences almost all facets of life in modern Africa, particularly Ghanaian politics.

Achieving the Black Social Gospel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Dorrien
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Abolitionist Movement ◽  
The 19Th Century

The black social gospel advocated protest activism within religious communities to resist America’s system of racial caste. Dorrien’s previous book, The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel, described the 19th century founding of this tradition as a successor to the abolitionist movement. The New Abolition ended just as King’s models of social justice ministry entered the story. Breaking White Supremacy describes the black social gospel luminaries who influenced King and the figures of King’s generation who led the civil rights movement.

Situating Earth Democracy: Vandana Shiva on Agroecology, Contemporary Politics and Resilience

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-216
Author(s):  
Christopher Hrynkow
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Sustainable Agriculture ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Peak Oil ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The World

This article focuses on three works authored by Vandana Shiva and recently published by Zed Books. It employs these books as dialogical aids to map her thought in its political and ethical dimensions as they relate to peace, sustainability, and social justice. More specifically, after a brief introduction and a biographical discussion, this article situates her vision of Earth Democracy as a means to tie together Shiva’s inter-related reflections in the areas of agroecology, contemporary politics, and resilience. Comment is then offered concerning the tension and promises of Shiva’s treatment of these issues. The reader of this article is left with several points of entry to understand Shiva’s contributions to discourses on sustainable agriculture, nonviolent political change, and resilient sustainability. Shiva V (2016a) Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability and Peace. London: Zed Books. Shiva V (2016b) Soil, Not Oil: Climate Change, Peak Oil. London: Zed Books. Shiva V (2016c) Who Really Feeds the World? London: Zed Books.

Contestation over Sixties Memory in the New Millennium

2018 ◽  
pp. 187-198
Author(s):  
Kristen Hoerl
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
Independent Films ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

The conclusion discusses the implications of Hollywood’s selective amnesia regarding late sixties dissent for the 2016 presidential election campaign and contemporary social movements. It explains that while several recent television programs including the award-winning series Mad Men have provided caricatured portrayals of the counterculture, anti-war, and Black Power movements, independent films such as Cesar Chavez and Chicago 10 have celebrated collective protest. The chapter concludes that these recent portrayals of sixties-era activism reveal ongoing contestation about the decade, its legacy, and the role of dissent in contemporary politics. While the bad sixties endures in popular culture, other memories of dissent are resources for imagining empowering models of social justice organizing.

scholarly journals Walter Benjamin’s Zur Kritik der Gewalt (‘On the Critique of Violence’): reception, relevance, and a mis-diagnosis?

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Whittington
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Point ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Axel Honneth ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Early Essay ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Critique Of Violence

 Walter Benjamin’s early essay Zur Kritik der Gewalt [Zur Kritik] first published in 1921 is a notoriously difficult text, but its relevance to contemporary politics makes it a text to which theorists repeatedly return. This reading takes issue with those critics, notably Axel Honneth, who see Benjamin’s project in Zur Kritik as fatally, dangerously flawed. It is suggested here that Benjamin’s text, despite the difficulties, still posits the possibility of a ‘lookout point’ - not prescriptive per se but in keeping with his abiding interest in literature, metaphorical and exegetical. There is no ground on which to stand that does not in effect constitute the lookout point of the place and times of the lookout, but this reading suggests that the Benjaminian lookout point is the lookout which is never fixed because it is not ‘looking out’ on but towards others, and is not merely addressing and prescribing, but talking with itself and others. That Benjamin embraces religious language to effect this move, perhaps suggesting, a lookout in judgment from a fixed point, from some ‘higher’ (transcendental) ground, certainly might be troubling for some, but it will be suggested these anxieties are misplaced. 

Latina/o Religious Politics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felipe Hinojosa
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Politics ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
Family Choices ◽  
Personal Matter

Religion is at the heart of the Latina/o experience in the United States. It is a deeply personal matter that often shapes political orientations, how people vote, where they live, and the type of family choices they make. Latina/o religious politics—defined as the religious beliefs, ethics, and cultures that motivate social and political action in society—represent the historic interaction between popular and institutional religion. The evolution of Protestantism, Pentecostalism, and Catholic Social Action throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries illuminates the ways in which Latina/o religious communities interacted with movements for social justice.

Faith in a Secular Humanism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa L. Caldwell
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Religiously Affiliated ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Shared Spaces ◽  
Secular Theology ◽  
Care And Justice

This chapter presents the concept of a “secular theology of compassion.” Through a discussion of the ways in which Moscow’s religious communities cooperate to forge common cross-denominational interests through social justice projects, the chapter considers how clergy, staff, and volunteers in religiously affiliated welfare programs separate their personally held religious beliefs and theological philosophies from the larger ethical values that guide their work. Of particular concern are the political, spiritual, and ethical negotiations that take place between Russia’s Orthodox and non-Orthodox Christian communities as they strive to pursue shared goals of social justice while maintaining their respective histories and communities. Their collective efforts demonstrate how ethical values of empathy, care, and justice traverse, confuse, and even transcend religious/secular distinctions and provide opportunities for new shared spaces and practices of religiosity and compassion.

YOUTH MUTICULTURAL COMMUNITY BASE ON LOCAL CULTURE OF MANGGARAI AS THE EFFORT TO FIGHT AGAINST VIOLENCE, RADICALISM AND TERORISM

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-31
Author(s):  
Fransiska Widyawati ◽  
Yohanes Albino
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Local People ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Human Community ◽  
Multicultural Community ◽  
Community Model

Violence, radicalism and terrorism have become a real threat to the human community today. The culprit can be anyone, including young people. Many young people have been no longer open, dialogic and multicultural in society. Many of them have been exposed to radicalisme and have a narrow ideology. This research argues that young people need to be helped to learn to live together with other young people, in open and multicultural and multi-religious communities. Therefore, the research develops a multicultural community model of young people based on the local context and culture of the Manggarai people. The model is names as Nai Ca Anggit Tuka Ca Léléng Communitty. The strength of the community is one its unity, harmony and brother/sisterhood values. This multicultural community of young people becomes a forum where young people from various religious backgrounds, ethnicities, races, regions, etc. gather and work together to promote a world and life that is non-violent, open and dialogical. By joining and participating on this community, young people want to show their roots in local communities, to be involved in the preservation of local culture and to involve local people in the struggle and action to ward off the danger of violence, radicalism and terrorism.

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