It is difficult to imagine forces in the modern world as potent as nationalism and religion. Both provide people with a source of meaning, each has motivated individuals to carry out extraordinary acts of heroism and cruelty, and both serve as the foundation for communal and personal identity. While the subject has received both scholarly and popular attention, this distinctive book is the first comparative study to examine the origins and development of three distinct models: religious nationalism, secular nationalism, and civil-religious nationalism. Using multiple methods, the authors develop a new theoretical framework that can be applied across diverse countries and religious traditions to understand the emergence, development, and stability of different church-state arrangements over time. The work combines public opinion, constitutional, and content analysis of the United States, Israel, India, Greece, Uruguay, and Malaysia, weaving together historical and contemporary illustrations.
A front-burner issue on the public policy agenda today is the increased use of partnerships between government and nongovernmental entities, including faith-based social service organizations. In the wake of President Bush's faith-based initiative, many are still wondering about the effectiveness of these faith-based organizations in providing services to those in need, and whether they provide better outcomes than more traditional government, secular nonprofit, and for-profit organizations. In Faith, Hope, and Jobs, Stephen V. Monsma and J. Christopher Soper study the effectiveness of 17 different welfare-to-work programs in Los Angeles County—a county in which the U.S. government spends 14% of its entire welfare budget—and offer groundbreaking insight into understanding what works and what doesn't. Monsma and Soper examine client assessment of the programs, their progress in developing attitudes and resources important for finding self-supporting employment, and their experience in finding actual employment. The study reveals that the clients of the more explicitly faith-based programs did best in gaining in social capital and were highly positive in evaluating the religious components of their programs. For-profit programs tended to do the best in terms of their clients finding employment. Overall, the religiously active respondents tended to experience better outcomes than those who were not religiously active but surprisingly, the religiously active and non-active tended to do equally well in faith-based programs. Faith, Hope, and Jobs concludes with three sets of concrete recommendations for public policymakers, social service program managers, and researchers.
A front-burner issue on the public policy agenda today is the increased use of partnerships between government and nongovernmental entities, including faith-based social service organizations. In the wake of President Bush's faith-based initiative, many are still wondering about the effectiveness of these faith-based organizations in providing services to those in need, and whether they provide better outcomes than more traditional government, secular nonprofit, and for-profit organizations. In "Faith, Hope, and Jobs," Stephen V. Monsma and J. Christopher Soper study the effectiveness of 17 different welfare-to-work programs in Los Angeles County -- a county in which the U.S. government spends 14% of its "entire" welfare budget -- and offer groundbreaking insight into understanding what works and what doesn't. Monsma and Soper examine client assessment of the programs, their progress in developing attitudes and resources important for finding self-supporting employment, and their experience in finding actual employment. The study reveals that the clients of the more explicitly faith-based programs did best in gaining in social capital and were highly positive in evaluating the religious components of their programs. For-profit programs tended to do the best in terms of their clients finding employment. Overall, the religiously active respondents tended to experience better outcomes than those who were not religiously active but surprisingly, the religiously active and non-active tended to do equally well in faith-based programs. "Faith, Hope, and Jobs" concludes with three sets of concrete recommendations for public policymakers, social service program managers, and researchers.
European governments must struggle with assimilating Muslim newcomers into their countries, with so many more now living in Western Europe. Britain, France, and Germany have dealt with the related problems differently. This book explains why their policies differ and proposes ways of ensuring the successful incorporation of practicing Muslims into liberal democracies. Resolving their issues has become all the more urgent in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Social movements inspired by powerful ideological beliefs continue to define global and national politics. In Yugoslavia, civil war is justified in the name of religion and ethnic identity. The Arab-Israeli conflict rages on, fuelled on either side by a conviction of indisputable ideological truth. Closer to home, American religious organizations consistently challenge political authority in the name of a higher morality. Existing theories either ignore the role of religion in social movement formation or discredit the claim that religious convictions can directly lead adherents to engage in political action. Through a detailed analysis of American and British evangelical Christians, J. Christopher Soper here demonstrates that religious commitments were, in fact, crucial in promoting political activism in both countries. Evangelical Christianity in the United States and Great Britain is the first book to provide such a comparative perspective. Focussing on the temperance movement and the politics of abortion, Soper highlights the similarities, and equally intriguing differences, between British and American political/evangelical structures. Using interviews and literature gathered from evangelical organizations on both sides of the Atlantic, he paints a fascinating picture of a hitherto neglected aspect of social movement theory. Evangelical Christianity in the United States and Great Britain is an invaluable new resource for scholars of religious studies, political science and sociology alike. Soper provides a unique model with which to view a dominant political trend: the mobilization of collective action groups around a set of powerful beliefs. His research can thus be applied beyond the boundaries of his chosen topic, and will be an important contribution to the study of any movement in which ideology assumes a significant role.
Now in a thoroughly revised and updated edition, this essential text offers a rigorous, systematic comparison of church-state relations in the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, and England. Stephen V. Monsma and J. Christopher Soper examine the historical roots and contemporary strategies of the different approaches each government has taken. Providing clarity on the little-understood, evolving relationship between church and state in the West, this book provides an invaluable comparative analysis of a topic that is increasingly a source of profound political and social conflict. The authors persuasively argue that the United States can learn a great deal from other Western democracies in promoting religious neutrality and the free exercise of religion.
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