Obamagelicals: How the Right Turned Left demonstrates how rhetorical strategies normalized, marginalized, and/or anaesthetized the traditional views of the white Protestant evangelical voter and gave younger white Protestant evangelicals, whose self-identify as being centrists or modernists, a voice that had otherwise been drowned out by the traditional old guard of the Protestant evangelical religious right. Obamagelicals argues President Obama capitalized on this completely different set of value issues that resonated with white Protestant evangelical centrists and modernists in ways never dreamed possible. Obamagelicals is a unique contribution to the current, interdisciplinary conversation about the role of white Protestant evangelicals in the democratic process and the victorious presidential election. It is unique because it treats Protestant evangelicalism not as a monolith but as a mosaic—comprised of numerous denominations and belief patterns. Through this creation of space on the theological continuum of Protestant evangelicalism, believers draw attention to themselves by creating distinction and attention. This book examines how the shift in theological interpretations of the Scriptures lead to shift in cultural and political issues that went undetected by Republican candidate Senator John McCain but embraced by President Obama. Obamagelicals provides a consistent methodological approach that is easy to understand for those interested in religion and politics. Using data analysis and cross-tabulations, each topic or theme employs simple, easy to understand variables thereby allowing for a cross-comparison. Obamagelicals allows us the opportunity to begin to examine the connections between religiosity and political participation on such key policy issues as the economy, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and same-sex marriages, within the mosaic of Protestant evangelicalism in the shadow of the 2008 election.
To the dismay of many, gun violence against youth – be it at school or on the streets – is a common theme in American culture. As the occurrences of these gruesome shootings become more frequent, Americans grow even more anesthetized to the events. Even President Obama has indicated that shootings do not affect him as they once did; “Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine” (Bailey 2015, 1). As Americans become less shocked by school shootings and death, they become numb to violence in other aspects of society – like shootings of black males and shootings of law enforcement officers. Yet, nothing has galvanized the country as it relates to police tactics, black deaths, race relations, and criminal justice techniques more than the death of Michael Brown. The fatal shooting of Brown by Officer Darren Wilson, a 28-year old white policeman, occurred on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St Louis. The circumstances of the shooting, which continue to be debated and discussed, resulted in an escalation of existing tensions between the citizens of Ferguson and the institution charged with protecting them and the country as a whole. This book provides a more comprehensive examination of the events surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown by Officer Wilson and the events that followed. It uncovers the lingering questions surrounding the events of August 9, 2014, and will serve to generate an on-going dialogue about the role race and class play in the criminal justice system, the importance of recognizing the impact of public policy initiatives and laws at the local level when measured through the lens of criminal justice and judicial equity, and the role the media plays in shaping the public agenda. This book does this by exploring the relationship between established historical cultural norms that have propagated classism and racial division and the public policy initiatives that allow the continuation of these problems.
Debates on public policy in the United States are shaped, in part, by moral and religious commitments of individuals and communities. Heclo (2003) writes in Religion Returns to the Public Square, “Government policy and religious matters . . . both claim to give authoritative answers to important questions about how people should live.” Heclo’s words apply especially to the issue of poverty and welfare reform, a matter on which the great religious traditions have played an integral part. Apart from its profound political significance, there is every indication that the welfare reform legislation of 1996 (Personal Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act, PWORA) has altered the landscape of American religion. Through Section 104 of PWORA, also known as Charitable Choice, religious congregations, interfaith ministries and denominational work relief agencies have been thrust into the center of America’s welfare to work transition and community revitalization efforts. Charitable Choice makes it illegal for state governments to discriminate against social service providers who organization has a religious mandate. This book examines Charitable Choice – and more broadly, the changing relationship between religion and social welfare – as its primary point of departure for investigating faith-based poverty relief in the post-welfare era. This research employs a mixed methods approach to understanding the role of Protestant evangelicals in addressing the needs of the poor and specifically their role in the implementation of Charitable Choice. To accomplish this task, two national surveys, one individual and one congregational, are used to explore the role of religiosity and the creation of Protestant evangelical sub-cultures and their effects on civic engagement, volunteerism and support for Charitable Choice. It then triangulates this data with qualitative research to develop a clearer understanding of the issues that affect participation rates and public welfare delivery systems. In-depth interviews of thirty-six Protestant evangelical ministers from central Appalachia are conducted and analyzed. This text will advance both practice and theory by providing an understanding about the complex world of Protestant evangelicalism. This volume has the potential to increase our understanding about the role intra-textual and inter-textual theological beliefs and convictions play in the public policy process and whether faith-based organizations can help to address the issues surrounding poverty and social welfare. To the policy maker, the authors hope to provide practical information that affects policy delivery and policy evaluation. To the religious scholar and social science researcher, they hope this study serves as one brick in a larger foundation known as Protestant evangelicalism. It will provide a different strategy for identifying key variables associated with public policy analysis. And in the end, it will require us all to answer if charity is truly a choice.
Obamagelicals: How the Right Turned Left demonstrates how rhetorical strategies normalized, marginalized, and/or anaesthetized the traditional views of the white Protestant evangelical voter and gave younger white Protestant evangelicals, whose self-identify as being centrists or modernists, a voice that had otherwise been drowned out by the traditional old guard of the Protestant evangelical religious right. Obamagelicals argues President Obama capitalized on this completely different set of value issues that resonated with white Protestant evangelical centrists and modernists in ways never dreamed possible. Obamagelicals is a unique contribution to the current, interdisciplinary conversation about the role of white Protestant evangelicals in the democratic process and the victorious presidential election. It is unique because it treats Protestant evangelicalism not as a monolith but as a mosaic—comprised of numerous denominations and belief patterns. Through this creation of space on the theological continuum of Protestant evangelicalism, believers draw attention to themselves by creating distinction and attention. This book examines how the shift in theological interpretations of the Scriptures lead to shift in cultural and political issues that went undetected by Republican candidate Senator John McCain but embraced by President Obama. Obamagelicals provides a consistent methodological approach that is easy to understand for those interested in religion and politics. Using data analysis and cross-tabulations, each topic or theme employs simple, easy to understand variables thereby allowing for a cross-comparison. Obamagelicals allows us the opportunity to begin to examine the connections between religiosity and political participation on such key policy issues as the economy, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and same-sex marriages, within the mosaic of Protestant evangelicalism in the shadow of the 2008 election.
Debates on public policy in the United States are shaped, in part, by moral and religious commitments of individuals and communities. Heclo (2003) writes in Religion Returns to the Public Square, “Government policy and religious matters . . . both claim to give authoritative answers to important questions about how people should live.” Heclo’s words apply especially to the issue of poverty and welfare reform, a matter on which the great religious traditions have played an integral part. Apart from its profound political significance, there is every indication that the welfare reform legislation of 1996 (Personal Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act, PWORA) has altered the landscape of American religion. Through Section 104 of PWORA, also known as Charitable Choice, religious congregations, interfaith ministries and denominational work relief agencies have been thrust into the center of America’s welfare to work transition and community revitalization efforts. Charitable Choice makes it illegal for state governments to discriminate against social service providers who organization has a religious mandate. This book examines Charitable Choice – and more broadly, the changing relationship between religion and social welfare – as its primary point of departure for investigating faith-based poverty relief in the post-welfare era. This research employs a mixed methods approach to understanding the role of Protestant evangelicals in addressing the needs of the poor and specifically their role in the implementation of Charitable Choice. To accomplish this task, two national surveys, one individual and one congregational, are used to explore the role of religiosity and the creation of Protestant evangelical sub-cultures and their effects on civic engagement, volunteerism and support for Charitable Choice. It then triangulates this data with qualitative research to develop a clearer understanding of the issues that affect participation rates and public welfare delivery systems. In-depth interviews of thirty-six Protestant evangelical ministers from central Appalachia are conducted and analyzed. This text will advance both practice and theory by providing an understanding about the complex world of Protestant evangelicalism. This volume has the potential to increase our understanding about the role intra-textual and inter-textual theological beliefs and convictions play in the public policy process and whether faith-based organizations can help to address the issues surrounding poverty and social welfare. To the policy maker, the authors hope to provide practical information that affects policy delivery and policy evaluation. To the religious scholar and social science researcher, they hope this study serves as one brick in a larger foundation known as Protestant evangelicalism. It will provide a different strategy for identifying key variables associated with public policy analysis. And in the end, it will require us all to answer if charity is truly a choice.
To the dismay of many, gun violence against youth – be it at school or on the streets – is a common theme in American culture. As the occurrences of these gruesome shootings become more frequent, Americans grow even more anesthetized to the events. Even President Obama has indicated that shootings do not affect him as they once did; “Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine” (Bailey 2015, 1). As Americans become less shocked by school shootings and death, they become numb to violence in other aspects of society – like shootings of black males and shootings of law enforcement officers. Yet, nothing has galvanized the country as it relates to police tactics, black deaths, race relations, and criminal justice techniques more than the death of Michael Brown. The fatal shooting of Brown by Officer Darren Wilson, a 28-year old white policeman, occurred on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St Louis. The circumstances of the shooting, which continue to be debated and discussed, resulted in an escalation of existing tensions between the citizens of Ferguson and the institution charged with protecting them and the country as a whole. This book provides a more comprehensive examination of the events surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown by Officer Wilson and the events that followed. It uncovers the lingering questions surrounding the events of August 9, 2014, and will serve to generate an on-going dialogue about the role race and class play in the criminal justice system, the importance of recognizing the impact of public policy initiatives and laws at the local level when measured through the lens of criminal justice and judicial equity, and the role the media plays in shaping the public agenda. This book does this by exploring the relationship between established historical cultural norms that have propagated classism and racial division and the public policy initiatives that allow the continuation of these problems.
Engaging Deconstructive Theology presents an evangelical approach for theological conversation with postmodern thinkers. Themes are considered from Derrida, Foucault, Mark C. Taylor, Rorty, and Cupitt, developing dialogue from an open-minded evangelical perspective. Ron Michener draws upon insights from radical postmodern thought and seeks to advance an apologetic approach to the Christian faith that acknowledges a mosaic of human sources including experience, literature, and the imagination.
Tenacious hope, the heart of a just and free society During the Enlightenment, Scottish intellectuals and administrators met the demands of profit and progress while shepherding concerns for self and other, individual and community, and family and work. Communication Ethics and Tenacious Hope captures the “unity of contraries,” offering the Scottish Enlightenment as an exemplar of tenacious hope countering the excesses of individualism. Ronald C. Arnett reveals two stories: the struggle between optimism and tenacious hope, and optimism’s ultimate triumph in the exclusion of difference and the reification of progress as an ultimate good. In chapters that detail the legacies of Lord Provost George Drummond, Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Reid, George Campbell, Adam Ferguson, and Sir Walter Scott, Arnett highlights the problematic nature of optimism and the ethical agency of tenacious hope. Arnett illustrates the creative union of education and administration, the ability to accept doubt within systems of knowledge and imagination, and an abiding connection to local soil. As principles of progress, free will, and capitalism swept Europe, proponents of optimism envisioned a world of consumerism and absolutes. In contrast, practitioners of tenacious hope embraced uncertainty and compassion as pragmatic necessities. This work continues Arnett’s scholarship, articulating the vital importance of communication ethics. Those seeking to discern and support a temporal sense of the good in this historical moment will find in this timely work the means to pursue, hold, and nourish tenacious hope. This insightful theorization of the Scottish Enlightenment distills the substance of a just and free society for meeting dangerous and uncertain times.
Robert Brandom is one of the most renowned contemporary American philosophers, discussed widely in analytic as well as continental philosophical communities on both sides of the Atlantic. His innovative approach to language and rationality combines the philosophies of language and mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and logic with intriguing interpretations of historical figures such as Kant, Hegel, and Wittgenstein. Yet, due to its boldly unorthodox and highly technical nature, Brandom's work can also be daunting for the beginner. In this accessible book, Ronald Loeffler provides a critical and clear-headed guide through the maze of Brandom's philosophy. He conveys the pioneering nature of Brandom's approach to language and communication, with its unabashed appropriation of the German Idealistic tradition, and offers focused, sure-footed introductions to all major aspects of Brandom’s thought, including his normative pragmatics and inferential role semantics and his theories of empirical knowledge, logic, linguistic representation, and objectivity. This book will be essential reading for students of philosophy, as well as those in related fields with interests in language, communication, and the nature of norm-governed social interaction.
A concise, streamlined edition of Ebert's larger Business volume, this extremely successful book provides the essence of business in a brief and affordable format. Its compact presentation spans the range of functional areas—management, marketing, operations, accounting, information systems, finance, and law—clearly demonstrating the interrelationships between them. Coverage features the most intriguing and up-to-date examples, case studies, Internet exercises, SCANS-oriented critical-thinking exercises, new videos, part-opening World Wide Web vignettes, and Crafting Your Business Plan exercises. Each chapter contains tables, photographs, and figures carefully chosen to illustrate, in a visually appealing way, the points and messages of the chapter. For anyone—from mailroom to management—who seeks to thrive in today's business world.
This revised and updated edition of Murder in America presents a pragmatic examination of both common and unusual acts of homicide in the United States.
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