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Author: Vincent D. Rougeau
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199720071
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
What does it mean to be a Christian citizen of the United States today? This book challenges the argument that the United States is a Christian nation, and that the American founding and the American Constitution can be linked to a Christian understanding of the state and society. Vincent Rougeau argues that the United States has become an economic empire of consumer citizens, led by elites who seek to secure American political and economic dominance around the world. Freedom and democracy for the oppressed are the public themes put forward to justify this dominance, but the driving force behind American hegemony is the need to sustain economic growth and maintain social peace in the United States. This state of affairs raises important questions for Christians. In recent times, religious voices in American politics have taken on a moralistic stridency. Individual issues like abortion and same-sex marriage have been used to "guilt" many Christians into voting Republican or to discourage them from voting at all. Using Catholic social teaching as a point of departure, Rougeau argues that conservative American politics is driven by views of the individual and the state that are inconsistent with mainstream Catholic social thought. Without thinking more broadly about their religious traditions and how those traditions should inform their engagement with the modern world, it is unwise for Christians to think that pressing single issues is an appropriate way to actualize their faith commitments in the public realm. Rougeau offers concerned Christians new tools for a critical assessment of legal, political and social questions. He proceeds from the fundamental Christian premise of the God-given dignity of the human person, a dignity that can only be realized fully in community with others. This means that the Christian cannot simply focus on individual empowerment as 'freedom' but must also seek to nurture community participation and solidarity for all citizens. Rougeau demonstrates what happens when these ideas are applied to a variety of specific contemporary issues involving the family, economics, and race. He concludes by offering a new model of public engagement for Christians in the American Empire.
Author: Vincent D. Rougeau
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190293268
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Get Book
Book Description
What does it mean to be a Christian citizen of the United States today? This book challenges the argument that the United States is a Christian nation, and that the American founding and the American Constitution can be linked to a Christian understanding of the state and society. Vincent Rougeau argues that the United States has become an economic empire of consumer citizens, led by elites who seek to secure American political and economic dominance around the world. Freedom and democracy for the oppressed are the public themes put forward to justify this dominance, but the driving force behind American hegemony is the need to sustain economic growth and maintain social peace in the United States. This state of affairs raises important questions for Christians. In recent times, religious voices in American politics have taken on a moralistic stridency. Individual issues like abortion and same-sex marriage have been used to "guilt" many Christians into voting Republican or to discourage them from voting at all. Using Catholic social teaching as a point of departure, Rougeau argues that conservative American politics is driven by views of the individual and the state that are inconsistent with mainstream Catholic social thought. Without thinking more broadly about their religious traditions and how those traditions should inform their engagement with the modern world, it is unwise for Christians to think that pressing single issues is an appropriate way to actualize their faith commitments in the public realm. Rougeau offers concerned Christians new tools for a critical assessment of legal, political and social questions. He proceeds from the fundamental Christian premise of the God-given dignity of the human person, a dignity that can only be realized fully in community with others. This means that the Christian cannot simply focus on individual empowerment as 'freedom' but must also seek to nurture community participation and solidarity for all citizens. Rougeau demonstrates what happens when these ideas are applied to a variety of specific contemporary issues involving the family, economics, and race. He concludes by offering a new model of public engagement for Christians in the American Empire.
Author: Vincent D. Rougeau
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199720071
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Get Book
Book Description
What does it mean to be a Christian citizen of the United States today? This book challenges the argument that the United States is a Christian nation, and that the American founding and the American Constitution can be linked to a Christian understanding of the state and society. Vincent Rougeau argues that the United States has become an economic empire of consumer citizens, led by elites who seek to secure American political and economic dominance around the world. Freedom and democracy for the oppressed are the public themes put forward to justify this dominance, but the driving force behind American hegemony is the need to sustain economic growth and maintain social peace in the United States. This state of affairs raises important questions for Christians. In recent times, religious voices in American politics have taken on a moralistic stridency. Individual issues like abortion and same-sex marriage have been used to "guilt" many Christians into voting Republican or to discourage them from voting at all. Using Catholic social teaching as a point of departure, Rougeau argues that conservative American politics is driven by views of the individual and the state that are inconsistent with mainstream Catholic social thought. Without thinking more broadly about their religious traditions and how those traditions should inform their engagement with the modern world, it is unwise for Christians to think that pressing single issues is an appropriate way to actualize their faith commitments in the public realm. Rougeau offers concerned Christians new tools for a critical assessment of legal, political and social questions. He proceeds from the fundamental Christian premise of the God-given dignity of the human person, a dignity that can only be realized fully in community with others. This means that the Christian cannot simply focus on individual empowerment as 'freedom' but must also seek to nurture community participation and solidarity for all citizens. Rougeau demonstrates what happens when these ideas are applied to a variety of specific contemporary issues involving the family, economics, and race. He concludes by offering a new model of public engagement for Christians in the American Empire.
Author: Mark Lewis Taylor
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451413892
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
Princeton theologian Mark Taylor here looks at the influence and stance of the right-wing Christian movement in the U.S. He questions its religious authenticity, its claim to be called Christian, and the ethical stands it has taken in national politics of the last ten years. The heart of Taylor's argument is Jesus himself. Using the latest New Testament scholarship on the historical Jesus and his tactic in relation to the Roman Empire, Taylor argues that Jesus' life and work and message are inherently political and driven by the need to show God's love for the poor, condemnation of the oppressor, and search for a reign of justice. These Christian hallmarks, Taylor asserts, stand as a critical corrective to a distorted Christianity that often dominates the U.S. political scene today.
Author: Emily Conroy-Krutz
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501701037
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
In 1812, eight American missionaries, under the direction of the recently formed American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, sailed from the United States to South Asia. The plans that motivated their voyage were ano less grand than taking part in the Protestant conversion of the entire world. Over the next several decades, these men and women were joined by hundreds more American missionaries at stations all over the globe. Emily Conroy-Krutz shows the surprising extent of the early missionary impulse and demonstrates that American evangelical Protestants of the early nineteenth century were motivated by Christian imperialism—an understanding of international relations that asserted the duty of supposedly Christian nations, such as the United States and Britain, to use their colonial and commercial power to spread Christianity. In describing how American missionaries interacted with a range of foreign locations (including India, Liberia, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, North America, and Singapore) and imperial contexts, Christian Imperialism provides a new perspective on how Americans thought of their country’s role in the world. While in the early republican period many were engaged in territorial expansion in the west, missionary supporters looked east and across the seas toward Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Conroy-Krutz’s history of the mission movement reveals that strong Anglo-American and global connections persisted through the early republic. Considering Britain and its empire to be models for their work, the missionaries of the American Board attempted to convert the globe into the image of Anglo-American civilization.
Author: Jeremy M. Schott
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812203461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
In Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity, Jeremy M. Schott examines the ways in which conflicts between Christian and pagan intellectuals over religious, ethnic, and cultural identity contributed to the transformation of Roman imperial rhetoric and ideology in the early fourth century C.E. During this turbulent period, which began with Diocletian's persecution of the Christians and ended with Constantine's assumption of sole rule and the consolidation of a new Christian empire, Christian apologists and anti-Christian polemicists launched a number of literary salvos in a battle for the minds and souls of the empire. Schott focuses on the works of the Platonist philosopher and anti- Christian polemicist Porphyry of Tyre and his Christian respondents: the Latin rhetorician Lactantius, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, and the emperor Constantine. Previous scholarship has tended to narrate the Christianization of the empire in terms of a new religion's penetration and conquest of classical culture and society. The present work, in contrast, seeks to suspend the static, essentializing conceptualizations of religious identity that lie behind many studies of social and political change in late antiquity in order to investigate the processes through which Christian and pagan identities were constructed. Drawing on the insights of postcolonial discourse analysis, Schott argues that the production of Christian identity and, in turn, the construction of a Christian imperial discourse were intimately and inseparably linked to the broader politics of Roman imperialism.
Author: David Ray Griffin
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188
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Book Description
In this book, four distinguished scholars level a powerful critique of the rapid expansion of the emerging American empire and its oppressive and destructive political, military, and economic policies. Arguing that a global Pax Americana is internationally disastrous, the authors demonstrate how America's imperialism inevitably leads to rampant irreversible ecological devastation, expanding military force for imperialistic purposes, and a grossly inequitable distribution of goods--all leading to the diminished well-being of human communities.
Author: Charles Odahl
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136961275
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
This biographical narrative is a detailed portrayal of the life and career of the first Christian emperor Constantine the Great (273 – 337). Combining vivid narrative and historical analysis, Charles Odahl relates the rise of Constantine amid the crises of the late Roman world, his dramatic conversion to and public patronage of Christianity, and his church building programs in Rome, Jerusalem and Constantinople which transformed the pagan state of Roman antiquity into the Christian empire medieval Byzantium. The author’s comprehensive knowledge of the literary sources and his extensive research into the material remains of the period mean that this volume provides a more rounded and accurate portrait of Constantine than previously available. This revised second edition includes: An expanded and revised final chapter A new Genealogy and an expanded Chronology New illustrations Revised and updated Notes and Bibliography A landmark publication in Roman Imperial, early Christian, and Byzantine history, Constantine and the Christian Empire will remain the standard account of the subject for years to come.
Author: Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9780826416278
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
Nelson-Pallmeyer calls into question the imperialistic tendencies of the United States, using the life of Jesus to offer a critique of such tendencies.
Author: Tripp York
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781931038829
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 124
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Book Description
Both the United States and the church demand total allegiance. As York addresses various topics, he shows how easy it is to confuse our allegiance to the church with our allegiance to the state. Ultimately York wishes to be provocative in attempting to rouse Christians out of their tendency to make an idol of the sacred rituals that constitute their nation.
Author: Mike Mazzalongo
Publisher: BibleTalk Books
ISBN: 1945778644
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 32
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Book Description
Mike reviews the repeated claims that America's best days are in the past and offers a plan for our nation's renewal.
