Prophetic Politics

Prophetic Politics
Title Prophetic Politics PDF eBook
Author David S. Gutterman
Publisher Cornell University Press
Pages 238
Release 2018-07-05
Genre Political Science
ISBN 1501725394

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"In an era of military conflict and economic hardship, religious and political leaders adamantly speak in the language of crisis. Whether one attributes this public religious fervor to a response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, millennial hopes and fears, a sense of moral decay (generally based on either growing economic inequality or the 'breakdown of the American family'), or a sign of the normal progression of the stages of history, the discourse of religious revival is increasingly prominent. And, as is amply evident in the United States and throughout the world, devout declarations of religious belief in the public sphere can bring intractable passions to politics."—from Chapter 1 What are the relationships among religion, politics, and narratives? What makes prophetic political narratives congenial or hostile to democratic political life? David S. Gutterman explores the prophetic politics of four twentieth- and twenty-first-century American Christian social movements: the Reverend Billy Sunday and his vision of "muscular Christianity"; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights movement; the conservative Christian male organization Promise Keepers; and the progressive antipoverty organization Call to Renewal. Gutterman develops a theory based on the work of Hannah Arendt and others and employs this framework to analyze expressions of the prophetic impulse in the political narrative of the United States. In the process, he examines timely issues about the tense and intricate relationship between religion and politics. Even prior to George W. Bush's faith-based initiative, debates about abortion, family values, welfare reform, and environmental degradation were informed by religious language and ideas. In an interdisciplinary and accessible manner, Gutterman translates the narratives employed by American Christian social movements to define both the crises in the land and the path to resolving these crises. The book also explores the engagement of these prophetic social movements in contentious political issues concerned with sex, gender, sexuality, race, and class, as well as broader questions of American identity.

Prophetic Politics

Prophetic Politics
Title Prophetic Politics PDF eBook
Author Philip J. Harold
Publisher Ohio University Press
Pages 321
Release 2009-09-01
Genre Philosophy
ISBN 0821443151

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In Prophetic Politics, Philip J. Harold offers an original interpretation of the political dimension of Emmanuel Levinas’s thought. Harold argues that Levinas’s mature position in Otherwise Than Being breaks radically with the dialogical inclinations of his earlier Totality and Infinity and that transformation manifests itself most clearly in the peculiar nature of Levinas’s relationship to politics. Levinas’s philosophy is concerned not with the ethical per se, in either its applied or its transcendent forms, but with the source of ethics. Once this source is revealed to be an anarchic interruption of our efforts to think the ethical, Levinas’s political claims cannot be read as straightforward ideological positions or principles for political action. They are instead to be understood “prophetically,” a position that Harold finds comparable to the communitarian critique of liberalism offered by such writers as Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. In developing this interpretation, which runs counter to formative influences from the phenomenological tradition, Harold traces Levinas’s debt to phenomenological descriptions of such experiences as empathy and playfulness. Prophetic Politics will highlight the relevance of the phenomenological tradition to contemporary ethical and political thought—a long-standing goal of the series—while also making a significant and original contribution to Levinas scholarship.

A Prophetic Peace

A Prophetic Peace
Title A Prophetic Peace PDF eBook
Author Alick Isaacs
Publisher Indiana University Press
Pages 225
Release 2011-09-06
Genre Biography & Autobiography
ISBN 0253356849

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Challenging deeply held convictions about Judaism, Zionism, war, and peace, Alick Isaacs's combat experience in the second Lebanon war provoked him to search for a way of reconciling the belligerence of religion with its messages of peace. In his insightful readings of the texts of Biblical prophecy and rabbinic law, Isaacs draws on the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jacques Derrida, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Martin Buber, among others, to propose an ambitious vision of religiously inspired peace. Rejecting the notion of Jewish theology as partial to war and vengeance, this eloquent and moving work points to the ways in which Judaism can be a path to peace. A Prophetic Peace describes an educational project called Talking Peace whose aim is to bring individuals of different views together to share varying understandings of peace.

After the Election

After the Election
Title After the Election PDF eBook
Author Ron Scott Sanders
Publisher Wipf and Stock Publishers
Pages 156
Release 2018-04-05
Genre Religion
ISBN 1532601212

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The role of Evangelical Christianity in American public life is controversial. The mythology of America as a "Christian nation" and the promissory note of secularism have proved inadequate to cope with the increasing pluralism, the resilience of spirituality, and the wariness toward formal religion that mark our post-secular age. Christianity and democracy have a complex history together, but is there a future where these two great traditions draw the best out of one another? What does that future look like in a heterogeneous society? Sanders argues that democracy is stronger when it allows all of its religious citizens to participate fully in the public sphere, and Christianity is richer when it demonstrates the wisdom of God from the ground up, rather than legislating it from the top down. In this reality, the Evangelical church must return to Christianity's prophetic roots and see itself as a "community in exile," where participation in the political is important, but not ultimate--where the substantive work of the church happens "after the election."

Prophets of the Hood

Prophets of the Hood
Title Prophets of the Hood PDF eBook
Author Imani Perry
Publisher Duke University Press
Pages 249
Release 2004-11-30
Genre Music
ISBN 0822386151

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At once the most lucrative, popular, and culturally oppositional musical force in the United States, hip hop demands the kind of interpretation Imani Perry provides here: criticism engaged with this vibrant musical form on its own terms. A scholar and a fan, Perry considers the art, politics, and culture of hip hop through an analysis of song lyrics, the words of the prophets of the hood. Recognizing prevailing characterizations of hip hop as a transnational musical form, Perry advances a powerful argument that hip hop is first and foremost black American music. At the same time, she contends that many studies have shortchanged the aesthetic value of rap by attributing its form and content primarily to socioeconomic factors. Her innovative analysis revels in the artistry of hip hop, revealing it as an art of innovation, not deprivation. Perry offers detailed readings of the lyrics of many hip hop artists, including Ice Cube, Public Enemy, De La Soul, krs-One, OutKast, Sean “Puffy” Combs, Tupac Shakur, Lil’ Kim, Biggie Smalls, Nas, Method Man, and Lauryn Hill. She focuses on the cultural foundations of the music and on the form and narrative features of the songs—the call and response, the reliance on the break, the use of metaphor, and the recurring figures of the trickster and the outlaw. Perry also provides complex considerations of hip hop’s association with crime, violence, and misogyny. She shows that while its message may be disconcerting, rap often expresses brilliant insights about existence in a society mired in difficult racial and gender politics. Hip hop, she suggests, airs a much wider, more troubling range of black experience than was projected during the civil rights era. It provides a unique public space where the sacred and the profane impulses within African American culture unite.

Prophets, Politics and Nations

Prophets, Politics and Nations
Title Prophets, Politics and Nations PDF eBook
Author Emma Stark
Publisher Destiny Image
Pages 0
Release 2024-07-02
Genre Political Science
ISBN 9780768477566

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Cornel West and the Politics of Prophetic Pragmatism

Cornel West and the Politics of Prophetic Pragmatism
Title Cornel West and the Politics of Prophetic Pragmatism PDF eBook
Author Mark David Wood
Publisher University of Illinois Press
Pages 290
Release 2000
Genre Philosophy
ISBN 9780252025785

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"Wood evaluates the political consequences of a shift in West's position from an earlier, revolutionary socialist stance to a later, progressive reformist one. Wood shows how West's subsequent reworking of Marxism supports his transition from a socialist to a progressivist politics."--BOOK JACKET.