Christianity And Power Politics Today

This volume aims to reconstruct and debate a contemporary Christian realist framework, while also applying such a perspective to the issues of contemporary politics such as the Bush Doctrine, the laws of war, democracy and democratization, U.S. participation in international institutions, and apocalyptic terrorism.

Christian realism is undergoing a renaissance in both American Christianity and around the world. Caught between globalist liberalism, on the one hand, and pragmatic realism on the other, Christians are in search of international ethics, a standard and tradition in foreign policy, that takes the two great books of life, the Christian Scriptures and the world we live in, seriously. This book is an extended, edited collection that mines the tradition of Christian realism in international relations and finds in it voices and mentors urgently fresh for a new age. With classic authors like Reinhold Niebuhr, Herbert Butterfield, Paul Ramsey, and Jean Bethke Elshtain, and contemporaries like Marc LiVecche, Rebecca Heinrichs, and others, this collection offers for the first time an organization, periodization, and collection of primary Christian realist sources for the initiate and the expert in foreign relations.

The expectations that economic leaders and politicians have of religions and their leaders as guardians of the moral and ethical traditions of humanity, and of their ability to mediate in the current situations of conflict, requires religions, and not least Christian churches, to engage in critical self-reflection about their action in the public space. -- Konrad Raiser *** Religion pervades today's headlines, yet not always in a positive way. Is there a positive role for religion in the future? Focusing on the global picture and on all religions, not the least Christianity, in this book author Konrad Raiser closely probes the relationship between religion and politics in all its rich, promising, and sometimes deadly combinations. As a Christian theologian with decades of international and interreligious experience, Raiser's enlightening book wrestles with: the most contentious questions posed by the ambiguous status of religion in a post-secular world * the advent of a global economic order that leaves whole regions behind * the rise of fundamentalism in religious traditions * religion and violence * religiously-motivated terrorism. Anchored in fundamental considerations about how religion and politics relate to each other in both practice and in theory, Raiser searches for a positive cultural role for religion in today's emerging global culture and in the path to peace and justice.

Power, Politics, and the Missouri Synod follows the rise of two Lutheran clergymen - Herman Otten and J. A. O. Preus - who led different wings of a conservative movement that seized control of a theologically conservative but socially and politically moderate church denomination (LCMS) and drove "moderates" from the church in the 1970s. The schism within what was then one of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States ultimately reshaped the landscape of American Lutheranism and fostered the polarization that characterizes today's Lutheran churches.

When Barack Obama praised the writings of philosopher theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the run up to the 2008 US Presidential Elections, he joined a long line of top politicians who closely engaged with Niebuhr's ideas, including Tony Benn, Jimmy Carter, Martin Luther King Jr. and Dennis Healey. Beginning with his early ministry amongst industrial workers in early twentieth century Detroit, Niebuhr displayed a passionate commitment to social justice that infused his life's work. Rigorously championing 'Christian Realism' he sought a practically orientated intellectual engagement with the political challenges of his day. His ideas on International Relations have also helped to shape debate amongst leading academic thinkers and policy makers. In both Christian and secular contexts he continues to attract new readers today. In this timely re-evaluation both critics and disciples of Niebuhr's work reflect on his notable contribution to Christian social ethics, the Christian doctrine of humanity, and the engagement of Christian thought with contemporary politics. The authors bring a wide range of expertise from both sides of the Atlantic, indicating how a re-evaluation of Niebuhr's thought can help inform contemporary debates on Christian social ethics and other wider theological issues.

Where do Christians fit in a two-party political system? The partisan divide that is rending the nation is now tearing apart American churches. On one side are Christian Right activists and other conservatives who believe that a vote for a Democratic presidential candidate is a vote for abortion, sexual immorality, gender confusion, and the loss of religious liberty for Christians. On the other side are politically progressive Christians who are considering leaving the institutional church because of white evangelicalism’s alliance with a Republican Party that they believe is racist, hateful toward immigrants, scornful of the poor, and directly opposed to the principles that Jesus taught. Even while sharing the same pew, these two sides often see the views of the other as hopelessly wrongheaded—even evil. Is there a way to transcend this deep-seated division? The Politics of the Cross draws on history, policy analysis, and biblically grounded theology to show how Christians can protect the unborn, advocate for traditional marriage, promote racial justice, care for the poor, and, above all, honor the gospel by adopting a cross-centered ethic instead of the idolatrous politics of power, fear, or partisanship. As Daniel K. Williams illustrates, both the Republican and Democratic parties are rooted in Christian principles, but both have distorted those principles and mixed them with assumptions that are antithetical to biblical truth. Williams explains how Christians can renounce partisanship and pursue policies that show love for our neighbors to achieve a biblical vision of justice. Nuanced, detailed, and even-handed, The Politics of the Cross tackles the thorny issues that divide Christians politically and offers a path forward with innovative, biblically minded political approaches that might surprise Christians on both the left and the right.

It is not simply for rhetorical flourish that politicians so regularly invoke God's blessings on the country. It is because the relatively new form of power we call the nation-state arose out of a Western political imagination steeped in Christianity. In this brief guide to the history of Christianity and politics, Pecknold shows how early Christianity reshaped the Western political imagination with its new theological claims about eschatological time, participation, and communion with God and neighbor. The ancient view of the Church as the "mystical body of Christ" is singled out in particular as the author traces shifts in its use and meaning throughout the early, medieval, and modern periods-shifts in how we understand the nature of the person, community and the moral conscience that would give birth to a new relationship between Christianity and politics. While we have many accounts of this narrative from either political or ecclesiastical history, we have few that avoid the artificial separation of the two. This book fills that gap and presents a readable, concise, and thought-provoking introduction to what is at stake in the contentious relationship between Christianity and politics.

How would politics be different if Christians acknowledged Jesus Christ as the archetype of all rulers, democratic and nondemocratic? How would our practice of politics change if we recognized the suffering love of Christ as the truest exercise of power? Power Made Perfect? offers a distinctive approach to government and politics. It is important, the author argues, to ask how creation provides guidance for political conduct; for politics to be an exercise in piety; and to approach politics in a fallen world with prudence and not in pursuit of ultimate solutions. But it is even more important to begin with Jesus Christ. Christ is the rightful ruler of the world who exercises power by suffering and dying for guilty humans. All political activity is held to the standard of Christ's sacrifice. In this book, Timothy Sherratt surveys major Christian political initiatives and schools of Christian political thought, with a particular emphasis on American politics, before outlining ways in which Christians in churches can practice faithful political engagement.

This book explores the interaction between two of the most charged topics in the modern world, religion and politics. It shows the inextricable connection between religious attitudes and representations, and political activities. After an introductory chapter explores theoretically the religious articulations of political power, the authors examine the role played by religion in the current political situation in several countries. Approaching these cases as anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and political scientists, the authors make visible the dialectical relationship between religion and the pursuit of political power—on the one hand, the political significance of religious choices, and on the other, the almost unavoidable need to articulate in religious terms a group’s attempt to acquire, maintain, or expand political power.