Ambivalent Miracles

Download or read book Ambivalent Miracles written by Nancy D. Wadsworth and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2014-02-24 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past three decades, American evangelical Christians have undergone unexpected, progressive shifts in the area of race relations, culminating in a national movement that advocates racial integration and equality in evangelical communities. The movement, which seeks to build cross-racial relationships among evangelicals, has meant challenging well-established paradigms of church growth that built many megachurch empires. While evangelical racial change (ERC) efforts have never been easy and their reception has been mixed, they have produced meaningful transformation in religious communities. Although the movement as a whole encompasses a broad range of political views, many participants are interested in addressing race-related political issues that impact their members, such as immigration, law enforcement, and public education policy. Ambivalent Miracles traces the rise and ongoing evolution of evangelical racial change efforts within the historical, political, and cultural contexts that have shaped them. Nancy D. Wadsworth argues that the stunning breakthroughs this movement has achieved, its curious political ambivalence, and its internal tensions are products of a complex cultural politics constructed at the intersection of U.S. racial and religious history and the meaning-making practices of conservative evangelicalism. Employing methods from the emerging field of political ethnography, Wadsworth draws from a decade’s worth of interviews and participant observation in ERC settings, textual analysis, and survey research, as well as a three-year case study, to provide the first exhaustive treatment of ERC efforts in political science. A 2014 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Download or read book Recognizing Miracles in Antiquity and Beyond written by Maria Gerolemou and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-04-23 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, scholars have extensively explored the function of the miraculous and wondrous in ancient narratives, mostly pondering on how ancient authors view wondrous accounts, i.e. the treatment of the descriptions of wondrous occurrences as true events or their use. More precisely, these narratives investigate whether the wondrous pursues a display of erudition or merely provides stylistic variety; sometimes, such narratives even represent the wish of the author to grant a “rational explanation” to extraordinary actions. At present, however, two aspects of the topic have not been fully examined: a) the ability of the wondrous/miraculous to set cognitive mechanisms in motion and b) the power of the wondrous/miraculous to contribute to the construction of an authorial identity (that of kings, gods, or narrators). To this extent, the volume approaches miracles and wonders as counter intuitive phenomena, beyond cognitive grasp, which challenge the authenticity of human experience and knowledge and push forward the frontiers of intellectual and aesthetic experience. Some of the articles of the volume examine miracles on the basis of bewilderment that could lead to new factual knowledge; the supernatural is here registered as something natural (although strange); the rest of the articles treat miracles as an endpoint, where human knowledge stops and the unknown divine begins (here the supernatural is confirmed). Thence, questions like whether the experience of a miracle or wonder as a counter intuitive phenomenon could be part of long-term memory, i.e. if miracles could be transformed into solid knowledge and what mental functions are encompassed in this process, are central in the discussion.

Download or read book Marcuse in the Twenty-First Century written by Robert Kirsch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book engages the critical theory of political philosopher Herbert Marcuse to imagine spaces of resistance and liberation from the repressive forces of late capitalism. Marcuse, an influential counterculture voice in the 1960s, highlighted the "smooth democratic unfreedom" of postwar capitalism, a critique that is well adapted to the current context. The compilation begins with a previously unpublished lecture delivered by Marcuse in 1966 addressing the inadequacy of philosophy in its current form, arguing how it may be a force for liberation and social change. This lecture provides a theoretical mandate for the volume’s original contributions from international scholars engaging how topics such as higher education, aesthetics, and political organization can contribute to the project of building a critical rationality for a qualitatively better world, offering an alternative to the bleak landscape of neoliberalism. The essays in this volume as whole engage the current context with an urgency appropriate to the problems facing an encroaching authoritarianism in political society with an interdisciplinary lens that speaks to the complexity of the problems facing modern society. The chapters originally published as a special issue in New Political Science.

Download or read book Billy Graham written by Andrew Finstuen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-24 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Billy Graham stands among the most influential Christian leaders of the twentieth century. Perhaps no single doctrine, practice, political position, or preacher has united the sprawling and diverse world of evangelicalism like Billy Graham. Throughout his six-decade career, Graham mainstreamed evangelicalism and through that tradition brought about major changes to American Christianity, global Christianity, church and state, the Cold War, race relations, American manhood, intellectual life, and religious media and music. His life and career provide a many-paned window through which to view the history and character of our present and recent past. Billy Graham: American Pilgrim offers groundbreaking accounts of Graham's role in shaping these phenomena. Graham stayed true to evangelical precepts yet journeyed to positions in religion, politics, and culture that stretched his tradition to its limits. This book's distinguished contributors capture Graham's evolution and complexity. Like most people, he grew in fits and starts. But Graham's growth occurred on an international stage, influencing the world around him in ways large and small. This book delves into this influence, going beyond conventional subjects and taking a fresh and nuanced look at the complex life and legacy of one of the most important figures of the last century.

Download or read book The Urban Church Imagined written by Jessica M. Barron and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2017-11-28 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the role of race and consumer culture in attracting urban congregants to an evangelical church The Urban Church Imagined illuminates the dynamics surrounding white urban evangelical congregations’ approaches to organizational vitality and diversifying membership. Many evangelical churches are moving to urban, downtown areas to build their congregations and attract younger, millennial members. The urban environment fosters two expectations. First, a deep familiarity and reverence for popular consumer culture, and second, the presence of racial diversity. Church leaders use these ideas when they imagine what a “city church” should look like, but they must balance that with what it actually takes to make this happen. In part, racial diversity is seen as key to urban churches presenting themselves as “in touch” and “authentic.” Yet, in an effort to seduce religious consumers, church leaders often and inadvertently end up reproducing racial and economic inequality, an unexpected contradiction to their goal of inclusivity. Drawing on several years of research, Jessica M. Barron and Rhys H. Williams explore the cultural contours of one such church in downtown Chicago. They show that church leaders and congregants’ understandings of the connections between race, consumer culture, and the city is a motivating factor for many members who value interracial interactions as a part of their worship experience. But these explorations often unintentionally exclude members along racial and classed lines. Indeed, religious organizations’ efforts to engage urban environments and foster integrated congregations produce complex and dynamic relationships between their racially diverse memberships and the cultivation of a safe haven in which white, middle-class leaders can feel as though they are being a positive force in the fight for religious vitality and racial diversity. The book adds to the growing constellation of studies on urban religious organizations, as well as emerging scholarship on intersectionality and congregational characteristics in American religious life. In so doing, it offers important insights into racially diverse congregations in urban areas, a growing trend among evangelical churches. This work is an important case study on the challenges faced by modern churches and urban institutions in general.

Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Interpretive Political Science written by Mark Bevir and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-03 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interpretive political science focuses on the meanings that shape actions and institutions, and the ways in which they do so. This Handbook explores the implications of interpretive theory for the study of politics. It provides the first definitive survey of the field edited by two of its pioneers. Written by leading scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, the Handbook’s 32 chapters are split into five parts which explore: the contrast between interpretive theory and mainstream political science; the main forms of interpretive theory and the theoretical concepts associated with interpretive political science; the methods used by interpretive political scientists; the insights provided by interpretive political science on empirical topics; the implications of interpretive political science for professional practices such as policy analysis, planning, accountancy, and public health. With an emphasis on the applications of interpretive political science to a range of topics and disciplines, this Handbook is an invaluable resource for students, scholars, and practitioners in the areas of international relations, comparative politics, political sociology, political psychology, and public administration.

Download or read book The Case for Identity Politics written by Christopher T. Stout and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the presidential election of 2016, many prominent scholars and political pundits argued that a successful Democratic Party in the future must abandon identity politics. While these calls for Democrats to distance themselves from such strategies have received much attention, there is scant academic work that empirically tests whether nonracial campaigns provide an advantage to Democrats today. As Christopher Stout explains, those who argue for deracialized appeals to voters may not be considering how several high-profile police shootings and acquittals, increasing evidence of growing racial health and economic disparities, retrenchments on voting rights, and the growth of racial hate groups have made race a more salient issue now than in the recent past. Moreover, they fail to account for how demographic changes in the United States have made racial and ethnic minorities a more influential voting bloc. The Case for Identity Politics finds that racial appeals are an effective form of outreach for Democratic candidates and enhance, rather than detract from, their electability in our current political climate.