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 Race and American Political Development written by Joseph E. Lowndes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race has been present at every critical moment in American political development, shaping political institutions, political discourse, public policy, and its denizens’ political identities. But because of the nature of race—its evolving and dynamic status as a structure of inequality, a political organizing principle, an ideology, and a system of power—we must study the politics of race historically, institutionally, and discursively. Covering more than three hundred years of American political history from the founding to the contemporary moment, the contributors in this volume make this extended argument. Together, they provide an understanding of American politics that challenges our conventional disciplinary tools of studying politics and our conservative political moment’s dominant narrative of racial progress. This volume, the first to collect essays on the role of race in American political history and development, resituates race in American politics as an issue for sustained and broadened critical attention.

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 Slavery's Long Shadow written by James L. Gorman and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How interactions of race and religion have influenced unity and division in the church At the center of the story of American Christianity lies an integral connection between race relations and Christian unity. Despite claims that Jesus Christ transcends all racial barriers, the most segregated hour in America is still Sunday mornings when Christians gather for worship. In Slavery’s Long Shadow fourteen historians and other scholars examine how the sobering historical realities of race relations and Christianity have created both unity and division within American churches from the 1790s into the twenty-first century. The book’s three sections offer readers three different entry points into the conversation: major historical periods, case studies, and ways forward. Historians as well as Christians interested in racial reconciliation will find in this book both help for understanding the problem and hope for building a better future. Contributors: Tanya Smith Brice Joel A. Brown Lawrence A. Q. Burnley Jeff W. Childers Wes Crawford James L. Gorman Richard T. Hughes Loretta Hunnicutt Christopher R. Hutson Kathy Pulley Edward J. Robinson Kamilah Hall Sharp Jerry Taylor D. Newell Williams

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.

Download or read book Faith and Race in American Political Life written by Robin Dale Jacobson and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on scholarship from an array of disciplines, this volume provides a deep and timely look at the intertwining of race and religion in American politics. The contributors apply the methods of intersectionality, but where this approach has typically considered race, class, and gender, the essays collected here focus on religion, too, to offer a theoretically robust conceptualization of how these elements intersect--and how they are actively impacting the political process. Contributors Antony W. Alumkal, Iliff School of Theology * Carlos Figueroa, University of Texas at Brownsville * Robert D. Francis, Lutheran Services in America * Susan M. Gordon, independent scholar * Edwin I. Hernández, DeVos Family Foundations * Robin Dale Jacobson, University of Puget Sound * Robert P. Jones, Public Religion Research Institute * Jonathan I. Leib, Old Dominion University * Jessica Hamar Martínez, University of Arizona * Eric Michael Mazur, Virginia Wesleyan College * Sangay Mishra, University of Southern California * Catherine Paden, Simmons College * Milagros Peña, University of Florida * Tobin Miller Shearer, University of Montana * Nancy D. Wadsworth, University of Denver * Gerald R. Webster, University of Wyoming