Public Religion Research and the Beatitudes Society Team Up to Offer Holiday Gift Resource
As we enter into this season of holidays, we wanted to pass along a new resource sponsored jointly by Public Religion Research and the Beatitudes Society–the Progressive Religion Bookshelf. The PRR and Beats team have put together a list of some of our favorite authors, organized across 12 categories, who are writing about the growing movement of people of faith who are working for social justice and the common good.
Here’s the best part: by shopping for gifts here, you not only support these authors, but 4%-7% of your purchase goes to support the work of Public Religion Research and the Beatitudes Society. The store contains books by PRR president Dr. Robert P. Jones, Beatitudes director Rev. Anne Howard, and the growing host of others who are lifting up progressive religious voices.
Please help us spread the word about this new resource. The direct link to the Progressive Religion Bookshelf is http://www.tinyurl.com/religionbooks.
Check out the preview of the Progressive Religion Bookshelf below. (Follow the link above to see the full version of the store):
New Polls Highlight Religious Activists in the 2008 Election and Beyond
Leading Researchers and Commentators Discuss Findings of First-Ever Surveys Comparing Progressive and Conservative Religious Activists at National Press Club on Tuesday, September 15
Leading researchers on religion and politics, Dr. John C. Green and Dr. Robert P. Jones, will be joined by prominent public intellectuals E.J. Dionne and Michael Cromartie at a press conference at the National Press Club at 1 p.m. on Tuesday September 15 to discuss the results of two new national polls of progressive and conservative religious activists.
The 2008 presidential election saw energetic involvement by both progressive and conservative religious activists, groups whose continued political engagement is evident in the debates over current issues such as health care, climate change, and gay and lesbian rights. These new surveys provide first-ever comparative portraits of two groups of highly religious, politically engaged activists who are often rivals in national politics and opponents on key issues of the day. Analysis will include demographics, civic engagement, general attitudes, and positions on major public policy issues. Questions will be taken from members of the press and public following presentations.
The Religious Activists Surveys were conducted by the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics in partnership with Public Religion Research.
WHAT:Press conference and discussion of new polling on religious activists
WHO:
·Dr. John C. Green, Director, Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, University of Akron
·Dr. Robert P. Jones, President, Public Religion Research
·E.J. Dionne, Washington Post columnist and Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
·Michael Cromartie, Vice President, Ethics and Public Policy Center
WHEN:Tuesday, September 15, 1:00 p.m.
WHERE:National Press Club Murrow Room
529 14th Street, NW 13th Floor Washington, DC 20045
I wanted everyone in the Public Religion Research community to know about an several ways that the religious community is speaking out in support of health care reform and about a unique opportunity to participate in a national call with President Obama.
Invitation: President Obama call with America’s Faith Community
Most prominently, President Obama has accepted an invitation to participate in a nationwide call-in about health care reform with America’s faith community. Everyone is welcome to listen-in on this call.
The call is part of “40 Days for Health Reform,” a coordinated effort by a range of religious groups to ensure that Congress passes reform legislation that extends quality, affordable health care to every American family. President Obama will join key religious leaders and people of faith across America on a call in and audio webcast on health care reform on August 19 at 5:00 p.m. ET. The call and “40 Days for Health Reform” is sponsored by an unprecedented coalition of more than 25 religious denominations and organizations who work for social justice and the common good. More information about the call is available at faithforhealth.org.
What: Nationwide Call-in with President Obama on Health Care Reform
Who’s Invited: You
When: Wednesday, August 19, 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time
How to call in: Visit faithforhealth.org to register and receive call-in information.
Jews for Health Care Reform
The Jewish community is also raising a distinctively Jewish voice for universal, affordable, accessible health care. The new site, www.jewsforhealthcarereform.org, calls on Jews to “get in the game” and outlines the motivation for Jews to be involved in the debate:
Because we care for justice, and a system that leaves millions of us uninsured and millions more underinsured is not just. Jewish tradition teaches that an individual human life is of infinite value and its preservation supersedes almost all other considerations. It’s that simple, and that crucial.
The effort is sponsored by the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism (The RAC) and contains a petition, a guide to the health care debate, and other resources. Here’s Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the RAC, talking about the religious imperative to extend health care to “all of God’s children.”
New National Television Ad Supporting Health Care Reform from a Religious Perspective
You can also check out a new national television ad featuring local evangelical, Catholic, and mainline pastors, and people of faith talking about the connection between their religious beliefs and health care reform. The ad is sponsored by Faithful America, PICO National Network, Sojourners, and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.
National Health Care Sermon Weekend
Finally, “40 Days for Health Care Reform” will include the weekend of August 28-30 as National Health Care Sermon Weekend. On this weekend, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other clergy will preach about health care reform from the perspectives of their religious traditions in congregations nationwide.
All of these events are clear indicators that progressive religious leaders and organizations are finding their voice and speaking out in powerful ways to challenge our leaders to work for basic justice for all and to be a force for healing not only for a broken health care system but for a broken world.
Inviting all to sign-up for latest findings on religion, values, & politics via our new Public Religion Research updates service. http://www.publicreligion.org.
Upcoming research:
-Voices of faith on Climate change and global poverty (April)
-Mainline Protestant clergy on gay and lesbian issues (May)
-Progressive religious activists survey (June)
To receive periodic updates on our latest research, just enter your email in the “Research Updates” box. You can unsubscribe easily at any time.
Please also feel free to pass it along to friends who may be interested.
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P.S. Note that you can also follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of speaking at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, as a guest of Tom Krattenmaker, frequent contributor to USA Today and Associate Vice President at Lewis & Clark. (Tom, by the way, has a great piece up today at USA Today on recent books that give a new perspective on Jesus and the church by New Testament scholars Bart Ehrman and Marcus Borg and church historian Diana Butler Bass). After the event, I talked at length with George Rede, Sunday opinion editor at the Oregonian, who focused his Easter Sunday column on my recent book, Progressive & Religious. In the piece, entitled “Religious progressives find new acceptance”, Rede talks about the resurrection of progressive religious voices in American public life.
Religious Progressives find new acceptance
by George Rede
Judging from recent headlines, you might think conservatives have a lock on religion. Whether the topic is same-sex marriage, stem cell research or President Barack Obama’s invitation to speak at Notre Dame’s commencement, the same sources from the religious right get top billing.
What’s going on? Robert P. Jones, a professor and ordained minister, has an idea.
Last month at Portland’s Lewis & Clark College, Jones talked about his new book, “Progressive & Religious: How Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist Leaders Are Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).
In the book, Jones cuts through the assumption that religion in America — and religious politics — are the domain of the religious right. (Think Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority; Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition; James Dobson and Focus on the Family. Recall their efforts to legislate morality on issues of abortion, sex education and gay rights.)
In reporting these hot-button issues, Jones found, the mainstream media fell into the trap of presenting a distorted picture, virtually defining religion and the public square in conservative terms. Jones’ research shows that for every progressive voice cited in the news media, three conservative religious voices were quoted.
That doesn’t match reality. After all, 14 percent of Americans define themselves as religious progressives versus 15 percent who self-identify as religious conservatives, according to the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey.
Jones spent three years crisscrossing the country doing 96 interviews with progressive religious leaders representing Christianity (both mainline and evangelical Protestant), Judaism (Reform) and Islam. From those interviews, several themes emerged: an emphasis on social justice, a fundamental belief in humanity, a vision for America as a more generous country, an active role in community organizing — plus a conviction that “truth” isn’t the exclusive realm of religious conservatives…
Continue reading the full article from The Oregonianhere.
You can also read a longer piece on Progressive & Religious by George Rede, Sunday Opinion Editor for the Oregonian, here.
Progressive & Religious is 50% off in April. Rowman & Littlefield has made my book available at the best price so far ($12.48 for hardcover, expires 4/27). To buy the book at this sale price, click here, and enter promotion code “4S9PROG50″ at checkout.
Wanted to give a few updates from the road and let everyone know that if you’ve wanted a copy of my recent book, Progressive & Religious, the publisher’s spring sale is on!
1. Progressive & Religious 50% off in April. Rowman & Littlefield has made my book available at the best price so far ($12.48 for hardcover, expires 4/27). To buy the book at this sale price, click here, and enter promotion code “4S9PROG50″ at checkout.
Feel free to pass this along to friends and colleagues.
2. We’ve had a successful launch of the book and book tour. I’ve been the recipient of the hospitality of several universities and seminaries (Emory University, Princeton Theological Seminary, Hebrew College and Andover Newton Theological School, MIT, Oregon State University, Lewis and Clark College), academic conferences (American Academy of Religion, Christian Scholars Conference), and local congregations (Oseh Shalom in MD, Oakhurst Baptist Church in GA, and the Interfaith Families Project in MD). I’ve also had the opportunity to do some engaging media talks, ranging from being Rev. Welton Gaddy’s guest on Air America to an appearance on Fox & Friends (!). I’m continuing to book engagements for the second half of the year to tell the story of the emerging progressive religious movement.
3. We also continue to publish compelling “Progressive Religious Voices podcasts series with progressive religious leaders. You can find them on iTunes or at www.progressiveandreligious.org/podcasts. They’re free–come check them out.
For much of the last two decades, voices that are both progressive and religious have been like the “the Whos” in Dr. Seuss’ classic Horton Hears a Who, yelling “We are here! We are here! We are here!” just to be noticed. This is how Rev. Tim Ahrens described it in an interview I conducted with him last year about the founding of We Believe Ohio in 2005 (for the full interview see my forthcoming book Progressive & Religious). But in just a few short years, the Whos have indeed been heard.
We Believe Ohio has grown from a few religious leaders responding to a single email into a broad organization that includes more than four hundred pastors, priests, rabbis, cantors, imams, and other religious leaders all over the state. These religious leaders have come together in an unprecedented way to reclaim a progressive voice for religion in the public square.
The growth of We Believe Ohio contrasts sharply with the fate of Rev. Russell Johnson, a fundamentalist megachurch pastor who had one of the biggest megaphones in Ohio in 2004. With his 2,000-member Fairfield Christian Church, Johnson ridiculed the early participants of We Believe Ohio, joking that their combined congregations could fit into a phone booth. Along with Rev. Rod Parsley—the movement’s bombastic mouthpiece who called on Ohio Christians (who he called the largest “interest group” in the state) to “lock and load” to defeat the “hordes of Hell”—Johnson was the force behind the so-called “Ohio Restoration Project,” an attempt to recruit “patriot pastors” to register one million “values voters.”
But by late 2007, Johnson had fallen. The pinnacle of Johnson’s work turned out to be supporting the failed bid of Kenneth Blackwell for governor in 2006. And he found himself in a swirl of controversy: the IRS placed a lien on him and his wife for failure to pay $22,269 in income taxes and penalties from 2002 to 2004; his church and the school and hotel it owns showed a net operating loss of $1.5 million for its fiscal year ending in June 2007; official complaints were filed against his church for violating its tax-exempt status in backing Blackwell’s campaign; and although neither he nor the church officially cited problems with his leadership, Johnson resigned his post as pastor in October 2007.
In the meantime, Ohio Christians clearly voiced their preference for a candidate that shared all their values rather than a candidate running on a narrow divisive platform of opposing abortion and same-sex marriage. Blackwell was handily defeated by Ted Strickland, a Methodist minister who stumped as a “Golden Rule Democrat” and who, as a senator, insisted on paying for his own health coverage as long as his constituents were not covered. According to the 2006 NEP exit polls, Strickland gained fourteen points among voters who attended religious services once per week or more, compared to support these voters gave Senator John Kerry in 2004. And voters, including a majority (fifty-one percent) of weekly church attenders, overwhelmingly supported a long-overdue ballot measure to increase the minimum wage.
Especially since 2006, I have been struck (and heartened) by the contrast in the energy, new ideas, and accomplishments among progressive religious groups and the flagging, tired efforts to trot out the same old lines among the religious right….
Note: The full text of this blog can be read in my regular “Dispatches from the Beltway” column on Religion Dispatches.
E.J. Dionne’s bold pronouncement that “the era of the Religious Right is over” has been the subject of much discussion and debate. Those who agree cite the growing support for broadening the evangelical agenda to include issues like the environment (a.k.a. “creation care”), poverty, and HIV/AIDS. They also point to the graying of the Religious Right, most prominently the deaths of Jerry Falwell and James Kennedy, and the virtual collapse of the Christian Coalition. Moreover, prominent old guard leaders like James Dobson and Pat Robertson have seriously damaged their credibility with many evangelicals by endorsing Mitt Romney, a Mormon, and Rudy Guiliani, a thrice-married, pro-choice New York governor, while passing over fellow-evangelical candidate Mick Huckabee. No one need ask for a more bald demonstration of prioritizing power over principle from the self-proclaimed leaders of “values voters.”
Skeptics of the decline of the Religious Right, on the other hand, cite the huge infrastructure, resources, and reach the Religious Right has built over the last few decades (to take just one example, James Dobson’s sprawling conglomerate has its own zip code in Colorado Springs and a larger monthly print circulation than the New York Times) and argue that it will not so easily wither on the vine. The most jaded on the left simply assert that the Religious Right is the truest expression of the heart of the evangelical community and is thus here to stay.
If the argument that “the era of the Religious Right is over” depended solely on what one might call the “graying and greening” argument—that the leadership is aging and out of touch and that a few issues like the environment have simply been attached to a persistent static core—I too would be skeptical. I want to argue, however, that the reason I believe Dionne is right is that a more thoroughgoing and measurable shift is happening within the evangelical community, one that represents not simply a broader agenda but also a significantly different spirit and worldview.
