Reading Politics and Faith
--Will Keillor, Acquisitions
With the party conventions over and the election approaching, I have been thinking a bit about politics and religion. Last week I heard an interview on NPR about the recent Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life study that found that a majority of Americans think that religious groups should not speak out about politics (there are some other interesting studies as well you might want to check out while you're at that site). The interview went on to a discussion of the separation of church and state and so forth. The interesting thing was that the interview followed this MPR story which featured a religious leader suggesting:
it will take uncommon alliances, such as religious and business groups, talking to each other to agree on how to fix the broken U.S. health care system.
Of course, the first joint appearance of the two candidates was at Saddleback Church, home to Rick Warren. Krista Tippett did an interview with the Warrens that discusses some of the issues related to the intersection of religion and politics (another site worth visiting).
All of these things got me thinking about my own struggles to make sense of how faith and politics should relate, both in my own life in my community and in my life as a voting citizen. If you've been thinking about some of these things as well during this political season, the library has a number of books that you might find useful in engaging with this topic. Here's a list of a few relatively new acquisitions, some of which may be shelved in our new books area (by the way, many of them I found using the subject search "Christianity and politics" in our catalog, MARTIN):
Call Number: BV3793 .W34 Call Number: BR115.P7 G567 Reaping the whirlwind : liberal democracy and the religious axis By John R. Pottenger.
Georgetown University Press, c2007.
Call Number: BL65.P7 P67 Religion in public life : must faith be privatized? By Roger Trigg.
Oxford University Press, 2007
Call Number: BL65.S8 T74 Why politics needs religion : the place of religious arguments in the public square By Brendan Sweetman.
IVP Academic, c2006.
Call Number: BL65.P7 S95 Georgetown University Press, c2008
Call Number: BX1407.P63 S624 By Frank Lambert Princeton University Press, c2008.
Call Number: BR516 .L352 Edited by J. W. Robbins and N. Magee
Continuum, c2008
Call Number: BR1642.U5 S6143 Oxford University Press, 2007
Call Numer: BR1642.U5 M368
Title
The great awakening : reviving faith & politics in a post-religious right America By Jim Wallis [foreword by Jimmy Carter].HarperOne, c2008.
God and country? : diverse perspectives on Christianity and patriotism
edited by Michael G. Long and Tracy Wenger Sadd.Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.



Politics in the parish : the political influence of Catholic priests By Gregory Allen Smith.
Religion in American politics : a short history
The sleeping giant has awoken : the new politics of religion in the United States
Wayward Christian soldiers : freeing the Gospel from political captivity By Charles Marsh.
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