Author: Lavinia Stan Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199714126 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu examine the relationship between religion and politics in ten former communist Eastern European countries. Contrary to widespread theories of increasing secularization, Stan and Turcescu argue that in most of these countries, the populations have shown themselves to remain religious even as they embrace modernization and democratization. Church-state relations in the new EU member states can be seen in political representation for church leaders, governmental subsidies, registration of religions by the state, and religious instruction in public schools. Stan and Turcescu outline three major models: the Czech church-state separation model, in which religion is private and the government secular; the pluralist model of Hungary, Bulgaria and Latvia, which views society as a group of complementary but autonomous spheres - for example, education, the family, and religion - each of which is worthy of recognition and support from the state; and the dominant religion model that exists in Poland, Romania, Estonia, and Lithuania, in which the government maintains informal ties to the religious majority. Church, State, and Democracy in Expanding Europe offers critical tools for understanding church-state relations in an increasingly modern and democratic Eastern Europe.
Author: Russell A. Miller Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134064446 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 282
Book Description
This volume examines the investigation by the 1975 Senate Select Committee (‘Church Committee’) into US intelligence abuses during the Cold War, and considers its lessons for the current ‘war on terror’. This report remains the most thorough public record of America’s intelligence services, and many of the legal boundaries operating on US intelligence agencies today are the direct result of reforms proposed by the Church Committee, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The Church Committee also drew attention to the importance of constitutional government as a Congressional body overseeing the activities of the Executive branch. Placing the legacy of the Church Committee in the context of the contemporary debate over US national security and democratic governance, the book brings together contributions from distinguished policy leaders and scholars of law, intelligence and political science.
Author: Robert P. Kraynak Publisher: ISBN: Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
This work challenges the commonly accepted view that Christianity is inherently compatible with modern democratic society. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it argues that there is no necessary connection between Christianity and any form of government.
Author: Emile Perreau-Saussine Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691248168 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 200
Book Description
How the Catholic Church redefined its relationship to the state in the wake of the French Revolution Catholicism and Democracy is a history of Catholic political thinking from the French Revolution to the present day. Emile Perreau-Saussine investigates the church's response to liberal democracy, a political system for which the church was utterly unprepared. Looking at leading philosophers and political theologians—among them Joseph de Maistre, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Charles Péguy—Perreau-Saussine shows how the church redefined its relationship to the state in the long wake of the French Revolution. Disenfranchised by the fall of the monarchy, the church in France at first embraced that most conservative of ideologies, "ultramontanism" (an emphasis on the central role of the papacy). Catholics whose church had lost its national status henceforth looked to the papacy for spiritual authority. Perreau-Saussine argues that this move paradoxically combined a fundamental repudiation of the liberal political order with an implicit acknowledgment of one of its core principles, the autonomy of the church from the state. However, as Perreau-Saussine shows, in the context of twentieth-century totalitarianism, the Catholic Church retrieved elements of its Gallican heritage and came to embrace another liberal (and Gallican) principle, the autonomy of the state from the church, for the sake of its corollary, freedom of religion. Perreau-Saussine concludes that Catholics came to terms with liberal democracy, though not without abiding concerns about the potential of that system to compromise freedom of religion in the pursuit of other goals.
Author: George E. Demacopoulos Publisher: Fordham Univ Press ISBN: 0823274217 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 263
Book Description
Winner of the 2017 Alpha Sigma Nu Award The collapse of communism in eastern Europe has forced traditionally Eastern Orthodox countries to consider the relationship between Christianity and liberal democracy. Contributors examine the influence of Constantinianism in both the post-communist Orthodox world and in Western political theology. Constructive theological essays feature Catholic and Protestant theologians reflecting on the relationship between Christianity and democracy, as well as Orthodox theologians reflecting on their tradition’s relationship to liberal democracy. The essays explore prospects of a distinctively Christian politics in a post-communist, post-Constantinian age.
Author: Jeffrey Klaiber Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers ISBN: 1606089471 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
No book in any language equals The Church, Dictatorships, and Democracy in Latin America for its comparative breadth. Historians, social scientists, and general readers will cull from it the conditions needed for the church to play a positive and creative role in furthering human rights and democracy. -John A. Coleman, SJ Loyola Marymount University Jeffrey Klaiber's book offers a wonderfully informative history of the Church's role in Latin American struggles to defend human rights and achieve democracy. Anyone who has followed with concern and interest these recent struggles-from military dictatorships in Brazil and Chile, through the violent conflicts in Central America, to the most recent struggles in Chiapas, Mexico-will find this remarkably comprehensive study of eleven different nations an invaluable text. -Arthur F. McGovern, SJ University of Detroit This volume provides readers with the first comprehensive view of the church during a defining period of Latin American history. This is an invaluable study by a longtime and astute observer. -Edward L. Cleary, OP Providence College A compelling account of the role of the church during the dictatorships and internal wars in eleven countries of Latin America . . . by an eminent historian. -Gerald H. Anderson Director of Overseas Ministries Study Center
Author: George Weigel Publisher: Hachette UK ISBN: 0465094341 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
A powerful new interpretation of Catholicism's dramatic encounter with modernity, by one of America's leading intellectuals Throughout much of the nineteenth century, both secular and Catholic leaders assumed that the Church and the modern world were locked in a battle to the death. The triumph of modernity would not only finish the Church as a consequential player in world history; it would also lead to the death of religious conviction. But today, the Catholic Church is far more vital and consequential than it was 150 years ago. Ironically, in confronting modernity, the Catholic Church rediscovered its evangelical essence. In the process, Catholicism developed intellectual tools capable of rescuing the imperiled modern project. A richly rendered, deeply learned, and powerfully argued account of two centuries of profound change in the church and the world, The Irony of Modern Catholic History reveals how Catholicism offers twenty-first century essential truths for our survival and flourishing.
Author: Jeffrey W. Robbins Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231156375 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 234
Book Description
Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote that "the people reign over the American political world like God over the universe," unwittingly casting democracy as the political instantiation of the death of God. According to Jeffrey W. Robbins, Tocqueville's assessment remains an apt observation of modern democratic power, which does not rest with a sovereign authority but operates as a diffuse social force. By linking radical democratic theory to a contemporary fascination with political theology, Robbins envisions the modern experience of democracy as a social, cultural, and political force transforming the nature of sovereign power and political authority. Robbins joins his work with Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's radical conception of "network power," as well as Sheldon Wolin's notion of "fugitive democracy," to fashion a political theology that captures modern democracy's social and cultural torment. This approach has profound implications not only for the nature of contemporary religious belief and practice but also for the reconceptualization of the proper relationship between religion and politics. Challenging the modern, liberal, and secular assumption of a neutral public space, Robbins conceives of a postsecular politics for contemporary society that inextricably links religion to the political. While effectively recasting the tradition of radical theology as a political theology, this book also develops a comprehensive critique of the political theology bequeathed by Carl Schmitt. It marks an original and visionary achievement by the scholar the Journal of the American Academy of Religion hailed "one of the best commentators on religion and postmodernism."
Author: Thomas Bokenkotter Publisher: Image ISBN: 0307874869 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 597
Book Description
Though sometimes a source of controversy regarding certain issues, the Catholic Church has in many ways lead the struggle for social justice and rights for the poor in our age. Pope John Paul II never lets an opportunity pass without insisting on the need for greater respect for human rights and the need to alleviate the pains of poverty. In the United States the Catholic Church is the single largest private organization providing assistance to the underprivileged--operating soup kitchens and shelters for the homeless, providing care for the sick, and education for the needy. But this struggle was not always a top priority. In fact, at the time of the French Revolution the Catholic Church was among the most conservative and reactionary of the world's powers. Church and Revolution deals with the interesting historical question: How did the Catholic Church develop from being a defender of the status quo to being a progressive force in world affairs? Thomas Bokenkotter traces the development of social justice in the Church over the 200 years since the French Revolution through portraits of fifteen colorful figures who were all key to the political revolutions of the past two centuries and who also effected the Church's response to them--including Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero; Irish emancipator Daniel O'Connell; founder of the American Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy Day; and Polish electrician and President, Lech Walesa.
Author: Lavinia Stan
Author: Russell A. Miller
Author: Robert P. Kraynak
Author: Emile Perreau-Saussine
Author: George E. Demacopoulos
Author: Jeffrey Klaiber
Author: Amy Erica Smith
Author: George Weigel
Author: Jeffrey W. Robbins
Author: Thomas Bokenkotter