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Author: Robert P. Kraynak
Publisher:
Published: 2001
Total Pages: 360
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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: Stathis N. Kalyvas
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2018-09-05
Total Pages: 314
ISBN-13: 1501731416
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Although dominant in West European politics for more than a century, Christian Democratic parties remain largely unexplored and little understood. An investigation of how political identities and parties form, this book considers the origins of Christian Democratic "confessional" parties within the political context of Western Europe. Examining five countries where a successful confessional party emerged (Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, and Italy) and one where it did not (France), Stathis N. Kalyvas addresses perplexing questions raised by the Christian Democratic phenomenon. How can we reconcile the religious roots of these parties with their tremendous success and resilience in secular and democratic Western Europe? Why have these parties discarded their initial principles and objectives to become secular forces governing secular societies? The author's answers reveal the way in which social and political actors make decisions based on self-interest under conditions that constrain their choices and the information they rely on—often with unintended but irrevocable consequences.Kalyvas also lays a foundation for a theory of the Christian Democratic phenomenon which would specify the conditions under which confessional parties succeed and would determine the impact of such parties, and the way they are formed, on politics and society. Drawing from political science, sociology, and history, his analysis goes beyond Christian Democracy to address issues related to the methodology of political science, the theory of party formation, the political development of Europe, the relationship between religion and politics, the construction of collective political identities, and the role of agency and contingency in politics.
Author: Carlo Invernizzi Accetti
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2019-10-03
Total Pages: 401
ISBN-13: 1108386156
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Christian Democratic actors and thinkers have been at the forefront of many of the twentieth century's key political battles - from the construction of the international human rights regime, through the process of European integration and the creation of postwar welfare regimes, to Latin American development policies during the Cold War. Yet their core ideas remain largely unknown, especially in the English-speaking world. Combining conceptual and historical approaches, Carlo Invernizzi Accetti traces the development of this ideology in the thought and writings of some of its key intellectual and political exponents, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. In so doing he sheds light on a number of important contemporary issues, from the question of the appropriate place of religion in presumptively 'secular' liberal-democratic regimes, to the normative resources available for building a political response to the recent rise of far-right populism.
Author: Jacques Maritain
Publisher: Ayer Publishing
Published: 1972
Total Pages: 63
ISBN-13: 9780836972436
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: George E. Demacopoulos
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Published: 2016-11-01
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 0823274217
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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: Hugh Heclo
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2009-07-01
Total Pages: 312
ISBN-13: 0674027051
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Exploring the tension at the heart of America’s culture wars, this is “a very fine book on a very important subject” (Mark A. Noll, author of The Civil War as a Theological Crisis). Christianity, not religion in general, has been important for American democracy. With this bold thesis, Hugh Heclo offers a panoramic view of how Christianity and democracy have shaped each other. Heclo shows that amid deeply felt religious differences, a Protestant colonial society gradually convinced itself of the truly Christian reasons for, as well as the enlightened political advantages of, religious liberty. By the mid-twentieth century, American democracy and Christianity appeared locked in a mutual embrace. But it was a problematic union vulnerable to fundamental challenge in the Sixties. Despite the subsequent rise of the religious right and glib talk of a conservative Republican theocracy, Heclo sees a longer-term, reciprocal estrangement between Christianity and American democracy. Responding to his challenging argument, Mary Jo Bane, Michael Kazin, and Alan Wolfe criticize, qualify, and amend it. Heclo’s rejoinder suggests why both secularists and Christians should worry about a coming rupture between the Christian and democratic faiths. The result is a lively debate about a momentous tension in American public life.
Author: Terence O. Ranger
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 298
ISBN-13: 0195174771
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In recent decades, Christianity has acquired millions of new adherents in Africa, the region with the world's fastest-expanding population. What role has this development of evangelical Christianity played in Africa's democratic history? To what extent do its churches affect its politics? By taking a historical view and focusing specifically on the events of the past few years, Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa seeks to explore these questions, offering individual case studies of six countries: Nigeria, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, and Mozambique. Unlike most analyses of democracy which come from a secular Western tradition, these contributors, mainly younger scholars based in Africa, bring first-hand knowledge to their chapters and employ both field and archival research to develop their data and analyses. The result is a groundbreaking work that will be indispensable to everyone concerned with the future of this volatile region. Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa is one of four volumes in the series Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in the Global South, which seeks to answer the question: What happens when a revivalist religion based on scriptural orthodoxy participates in the volatile politics of the Third World? At a time when the global-political impact of another revivalist and scriptural religion -- Islam -- fuels vexed debate among analysts the world over, these volumes offer an unusual comparative perspective on a critical issue: the often combustible interaction of resurgent religion and the developing world's unstable politics.
Author: Thomas Albert Kselman
Publisher:
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 358
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In this engaging and innovative new book, French scholar Jacques Proust analyzes the image Europe presented to Japan, deliberately or otherwise, from the mid-sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. Appearing for the first time in an American translation, Europe through the Prism of Japan relies on a large quantity of underexplored documents from which Proust has tried to reconstruct, like a puzzle, Japanese-European relations during the age of European exploration. This fascinating book describes in careful detail developments in Japanese culture and civilization during three hundred years of interaction between Japanese and Europeans, including Dutch merchants, Spanish Catholic missionaries, and German and Portuguese Jesuits. Proust examines not only Europeans' influence on Japan but also the unique Japanese interpretation of European culture. This fresh perspective offers a prism through which Europe may be viewed and frequently sheds light on facets of European civilization of which not even the Europeans, at the time, were aware. Proust's lively study is especially valuable because of its interdisciplinary nature. Covering topics as wide ranging as art history, theology, philosophy, political and social history, and even the history of medicine, Proust interweaves these fields to present a unified historical and intellectual fabric. This round-trip journey between Japan and the West, which in the sixteenth century took about four years and can be done today in twenty-four hours, has the advantage of imposing on comparative studies a unique geographical and historical framework. Proust broadens our understanding of two very different cultures by providing new insight into both European and Japanese history.
Author: Paul Freston
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2008-04-11
Total Pages: 281
ISBN-13: 0195174763
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This series offers a comparative perspective on a critical issue - the often combustible interaction of resurgent religion and the developing world's unstable politics. This volume considers the case of Latin America, where evengelical Protestantism is increasingly challenging the historical Catholic hegemony.
Author: John W. De Gruchy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1995-06
Total Pages: 314
ISBN-13: 9780521458412
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The need for global democratisation is now widely recognised, but there is considerable debate about what this means and how it can be achieved. In this important study John de Gruchy examines the historic and contemporary roles of Christianity in the development of democracy. He traces the gestation of modern democracy in medieval Christendom, and then describes the virtual breakdown of the relationship as democracy becomes the polity of modernity. Five twentieth-century case studies - the USA, Nicaragua, sub-Saharan Africa, Germany and South Africa - demonstrate the extent to which ecumenical Christianity has begun to reconnect with democracy and act as its contemporary midwife. De Gruchy argues that democracy needs to rediscover its spiritual heritage, while Christianity needs to develop a theology adequate for its participation in the realisation of a just democratic world order.
