The Spiritual-Industrial Complex

The Spiritual-Industrial Complex PDF

Author: Jonathan P. Herzog

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2011-08-05

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0195393465

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This fascinating volume argues that American leaders in the early Cold War considered the conflict to be profoundly religious, that they saw Communism not as godless but as a religion fighting faith with faith. As a result, they deliberately used religious beliefs and institutions as part of the plan to defeat the Soviet enemy. Jonathan Herzog offers an illuminating account of the spiritual-industrial complex, chronicling the rhetoric, programs, and policies that became its hallmarks.

The Spiritual-Industrial Complex

The Spiritual-Industrial Complex PDF

Author: Jonathan P. Herzog

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-08-05

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0199830746

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In his farewell address, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation of the perils of the military-industrial complex. But as Jonathan Herzog shows in this insightful history, Eisenhower had spent his presidency contributing to another, lesser known, Cold War collaboration: the spiritual-industrial complex. This fascinating volume shows that American leaders in the early Cold War years considered the conflict to be profoundly religious; they saw Communism not only as godless but also as a sinister form of religion. Fighting faith with faith, they deliberately used religious beliefs and institutions as part of the plan to defeat the Soviet enemy. Herzog offers an illuminating account of the resultant spiritual-industrial complex, chronicling the rhetoric, the programs, and the policies that became its hallmarks. He shows that well-known actions like the addition of the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance were a small part of a much larger and relatively unexplored program that promoted religion nationwide. Herzog shows how these efforts played out in areas of American life both predictable and unexpected--from pulpits and presidential appeals to national faith drives, military training barracks, public school classrooms, and Hollywood epics. Millions of Americans were bombarded with the message that the religious could not be Communists, just a short step from the all-too-common conclusion that the irreligious could not be true Americans. Though the spiritual-industrial complex declined in the 1960s, its statutes, monuments, and sentiments live on as bulwarks against secularism and as reminders that the nation rests upon the groundwork of religious faith. They continue to serve as valuable allies for those defending the place of religion in American life.

Overturning Tables

Overturning Tables PDF

Author: Scott A. Bessenecker

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2014-11-03

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 0830896767

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The history of Protestant mission in the world has unfolded in step with the history of the modern marketplace, defining missions success in marketplace terms. Scott Bessenecker points toward a view of missions freed of false attachments to material paradigms and tailored toward a kingdom vision.

Prison Industrial Complex For Beginners

Prison Industrial Complex For Beginners PDF

Author: James Braxton Peterson

Publisher: For Beginners, LLC

Published: 2016-02-10

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 1939994314

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Prison Industrial Complex For Beginners is a graphic narrative project that attempts to distill the fundamental components of what scholars, activists, and artists have identified as the Mass Incarceration movement in the United States. Since the early 1990s, activist critics of the US prison system have marked its emergence as a "complex" in a manner comparable to how President Eisenhower described the Military Industrial Complex. Like its institutional "cousin," the Prison Industrial Complex features a critical combination of political ideology, far-reaching federal policy, and the neo-liberal directive to privatize institutions traditionally within the purview of the government. The result is that corporations have capital incentives to capture and contain human bodies. The Prison Industrial Complex relies on the "law and order" ideology fomented by President Nixon and developed at least partially in response to the unrest generated through the Civil Rights Movement. It is (and has been) enhanced and emboldened via the US "war on drugs," a slate of policies that by any account have failed to do anything except normalize the warehousing of nonviolent substance abusers in jails and prisons that serve more as criminal training centers then as redemptive spaces for citizens who might re-enter society successfully. Prison Industrial Complex For Beginners is a primer for how these issues emerged and how our awareness of the systems at work in mass incarceration might be the very first step in reforming an institution responsible for some of our most egregious contemporary civil rights violations.

Addicted to Lust

Addicted to Lust PDF

Author: Samuel L. Perry

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-04-02

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0190844221

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Few cultural issues alarm conservative Protestant families and communities like the seemingly ubiquitous threat of pornography. Thanks to widespread access to the internet, conservative Protestants now face a reality in which every Christian man, woman, and child with a smartphone can access limitless pornography in their bathroom, at work, or at a friend's sleepover. Once confident of their victory over pornography in society at large, conservative Protestants now fear that "porn addiction" is consuming even the most faithful. How are they adjusting to this new reality? And what are its consequences in their lives? Drawing on over 130 interviews as well as numerous national surveys, Addicted to Lust shows that, compared to other Americans, pornography shapes the lives of conservative Protestants in ways that are uniquely damaging to their mental health, spiritual lives, and intimate relationships. Samuel L. Perry demonstrates how certain pervasive beliefs within the conservative Protestant subculture unwittingly create a context in which those who use pornography are often overwhelmed with shame and discouragement, sometimes to the point of depression or withdrawal from faith altogether. Conservative Protestant women who use pornography feel a "double shame" both for sinning sexually and for sinning "like a man," while conflicts over pornography in marriages are escalated by patterns of lying, hiding, blowing up, or threats of divorce. Addicted to Lust shines new light on one of the most talked-about problems facing conservative Christians.

Eff This! Meditation

Eff This! Meditation PDF

Author: Ms. Liza Kindred

Publisher: Rock Point

Published: 2019-10-22

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13: 1631066366

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Are you stressed out, anxious, or overwhelmed? Get out of the storm swirling in your head—and into the peaceful place inside you. Eff This! Meditation will help you let that crap go…with 108 hands-on practices rooted in humor, love, straight talk, and a deep respect for the foundational teachings of Buddhism. If you’re ready to throw your hands in the air and yell “Eff This!” you are not alone—and this book can help. You already know that you should meditate, and that meditation will make you happier and healthier. But you’re tired and irritated, and every time you try to meditate, your mind races and you can't stop thinking about that jerk at work. If this describes you, then this might be just what you need. This is not a joke, this is real meditation—and really effective practices—for everyday life. This book is a reference for you to come back to again and again. Integrate these tips into your daily life, or pull it off the shelf when you need a boost. Learn to celebrate the small victories in life with a “to done” list. Release yourself from phone addiction with a digital detox plan. Get your body out of stress mode by practicing diaphragmatic breathing. Be transported, and open your heart with a pick-me-up playlist. These are just a few of the simple, practical strategies that will help you find your center. Eff This! Meditation is a Shamatha (mindfulness-awareness) practice rooted in radical compassion for self, and presented in 108 tips, tricks, and ideas. They are all centered on the idea that, as humans, we might not be “finished,” but we are complete. Everything you need to attain enlightenment is already contained within you, and you can use meditation—and these practices—to connect with it. The book offers 108 exercises, organized by the amount of time you have to help you respond to your current effing context. There are a number of ways you can dive into the book: Read it all the way through Flip through and mark what seems interesting Try all of the techniques, one by one Grab the book in a panic and thumb through until something sticks out Open the book to a random page and do that thing However the eff you want; it’s your book now

Down in the Chapel

Down in the Chapel PDF

Author: Joshua Dubler

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2013-08-13

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 146683711X

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A bold and provocative interpretation of one of the most religiously vibrant places in America—a state penitentiary Baraka, Al, Teddy, and Sayyid—four black men from South Philadelphia, two Christian and two Muslim—are serving life sentences at Pennsylvania's maximum-security Graterford Prison. All of them work in Graterford's chapel, a place that is at once a sanctuary for religious contemplation and an arena for disputing the workings of God and man. Day in, day out, everything is, in its twisted way, rather ordinary. And then one of them disappears. Down in the Chapel tells the story of one week at Graterford Prison. We learn how the men at Graterford pass their time, care for themselves, and commune with their makers. We observe a variety of Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, and others, at prayer and in study and song. And we listen in as an interloping scholar of religion tries to make sense of it all. When prisoners turn to God, they are often scorned as con artists who fake their piety, or pitied as wretches who cling to faith because faith is all they have left. Joshua Dubler goes beyond these stereotypes to show the religious life of a prison in all its complexity. One part prison procedural, one part philosophical investigation, Down in the Chapel explores the many uses prisoners make of their religions and weighs the circumstances that make these uses possible. Gritty and visceral, meditative and searching, it is an essential study of American religion in the age of mass incarceration.

Drift

Drift PDF

Author: Rachel Maddow

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2012-03-27

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 0307461009

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The #1 New York Times bestseller that charts America’s dangerous drift into a state of perpetual war. Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring Reagan's radical presidency, the disturbing rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. Ultimately, she shows us just how much we stand to lose by allowing the scope of American military power to overpower our political discourse. Sensible yet provocative, dead serious yet seri­ously funny, Drift reinvigorates a "loud and jangly" political debate about our vast and confounding national security state.

Everything Is Spiritual

Everything Is Spiritual PDF

Author: Rob Bell

Publisher: St. Martin's Essentials

Published: 2020-09-15

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1250620570

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"An exciting vision of the future" --Michael Eric Dyson Everything Is Spiritual is an unexpected and compelling invitation to see your life in a whole new way. We have the great moments of our lives, the highs, those times when we soar, when it all makes sense, when it feels like it all has purpose and meaning. And then there are all those other moments—the lows and aches and failures and struggles and experiences that leave us wondering what the point of it all is. Are our lives ultimately bits and pieces and fragments—you try to find a little peace and hope and then it’s over? Or is there more going on here? In our increasingly polarized and disoriented world, Everything Is Spiritual gives us a radical new take on how it all fits together, how it works, how it’s all connected. Part memoir, part extended riff on the quantum nature of reality, part history of the universe, Rob Bell takes us back through the twists and turns and struggles of his story in order to help us see the larger story so that we can reconnect with our story.

The Global Industrial Complex

The Global Industrial Complex PDF

Author: Steven Best

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0739136984

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The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination is a groundbreaking collection of essays by a diverse set of leading scholars who examine the entangled and evolving global array of corporate-state structures of hegemonic power--what the editors refer to as "the power complex"--that was first analyzed by C. Wright Mills in his 1956 classic work, The Power Elite. In this new volume edited by Steven Best, Richard Kahn, Anthony J. Nocella II, and Peter McLaren, the power complex is conceived as co-constituted, interdependent and imbricated systems of domination. Spreading insidiously on a global level, the transnational institutional relationships of the power complex combine the logics of capitalist exploitation and profits and industrialist norms of efficiency, control, and mass production, While some have begun to analyze these institutional complexes as separate entities, this book is unique in analyzing them as overlapping, mutually-enforcing systems that operate globally and which will undoubtedly frame the macro-narrative of the 21st century (and perhaps beyond). The global industrial complex--a grand power complex of complexes--thus poses one of the most formidable challenges to the sustainability of planetary democracy, freedom and peace today. But there can be no serious talk of opposition to it until it is more popularly named and understood. The Global Industrial Complex aims to be a foundational contribution to this emerging educational and political project.