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This book analyzes the problems that arise when women's rights conflict with the views of conservative organized religion. Specifically, it addresses the legalization - or lack thereof - of divorce and abortion in three recently democratized Catholic countries: Spain, Chile, and Argentina. Offering a vital and timely contribution to political debates on democratic consolidation, social policy, gender, politics and religion, it challenges many of the accepted assumptions and conclusions in these fields, arguing that to understand the political dynamics and policy trajectories on these issues we must first analyze the distribution of both economic and political power. Merike Blofield moves the debate away from a (unitary) focus on values and public opinion to an analysis of how economic, social and political structures give certain actors more power than others. The topics covered should appeal to a broad readership interested in the difficulties of democratic consolidation in Latin America, and the obstacles to social policy reform in a region with such high levels of inequality. The analysis presented in The Politics of Moral Sin also deepens our understanding of why and how European countries have been so successful in limiting the indulgence of organized religion and in promoting women's rights.
This book analyzes the problems that arise when women's rights conflict with the views of conservative organized religion. Specifically, it addresses the legalization - or lack thereof - of divorce and abortion in three recently democratized Catholic countries: Spain, Chile, and Argentina. Offering a vital and timely contribution to political debates on democratic consolidation, social policy, gender, politics and religion, it challenges many of the accepted assumptions and conclusions in these fields, arguing that to understand the political dynamics and policy trajectories on these issues we must first analyze the distribution of both economic and political power. Merike Blofield moves the debate away from a (unitary) focus on values and public opinion to an analysis of how economic, social and political structures give certain actors more power than others. The topics covered should appeal to a broad readership interested in the difficulties of democratic consolidation in Latin America, and the obstacles to social policy reform in a region with such high levels of inequality. The analysis presented in The Politics of Moral Sin also deepens our understanding of why and how European countries have been so successful in limiting the indulgence of organized religion and in promoting women's rights.
Annotation. Although the US is proud of being a secular state, religion lies at the heart of American politics. This volume looks at how the country came to have the soul of a church & the consequences - the moral crusades against slavery, alcohol, witchcraft & discrimination that time & again have prevailed upon the nation.
Evil is not confined to war or to circumstances in which people are acting under extreme duress. Today it more frequently reveals itself in the everyday insensitivity to the suffering of others, in the inability or refusal to understand them and in the casual turning away of one’s ethical gaze. Evil and moral blindness lurk in what we take as normality and in the triviality and banality of everyday life, and not just in the abnormal and exceptional cases. The distinctive kind of moral blindness that characterizes our societies is brilliantly analysed by Zygmunt Bauman and Leonidas Donskis through the concept of adiaphora: the placing of certain acts or categories of human beings outside of the universe of moral obligations and evaluations. Adiaphora implies an attitude of indifference to what is happening in the world – a moral numbness. In a life where rhythms are dictated by ratings wars and box-office returns, where people are preoccupied with the latest gadgets and forms of gossip, in our ‘hurried life’ where attention rarely has time to settle on any issue of importance, we are at serious risk of losing our sensitivity to the plight of the other. Only celebrities or media stars can expect to be noticed in a society stuffed with sensational, valueless information. This probing inquiry into the fate of our moral sensibilities will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the most profound changes that are silently shaping the lives of everyone in our contemporary liquid-modern world.
A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction Book of 2013 A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2013 An Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Nominee An explosive, sweeping account of the scandal that has sent the Catholic Church into a tailspin -- and the brave few who fought for justice In the mid-1980s a dynamic young monsignor assigned to the Vatican's embassy in Washington set out to investigate the problem of sexually abusive priests. He found a scandal in the making, confirmed by secret files revealing complaints that had been hidden from police and covered up by the Church hierarchy. He also understood that the United States judicial system was eager to punish offenders and those who aided them. He presented all of this to the American bishops, warning that the Church could be devastated by negative publicity and bankrupted by its legal liability. They ignored him. Meanwhile, a young lawyer listened to a new client describe an abusive sexual history with a priest that began when he was ten years old. His parents' complaints were downplayed by Church officials who offered them money to go away. The lawyer saw a claim that any defendant would want to settle. Then he began to suspect he was onto something bigger, involving thousands of priests who had abused countless children while the Church had done almost nothing about it. The lawsuit he filed would touch off a legal war of historic and global proportions. Part history, part journalism, and part true-crime thriller, Michael D'Antonio's Mortal Sins brings to mind landmark books such as All the President's Men, And the Band Played On, and The Informant, as it reveals a long and ferocious battle for the soul of the largest and oldest organization in the world.
Arguably his most famous book, Moral Man and Immoral Society is Reinhold Niebuhr's important early study (1932) in ethics and politics. Widely read and continually relevant, this book marked Niebuhr's decisive break from progressive religion and politics toward a more deeply tragic view of human nature and history. Forthright and realistic, Moral Man and Immoral Society argues that individual morality is intrinsically incompatible with collective life, thus making social and political conflict inevitable. Niebuhr further discusses our inability to imagine the realities of collective power; the brutal behavior of human collectives of every sort; and, ultimately, how individual morality can mitigate the persistence of social immorality. This new edition includes a foreword by Cornel West that explores the continued interest in Niebuhr's thought and its contemporary relevance.
How has Pentecostalism, a decidedly American form of Christian revivalism, managed to achieve such phenomenal religious ascendancy in a former British colony among people of predominately African descent? According to Diane J. Austin-Broos, Pentecostalism has flourished because it successfully mediates between two historically central yet often oppositional themes in Jamaican religious life—the characteristically African striving for personal freedom and happiness, and the Protestant struggle for atonement and salvation through rigorous ethical piety. With its emphasis on the individual experience of grace and on the ritual efficacy of spiritual healing, and with its vibrantly expressive worship, Jamaican Pentecostalism has become a powerful and compelling vehicle for the negotiation of such fundamental issues as gender, sexuality, race, and class. Jamaica Genesis is a work of signal importance to all those concerned not simply with Caribbean studies but with the ongoing transformation of religion andculture.
New York Times–bestselling author John Danforth, an ordained Episcopal priest and former US senator, is uniquely qualified to write about one of the most contentious issues in America: the intersection of government and religion. In Faith and Politics, he explores the widening rift between left and right, conservative and liberal, believer and nonbeliever. Danforth takes on many of the polarizing hot-button issues, including stem-cell research, abortion, school prayer, and gay marriage, and addresses how we can approach them with less rancor. Arguing that voters must call for our leaders to turn away from wedge-issue politics and work on our country’s pressing problems, Danforth’s book is a much-needed clarion call to all Americans. “A lucid, powerful book that is at once reflective and instructive.”—Jon Meacham, former editor of Newsweek “[A] meditation about the contested terrain where politics and religion intersect.”—George F. Will “Danforth calls for a radical change in how his party operates.”—The Christian Science Monitor “This book and its author are a modern-day profile in courage.”—David Gergen “Danforth’s thoughtfulness, deep wisdom, and simple decency radiate from every page, and leave one at the end with rare hope that through commitment, faith and politics can ultimately enrich, not corrupt, one another.”—Harold Hongju Koh, dean of Yale Law School
Mexico is at the center of the global battle over abortion. In 2007, a watershed reform legalized the procedure in the national capital, making it one of just three places across Latin America where it was permitted at the time. Abortion care is now available on demand and free of cost through a pioneering program of the Mexico City Ministry of Health, which has served hundreds of thousands of women. At the same time, abortion laws have grown harsher in several states outside the capital as part of a coordinated national backlash. In this book, Elyse Ona Singer argues that while pregnant women in Mexico today have options that were unavailable just over a decade ago, they are also subject to the expanded reach of the Mexican state and the Catholic Church over their bodies and reproductive lives. By analyzing the moral politics of clinical encounters in Mexico City's public abortion program, Lawful Sins offers a critical account of the relationship among reproductive rights, gendered citizenship, and public healthcare. With timely insights on global struggles for reproductive justice, Singer reorients prevailing perspectives that approach abortion rights as a hallmark of women's citizenship in liberal societies.