Religion and Public Opinion in Britain

Religion and Public Opinion in Britain
Author: B. Clements
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2015-03-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137313595

Based on extensive analysis of surveys from recent decades, this book provides a detailed study of the attitudes of religious groups in Britain. It looks at continuity and change in relation to party support, ideology, abortion, homosexuality and gay rights, foreign policy, and public opinion towards religion in public life.

Political and Religious Identities of British Evangelicals

Political and Religious Identities of British Evangelicals
Author: Andrea C. Hatcher
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2017-07-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3319562827

This book examines the paradoxical relationship between the religious and political behaviors of American and British Evangelicals, who exhibit nearly identical religious canon and practice, but sharply divergent political beliefs and action. Relying on interviews with British religious and political elites (journalists, MPs, activists, clergy) as well as focus groups in ten Evangelical congregations, this study reveals that British Evangelicals, unlike their American counterparts known for their extensive involvement in party politics, have no discernible ideological or partisan orientation, choosing to pursue their political interests through civic or social organizations rather than electoral influence. It goes further to show that many British Evangelicals shun the label itself for its negative political connotations and in-/out-group sensibility, and choose to focus on a broader social justice imperative rendered almost incoherent by a lack of group identity. Placing itself at the forefront of an incipient but growing segment of comparative research into the intersectionality of religion and politics, the work satisfies a lacuna of how the same religious tradition can act differently in public squares contextualized by political and cultural variables.

Piety and Public Opinion

Piety and Public Opinion
Author: Thomas B. Pepinsky
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2018
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190697806

Across the Muslim world, religion plays an increasingly prominent role in both the private and public lives of over a billion people. Will democratic political participation by an increasingly religious population lead to victories by Islamists at the ballot box? Will more conspicuously pious Muslims participate in politics and markets in a fundamentally different way than they had previously? Against the common assumption that piety would naturally inhibit any tendencies towards modernity, democracy, or cosmopolitanism, Piety and Public Opinion reveals the complex and subtle links between religion and political beliefs in a critically important Muslim democracy.

C. S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law

C. S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law
Author: Justin Buckley Dyer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2016-08-08
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107108241

This book shows how Lewis was interested in the truths and falsehoods about human nature and how these conceptions manifest themselves in the public square.

The Oxford Handbook of American Public Opinion and the Media

The Oxford Handbook of American Public Opinion and the Media
Author: Robert Y. Shapiro
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 804
Release: 2013-05-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0199673020

With engaging new contributions from the major figures in the fields of the media and public opinion The Oxford Handbook of American Public Opinion and the Media is a key point of reference for anyone working in American politics today.

Persuasion and Conversion

Persuasion and Conversion
Author: Torrance Kirby
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2013-08-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004253653

The early modern ‘public sphere’ emerges out of a popular ‘culture of persuasion’ fostered by the Protestant Reformation. By 1600, religious identity could no longer be assumed as ‘given’ within the hierarchical institutions and elaborate apparatus of late-medieval ‘sacramental culture’. Reformers insisted on a sharp demarcation between the inner, subjective space of the individual and the external, public space of institutional life. Gradual displacement of sacramental culture was achieved by means of argument, textual interpretation, exhortation, reasoned opinion, and moral advice exercised through both pulpit and press. This alternative culture of persuasion presupposes a radically distinct notion of mediation. The common focus of the essays collected here is the dynamic interaction of religion and politics which provided a crucible for the emerging modern ‘public sphere’.

Seven Types of Atheism

Seven Types of Atheism
Author: John Gray
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2018-10-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0374714266

From the provocative author of Straw Dogs comes an incisive, surprising intervention in the political and scientific debate over religion and atheism When you explore older atheisms, you will find that some of your firmest convictions—secular or religious—are highly questionable. If this prospect disturbs you, what you are looking for may be freedom from thought. For a generation now, public debate has been corroded by a shrill, narrow derision of religion in the name of an often vaguely understood “science.” John Gray’s stimulating and enjoyable new book, Seven Types of Atheism, describes the complex, dynamic world of older atheisms, a tradition that is, he writes, in many ways intertwined with and as rich as religion itself. Along a spectrum that ranges from the convictions of “God-haters” like the Marquis de Sade to the mysticism of Arthur Schopenhauer, from Bertrand Russell’s search for truth in mathematics to secular political religions like Jacobinism and Nazism, Gray explores the various ways great minds have attempted to understand the questions of salvation, purpose, progress, and evil. The result is a book that sheds an extraordinary light on what it is to be human.

Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem

Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem
Author: Heinrich Meier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2006-12-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521699457

This book, by one of the most prominent interpreters of Leo Strauss's thought, was the first to address the problem that Leo Strauss himself said was the theme of his studies: the theologico-political problem or the confrontation with the theological and the political alternative to philosophy as a way of life. In his theologico-political treatise, which comprises four parts and an appendix, Heinrich Meier clarifies the distinction between political theology and political philosophy and reappraises the unifying center of Strauss's philosophical enterprise. The book is the culmination of Meier's work on the theologico-political problem. It will interest anyone who seeks to understand both the problem caused by revelation for philosophy and the challenge posed by political-religious radicalism. The appendix makes available for the first time two lectures by Strauss that are immediately relevant to the subject of this book and that will open the way for future research and debate on the legacy of Strauss.

The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Politics

The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Politics
Author: Corwin E. Smidt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 599
Release: 2017
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190657871

Over the past three decades, the study of religion and politics has gone from being ignored by the scholarly 7ommunity to being a major focus of research. Yet, because this important research is not easily accessible to nonspecialists, much of the analysis of religion's role in the political arena that we read in the media is greatly oversimplified. This Handbook seeks to bridge that gap by examining the considerable research that has been conducted to this point and assessing what has been learned, what remains unsettled due to conflicting research findings, and what important questions remain largely unaddressed by current research endeavors. The Handbook is unique to the field of religion and American politics and should be of wide interest to scholars, students, journalists, and others interested in the American political scene.