Resources
This bibliography is intended to be a work in progress, with frequent additions and changes to keep it current. We’ve highlighted resources that have come to our attention and that are relevant to our work. Several books may fit more than one category. In these cases, we’ve listed them more than once. We welcome comments and recommendations, but reserve the right to make final decisions for inclusion on the list and to edit annotations. Please e-mail us at religion@americanprogress.org.
Faith and Politics
The Holy Vote: The
Politics of Faith in America,
by Ray Suarez. (2006: Rayo, 336 pp.)
In this book, senior correspondent for “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” Ray Suarez explores “the disappearing
borders between American politics and Christianity” that have given rise to the
polarization we find ourselves in today. Suarez begins on a personal note. “I
love my country. I love my church,” he says, and goes on to lament that he
feels as if he’s “no longer living in the country I was raised in. Something
valuable in the accommodation we made for one another is gone, and getting it
back will take something more than just groping our way forward.”
Suarez traces the historical development of such wedge
issues as same-sex marriage, abortion, prayer in public schools, evolution, and
more. Scores of interviews give detail to these issues and capture the passion
of those involved. Suarez suggests a way for opposing sides to talk to each
other: “If we returned our policy debates to disagreements on the cases, rather
than on the religious identities that bring us to our conclusions, then we will
always have a place to begin the conversation.”
General Secretary of the National Council of Churches for
the past seven years and former six-term Democratic Congressman from
Pennsylvania, Rev. Bob Edgar aims in this book to rally America’s religious
majority to reclaim the progressive tradition, claiming that it’s been hijacked
by the religious right with its obsession on personal piety. Edgar points out
that the Bible raises the issues of peace and poverty over two thousand times,
while seldom mentioning homosexuality—and same-sex marriage not at all. Edgar lifts
up universal themes of justice, peace, and stewardship of the earth, around
which people of faith—Christians, Jews, and Muslims—can unite.
Tempting Faith: An
Inside Story of Political Seduction, by David Kuo. (2006: Free Press, 304
pp.)
Former No. 2 man in the White House’s Office of Faith-Based
and Community Initiatives, Kuo argues that far from being a serious effort to
help people in poverty, the Initiative was little more than a cynical use of the
Christian right for political gain, with the promised funding never
materializing. Kuo comes across as a disillusioned true-believer in President
Bush’s commitment to help the poor. As such, his book not only contains a
negative assessment of the administration’s attitude and performance but also
provides an impassioned argument for “compassionate conservatism” from one of
its most devoted advocates.
Social and Economic Justice
The Compassionate
Community: Ten Values to Unite
An outgrowth of the Sunday School lessons he has taught to
ninth and tenth graders at Temple Adath Israel in Lexington since 1997,
Democratic Treasurer of the State of Kentucky and now candidate for Governor Jonathan
Miller retells stories from the Hebrew Bible as a starting-off point to discuss
values such as opportunity, responsibility, freedom, faith, justice, and peace
that he says should form the basis of a compassionate community. In so doing, Miller
not only discusses these concepts philosophically but also proposes public
policies to transform them into reality in furtherance of his vision of the
common good.
God’s Politics: Why
the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, by Jim Wallis. (2005: HarperSanFrancisco,
256 pp.)
“God is personal, but never private, and the Bible reveals a
very public God.” Sojourners founder and one of the country’s leading
progressive evangelicals, Jim Wallis finds this public God to be revealed
through the Hebrew prophets, including Jesus, in their concern for peace and economic
and social justice. A New York Times
bestseller, the most important contribution of God’s Politics may very well be to put a dent in the unfortunate perception
that American Christianity equals right-wing intolerance. (See also “Security
and Peace.”)
The Politics of Jesus:
Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of the Teachings of Jesus and How
They Have Been Corrupted, by Obery M. Hendricks Jr. (2006: Doubleday, 384
pp.)
One of Hendricks’ great contributions in this book is to
place Jesus in the historical line of the great Hebrew prophets as a “political
revolutionary” who “demanded sweeping and comprehensive change in the
political, social, and economic structures in his setting in life: colonized
The End of Poverty:
Economic Possibilities for Our Time, by Jeffrey D. Sachs. Reprint Edition. (2006:
Penguin, 416 pp.)
“Currently more than eight million people around the world
die each year because they are too poor to stay alive. Our generation can
choose to end that extreme poverty by the year 2025,” says Jeffrey Sachs. Sachs
is Professor and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University,
and from 2002 to 2006 he was the Director of the UN Millennium Project.
Drawing heavily on the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, Sachs
focuses on lifting out of extreme poverty the approximately one-fifth of the
world’s population who live on the equivalent of $1 per day. Perhaps what is most
sobering is his charge that “the rich world today is so vastly rich” that the
required effort, a commitment of just 0.7 percent of the gross national product
of the developed countries, “is so slight that to do less is to announce
brazenly to a large part of the world, ‘You count for nothing.’”
Top Heavy: The
Increasing Inequality of Wealth in
The data may be a little behind the times, but inequality
has only gotten more widespread since this book was published in 2002, with the
top one or two percent of households richer than ever. Wolff details the
reasons why the
Security and Peace
The End of Poverty:
Economic Possibilities for Our Time, by Jeffrey D. Sachs. Reprint Edition.
(2006: Penguin, 416 pp.)
Citing 2004 statistics, Sachs points out that the
Unites States spends 30 times more on the military than on foreign aid. He contends
that “Americans would dearly love to believe that the United States can be an island of
stability and prosperity in a global sea of poverty and economic failure. History,
however, proves otherwise.” Terrorism, for example, “cannot be fought by
military means alone,” but requires that we “fight poverty and deprivation as
well.” While emphasizing that “I do not want to commit the simplistic fallacy
of attributing all political failures to economic crises,” Sachs warns that if
we continue to give short shrift to the needs of the world’s poor we “should
not be surprised” if we continue to “reap the whirlwind of that heartless
response.”
God’s Politics: Why the
Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, by Jim Wallis. (2005: HarperSanFrancisco,
256 pp.)
While the main theme of this book focuses on justice and the
common good (See “Social and Economic Justice”), Wallis does address
The Environment
Field Notes from a
Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, by Elizabeth Kolbert. (2006:
Based on her three-part series in The New Yorker, staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert traveled to the
An Inconvenient Truth:
The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, by
Al Gore. (2006: Rodale Press, 328 pp.)
A companion to the movie, this book contains the same
stunning photos and dramatic charts that made the movie a box office success and
increased the sense of urgency about the viable future of our planet. Along
with the DVD, this trilogy serves as a call-to-action, providing the necessary
information and insights to enable citizens and political leaders to make informed
decisions and changes in the way we live, so that we may simply continue to
live.
The Rough Guide to
Climate Change, by Robert Henson. (2006: Rough Guides Ltd, 336 pp.)
A who’s who and what’s what of climate change over the past
4.5 billion years. The guide’s straight-forward, encyclopedic presentation of sobering
charts, statistics, analysis, photographs, lifestyle suggestions, and resources
makes it an essential manual for those seeking to halt and reverse our planet’s
deteriorating direction.
Bioethics
The Language of God: A
Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, by Francis Collins. (2006: Free
Press, 304 pp.)
Head of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Francis Collins uses
his experience in sequencing the code of life to argue that far from being
incompatible, science and religion complement each other in enabling us to
glimpse the mind of God. Although not specifically concerned with bioethics,
the book’s appendix entitled “The Moral Practice of Science and Medicine:
Bioethics,” offers what Collins calls “a sample of some of the bioethical
dilemmas that are inspiring significant debate today.”
Stem Cell Wars: Inside
Stories from the Frontlines, by Eve Herold. (2006: Palgrave MacMillan, 256
pp.)
For passion, one need look no further than this urgent plea
for “the development of treatments that go beyond the stark limitations of
today’s limitations.” Herold, who is Director of Public Research and Education
at the Genetics Policy Institute, delivers a polemical work that is also carefully
researched, thus providing those committed to embryonic stem cell research with
tools of persuasion and information in pursuit of their cause. Filled with
personal stories of victims of the “bold-faced fictions” that have contributed
to the lack of progress in this promising area of medical research, Herold
leaves us with this thought: “The question is, will we have more compassion for
theoretical, potential persons than we do for the living?”
Sermons/Speeches/Writings
I Have a Dream:
Writings and Speeches That Changed the World, Special 75th Anniversary Edition, by Martin Luther King,
Jr. (1992: HarperSanFrancisco, 256 pp.)
This anniversary edition commemorates Dr. King’s birth in
1929 and contains what Coretta Scott King calls in her foreword “many of what I
consider to be my husband’s most important writings and orations.” With a
chronology of Dr. King’s life and an introduction to each entry to place it in
its historical context, this small volume serves as a useful companion to his
collection of sermons.
One of the most significant speeches is, “Where Do We Go from Here?” which King gave in 1967 when the Vietnam War was eroding the promise of the Great Society. Forty years later, the speech is still relevant in its comprehensive and radical critique of our economic system and its condemnation of economic injustice. King says, “If our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet here on earth.”
The war we are fighting has changed, as have the dollar
amounts, but the affront to justice remains.
Strength to Love,
by Martin Luther King, Jr. (2004: Augsburg
Fortress Publishers, 158 pp.)
In this, his first printed volume of sermons, all preached
around the time of the Montgomery
bus boycott in 1955-56, Dr. King writes that “in these sermons I have sought to
bring the Christian message to bear on the social evils that cloud our day and
the personal witness and discipline required.” While a number of references and
situations may be dated, the essential relevance of the message and messenger
remains timeless.
Classics
The Other America,
by Michael Harrington. Reprint Edition. (1997: Scribner, 252 pp.)
First published in 1962, Michael Harrington’s devastating exposure
of the underside of American society is traditionally credited with
contributing to the impetus for the War on Poverty. This 1997 reprint edition
contains an introduction by Irving Howe and an Afterward by Harrington. The poverty
data have changed since Harrington first gave voice to his “sense of outrage” 45
years ago, but his analysis remains depressingly on target.
Back then, he warned of “a most dangerous problem: an enormous
concentration of young people who, if they do not receive immediate help, may
well be the source of a kind of hereditary poverty new to American society.” Perhaps
even more to the point today than when Harrington first wrote the book is this stinging
indictment: “It is one of the terrible ironies of political life in America that
there are social problems that could be dealt with, where the basic research
has been done and the techniques of solution demonstrated, but where there is
no political force strong enough to enforce progress.”
A Theory of Justice,
by John Rawls. Revised Edition. (1999: Belknap Press, 560 pp.)
In what is often considered to be the twentieth
century’s definitive work on moral and political philosophy, Rawls defines
“justice as fairness.” By employing the concept of a “veil of ignorance,” i.e.,
no one knows what his or her place in society will be, Rawls maintains that a rational
person “would choose two rather different principles: the first requires
equality in the assignment of basic rights and duties, while the second holds
that social and economic inequalities, for example, inequalities of wealth and
authority, are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone,
and in particular for the least advantaged members of society.”