Public Faith in Action: How to Think Carefully, Engage Wisely, and Vote with Integrity - Softcover

Volf, Miroslav; McAnnally-Linz, Ryan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1587433842 ISBN 13: 9781587433849

Publisher: Brazos Press, 2016

Synopsis

Celebrated Theologian Offers Wisdom for Civic Engagement

Christian citizens have a responsibility to make political and ethical judgments in light of their faith and to participate in the public lives of their communities--from their local neighborhoods to the national scene. But it can be difficult to discern who to vote for, which policies to support, and how to respond to the social and cultural trends of our time.

This nonpartisan handbook offers Christians practical guidance for thinking through complicated public issues and faithfully following Jesus as citizens of their countries. The book focuses on enduring Christian commitments that should guide readers in their judgments and encourages legitimate debate among Christians over how to live out core values. The book also includes lists of resources for further reflection in each chapter and "room for debate" questions to consider.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

A Best Book of 2016 in Religion, Publishers Weekly

"Mixing faith and politics can be tricky, but [the authors] have assembled a helpful, concisely written guide. . . . A must-read."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A concise, readable, theologically informed guide for Christian political engagement, this book deftly integrates relevant biblical principles and contemporary data, summarizes the key issues at stake, and points to important additional reading. An excellent contribution to the rapidly growing body of work on how Christians can engage politics in a faithful way."
--Ron Sider, president emeritus, Evangelicals for Social Action

"The question isn't whether you'll live out a public faith but how. In this wise, measured, and refreshingly concrete discussion, Volf and McAnnally-Linz encourage Christians to be active, thoughtful contributors to the 'life together' that is society. The book is unapologetically convicted, but it makes room for the global realities that demand different responses and creates space for Christians to come to different prudential conclusions. Here is an antidote to polarization."
--James K. A. Smith, Calvin College; author of You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit; editor of Comment magazine

"This volume achieves its aims: opening up a series of serious questions that are a matter of public debate in a pluralistic society, while exhorting Christians to responsibly explore the answers through the lens of faith."
--Stephanie Summers, CEO, Center for Public Justice

"Public Faith in Action provides a deeply thoughtful model for how we as Christians might work out our faith for the glory of God and the flourishing of communities and people. One needn't agree with every application here in order to be instructed, challenged, and inspired by this call to commitment, conviction, and character as we strive to serve a suffering world faithfully and well."
--Karen Swallow Prior, author of Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More--Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

From the Inside Flap:

Christian citizens have a responsibility to make political and ethical judgments in light of their faith and to participate in the public lives of their communities--from their local neighborhoods to the national scene. But even in countries where Christians are free to engage in public life, it can be difficult to discern who to vote for, which policies to support, and how to respond to the social and cultural trends of our time.

This nonpartisan handbook explains that we need to develop habits of wise reflection if we are to engage faithfully with our political communities. To do so, we need to identify the key commitments of our faith that connect with contemporary public issues, understand the roots of those commitments, and learn what sorts of questions to ask when applying those values to the concrete realities of our contexts.

Public Faith in Action offers practical guidance for thinking through complicated public issues and faithfully following Jesus as citizens of our countries. It focuses on enduring Christian commitments that should guide us in our judgments and encourages legitimate debate among Christians over how to live out core values.|Miroslav Volf (DrTheol, University of Tübingen) is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School and founder and director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. He has written more than fifteen books, including A Public Faith, Exclusion and Embrace (winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion and selected among the one hundred best religious books of the twentieth century by Christianity Today), After Our Likeness, and The End of Memory.

Ryan McAnnally-Linz (PhD, Yale University) is an associate research scholar at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. In addition to his scholarly writings, he has coauthored articles with Miroslav Volf for Sojourners, The Christian Century, and The Huffington Post. He is the cofounder of Just Apparel, a nonprofit fair-trade clothing initiative.

About this edition

• Publisher: Brazos Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1587433842
• ISBN 13: 9781587433849
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256