Joining Hands Politics And Religion Together For Social Change

Goes beyond the church-versus-state debate to argue that religious belief and spiritual practice are integral to the politics of social change; and that political insights and activism are essential to authentic religious life.

Did Martin Luther King's spiritual understanding of political struggle truly help the Civil Rights movement? Can breast cancer victims incorporate both spiritual wisdom and political action in their fight for life? Confronting questions that challenge the foundations of both politics and spirituality, Roger S. Gottlieb presents a brave new account of how religious ethics and progressive movements share a common vision of a transformed world. In doing so, he offers a bold and eloquent affirmation: that authentic religion requires an activist, transforming presence in the political world, and that the moral and psychological insights of religion are indispensable resources in political struggles for democracy, human rights and ecological sanity. With original and compelling interpretations of Martin Luther King and the civil rights struggle, feminism, disability rights, the global environmental movement, and the fight for breast cancer, Joining Hands will alter the way spiritual seekers, political activists, and society as a whole think about the political role of religion and the spiritual component of politics.

Preface and Acknowledgements, Introduction, PART I, Two Ways of World Making, The Time Is Ripe, Politics Teaching Religion, Religion Teaching Politics, PART II, Redemptive Suffering and the Civil Rights Movement, After Patriarchy: Feminist Politics and the Transformation of Religion, Saving the World: Religion and Politics in the Environmental Movement, Beyond Our Private Sorrows: Spirituality and Politics as Responses to Breast Cancer and Disability, Toward Hope, Together, Notes, Index

Roger S. Gottliebis a professor of philosophy in the department of humanities and arts at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is the author or editor of twelve books on politics, religion, the Holocaust, and ecology; and has contributed to numerous publications including Tikkun, the Boston Globe, Orion Afield, and Ethics. He lives in Boston.