Congregations and faith-based organizations have become key participants in America’s welfare revolution. Recent legislation has expanded the social welfare role of religious communities, thus revealing a pervasive lack of faith in purely economic responses to poverty.Charitable Choices is an ethnographic study of faith-based poverty relief in 30 congregations in the rural south. Drawing on in-depth interviews and fieldwork in Mississippi faith communities, it exami...

This volume offers an in-depth examination of a diverse range of faith-based programs implemented in three different geographical locales: family support in rural Mississippi, transitional housing in Michigan, and addiction recovery in the Pacific Northwest (Washington-Oregon). Various types of religious service providers—faith-intensive and faith-related—are carefully examined, and secular organizations also serve as an illuminating point of comparison. Among other insights, this book rev...

In their introduction, the editors of New Ways of Doing Business assert that in retrospect, it will be apparent that today's government, that of the early years of the 21st century, 'was undergoing its most significant transformation since the decade of the 1930's when direct government-delivered services grew significantly as part of the New Deal.' This newest volume in the IBM Endowment for the Business of Government series is an invaluable guide to navigating the sometimes controversial...

In this rich collection of essays, editors Dale McConkey and Peter Augustine Lawler explore the contributions that religious faith and morality can make to a civil society. Though the level of religious expression has remained high in the United States, the shift from traditional religious beliefs to a far more individualized style of faith has led many to contend that no faith commitment, collective or personal, should contribute to the vibrancy of a civil democratic society. Challenging ...

"If reconciliation is the takeaway point for the civil rights story we usually tell, then the takeaway point for the more complex, more truthful civil rights story contained in Dear White Christians is reparations." — from the preface to the second editionWith the troubling and painful events of the last several years—from the killing of numerous unarmed Black men and women at the hands of police to the rallying of white supremacists in Charlottesville—it is clearer than e...

In this book Apple explores the 'conservative restoration' - the rightward turn of a broad-based coalition that is making successful inroads in determining American and international educational policy. It takes a pragmatic look at what critical educators can do to build alternative coalitions and policies that are more democratic. Apple urges this group to extricate itself from its reliance on the language of possibility in order to employ pragmatic analyses that address the material real...

In these seventeen essays, distinguished senior scholars discuss the conceptual issues surrounding the idea of freedom of inquiry and scrutinize a variety of obstacles to such inquiry that they have encountered in their personal and professional experience. Their discussion of threats to freedom traverses a wide disciplinary and institutional, political and economic range covering specific restrictions linked to speech codes, the interests of donors, institutional review board licensing, p...

Contemporary and controversial, Shannon Gilreath's Sexual Politics is an important update to the continuing debate over the place of gay people in American law, politics, and religion. Gilreath incisively navigates a number of complex issues, including the delicate balance between sexual privacy and public equality, the entwining of religion and U.S. law and politics, and gay marriage. He offers astute academic observation and depth of personal reflection to create an unmatched critique of...

American Grace is a major achievement, a groundbreaking examination of religion in America.Unique among nations, America is deeply religious, religiously diverse, and remarkably tolerant. But in recent decades the nation’s religious landscape has been reshaped.America has experienced three seismic shocks, say Robert Putnam and David Campbell. In the 1960s, religious observance plummeted. Then in the 1970s and 1980s, a conservative reaction produced...

For the past two decades, Michael Porter's work has towered over the field of competitive strategy.On Competition, Updated and Expanded Edition brings together more than a dozen of Porter's landmark articles from the Harvard Business Review. Five are new to this edition, including the 2008 update to his classic "The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy," as well as new work on health care, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, and ...

The call to make the world a better place is inherent in the Christian belief and practice. But why have efforts to change the world by Christians so often failed or gone tragically awry? And how might Christians in the 21st century live in ways that have integrity with their traditions and are more truly transformative? In To Change the World, James Davison Hunter offers persuasive--and provocative--answers to these questions. Hunter begins with a penetrating appraisal of the mos...

Twenty years ago, not one nation on earth had legal same-sex marriage. Now, access to same-sex marriage is increasingly seen as a basic human right. In a matter of less than a generation, western cultures have experienced a moral revolution.Dr. R. Albert Mohler examines how this transformation occurred, revealing the underlying cultural shifts behind this revolution: the acceptance of divorce culture, liberation of sex from reproduction, the prevalence of heterosexual cohabitation,...