I just got around to reading Jeffrey Sachs 2007 BBC Reith Lectures entitled Bursting at the Seams Many may have read if not do so Sachs stirring and important 2005 book The End of Poverty Economic Possibilities for Our Time Sachs an economist has been the principal adviser to the
John A. Coleman
John A. Coleman S.J., is an associate pastor at St. Ignatius Church in San Francisco. For many years he was the Casassa Professor of Social Values at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. His books and other writing have focused largely on areas connected to sociology of religion and also to social ethics. His most recent work has concentrated on issues of globalization.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Go Back to the Common Good
In many ways the subtitle captures the expansive scope of this highly original intriguing and challenging book much better than the more pedestrian sounding the vocation of business John M daille a real-estate broker who also teaches at the University of Dallas deftly employs Catholic social t
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
‘Dramatic Confrontations’ Unveiled
This book is sure to garner much attention from professional sociologists of religion and probably historians of the Second Vatican Council as well In fact a blue-ribbon panel already responded and critiqued Melissa Wilde rsquo s volume at the annual meeting of the Association for the Sociology
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Take the Test
Stephen Prothero a historian of American religion and the author of a much acclaimed earlier volume American Jesus takes his cue for his title from E D Hirsch rsquo s 1987 volume Cultural Literacy What Every American Needs to Know Prothero addresses a huge paradox America is very religious b
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
They Dream the Possible Dream
I cannot sufficiently praise and recommend American Mythos In its supple mining of data and its perspicacity about American culture and institutions it ranks with Robert Bellah rsquo s Habits of the Heart and Robert Putnam rsquo s Bowling Alone as ground-breaking interpretative social science I s
Posted inFrom Our Archives
Left Behind
In a recent article in The Nation, the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, author of American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville, expressed his shock at the moribund state of the American secular left. He found it strange, as an outsider, that so many progressives seem to
Posted inFrom Our Archives
Religious Liberty
On Dec. 7 we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the promulgation of the “Declaration on Religious Liberty” (known also by the opening words of the Latin text, Dignitatis Humanae). No other decree of the Second Vatican Council was so controversial, underwent so many trials and setbacks (
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Reflective Pluralism
Has the pluribus in the vaunted boast begun to submerge even eradicate the unum America has become Robert Wuthnow the director of Princeton University rsquo s Center for the Study of American Religion argues in this new book a more religiously diverse nation Buddhist and Hindu temples and Mo
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Separation Anxiety
This is a provocative even polemical book The provocation flows from the near-taboo question it raises a question that merits a serious hearing How much time do children need with parents especially mothers Do we need to scrutinize closely America rsquo s ongoing massive historically unprece
Posted inBooks
In Our Own Image
Reading American Jesus I longed to teach again a course I regularly used to offer on American culture and religion This would definitely be a required text It is a spritely sometimes ironic truly illuminating overview of Jesus as a national icon within and outside the organized churches Steph