Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist leaders are moving beyond the culture wars and attempting to bring a progressive religious voice from their traditions to political and public life. According to the web site:
In recent years, Americans have become frustrated with the troubled relationship between religion and politics: an exclusive claim on faith and values from the right and a radical divorce of faith from politics on the left. Now a new group of religious leaders is re-envisioning religion in public life and blazing a trail that goes beyond partisan politics to work for a more just and inclusive society. Progressive & Religious draws on nearly 100 in-depth interviews with Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist leaders to tell the story of this dynamic, emerging movement.
Robert P. Jones explains how progressive religious leaders are tapping the deep connections between religion and social justice to work on issues like poverty and workers’ rights, the environment, health care, pluralism, and human rights. Interviewees include David Saperstein, Michael Lerner, Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Susan Thistlethwaite, Feisal Abdul Rauf, Eboo Patel, Kecia Ali, Surya Das, Robert Thurman, and E. J. Dionne.
You can hear these inspiring leaders talk about this emerging movement by tuning in to “Progressive Religious Voices,” our bi-monthly podcast. You can listen online, or subscribe to this podcast (directly or on iTunes) to have a new interview delivered to your ipod or mp3 player every two weeks.
Progressive and Religious, Jones’ latest book, details the progress of this movement.
Listen to podcasts and read more at Progressive and Religious here.
Robert P. Jones is President of Public Religion Research