The New Evangelical Social Engagement

Evangelicals are increasingly turning their attention toward issues such as the environment, international human rights, economic development, racial reconciliation, and urban renewal. This marks an expansion of the social agenda advanced by the Religious Right over the past few decades. For outsiders to evangelical culture, this trend complicates simplistic stereotypes. For insiders, it brings contention over what "true" evangelicalism means today. The New Evangelical Social Engagement brings together an impressive interdisciplinary team of scholars to map this new religious terrain and spell out its significance.

The volume's introduction describes the broad outlines of this "new evangelicalism." The editors identify its key elements, trace its historical lineage, account for the recent changes taking place within evangelicalism, and highlight the implications of these changes for politics, civic engagement, and American religion. Part One of the book discusses important groups and trends: emerging evangelicals, the New Monastics, an emphasis on social justice, Catholic influences, gender dynamics and the desire to rehabilitate the evangelical identity, and evangelical attitudes toward the new social agenda. Part Two focuses on specific issues: the environment, racial reconciliation, abortion, international human rights, and global poverty. Part Three contains reflections on the new evangelical social engagement by three leading scholars in the fields of American religious history, sociology of religion, and Christian ethics.

Philip Goff is director of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture and professor of Religious Studies and American Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Author or editor of over thirty books and journal volumes, he writes about the role of religion in American history, particularly its relationship to other aspects of American culture.

Brian Steensland is Associate Professor of Sociology at Indiana University. His first book, The Failed Welfare Revolution, received the Mary Douglas Prize and the Political Sociology Book Award. His academic articles have appeared in leading sociology journals, such as the American Journal of Sociology and Social Forces.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Contributors

Introduction: The New Evangelical Social Engagement - Brian Steensland and Philip Goff

Part One: Recent Evangelical Movements and Trends
Chapter One - "FORMED": Emerging Evangelicals Navigate Two Transformations - James S. Bielo
Chapter Two - Whose Social Justice? Which Evangelicalism? Social Engagement in a Campus Ministry - John Schmalzbauer
Chapter Three - All Catholics Now? Spectres of Catholicism in Evangelical Social Engagement - Omri Elisha
Chapter Four - The New Monasticism - Will Samson
Chapter Five - "We Need a Revival": Young Evangelical Women Redefine Activism in New York City - Adriane Bilous
Chapter Six - New and Old Evangelical Public Engagement: A View from the Polls - John C. Green

Part Two: Areas of Evangelical Social Engagement
Chapter Seven - Green Evangelicals - Laurel Kearns
Chapter Eight - The Rise of the Diversity Expert: How American Evangelicals Simultaneously Accentuate and Ignore Race - Gerardo Marti and Michael O. Emerson
Chapter Nine - Pro-Lifers of the Left: Progressive Evangelicals' Campaign Against Abortion - Daniel K. Williams
Chapter Ten - Global Reflex: International Evangelicals, Human Rights, and the New Shape of American Social Engagement - David R. Swartz
Chapter Eleven - Global Poverty and Evangelical Action - Amy Reynolds and Stephen Offutt

Part Three: Reflections on Evangelical Social Engagement
Chapter Twelve - What's New about the New Evangelical Social Engagement? - Joel Carpenter
Chapter Thirteen - Evangelicals of the 1970s and 2010s: What's the Same, What's Different, and What's Urgent - R. Stephen Warner
Chapter Fourteen - We Need a New Reformation - Glen Harold Stassen

Index