A sweeping history of liberalism, from its earliest origins to its imperiled present and uncertain future Donald Trump is the first American president to regard liberal values with open contempt. He has company: the leaders of Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, among others, are also avowed illiberals. What happened? Why did liberalism lose the support it once enjoyed? In What Was Liberalism?, James Traub returns to the origins of liberalism, in the aftermath of the American and French revolutions and in the works of such great thinkers as John Stuart Mill and Isaiah Berlin. Although the first liberals were deeply skeptical of majority rule, the liberal faith adapted, coming to encompass belief in not only individual rights and free markets, but also state action to provide basic goods. By the second half of the twentieth century, liberalism had become the national creed of the most powerful country in the world. But this consensus did not last. Liberalism is now widely regarded as an antiquated doctrine. What Was LIberalism? reviews the evolution of the liberal idea over more than two centuries for lessons on how it can rebuild its majoritarian foundations.

Faith leaders, learn to manage your own trauma and help others manage theirs with The Four Promises by Ron Bell. We—all of us—are experiencing ongoing trauma, pain, and loss. The challenges are compounded for pastors and other faith leaders because they must manage their own trauma and help people in their congregations and communities. People and congregations need help to find healing and wholeness, but so do their leaders. This book addresses the need at both levels. The Four Promises: Spiritual Healing for Past and Present Trauma is a deeply compassionate and effective tool for pastors, ministry leaders, chaplains, leaders of faith-oriented organizations—and for the people they serve. It offers a process of reflection and self-discovery based on a sequence of four tactics we can use to manage our own experiences of loss, pain, and trauma. The tactics are helpfully framed as promises we make to ourselves. Downloadable and reproducible teaching tools are available to facilitate group study. The promises and the process are rooted in author Ron Bell’s own family history in a church where members’ lived experiences were often full of pain. Bell witnessed the very specific method by which members and leaders expressed their pain and then were empowered to manage it. As a trauma-trained scholar, he analyzed the method and developed this process, which is being adopted and taught in denominational and academic settings across the U.S. Experiencing a traumatic event can cause us to instinctively hold our breath. Living in ongoing trauma without resources and tools can teach us to live breathless, toxic, tired, sick, and unhealthy lives. This book helps break that cycle. As we navigate past and present trauma, The Four Promises provides concrete and thoughtful steps to help us engage with our trauma, heal, and finally exhale.

Nine contributors tackle questions about the nature of memory and forgiveness after the Holocaust. This book - created out of shared concerns about forgiveness, reconciliation, and justice, and out of a desire to investigate differences between religious traditions - represents an effort to spark meaningful dialogue between Jews and Christians and to encourage others to participate in similar inter- and intrafaith inquiries.

Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: When talking about integration, one must think first of all about the problems such an integration means. Many Romanians nowadays look at the integration into the European and Euro-Atlantic structures only as a means of better living standards. But very few Romanians might be willing to pay the price for the integration. Nobody in Romania seems to know exactly the direction we are heading to. But there must certainly be changes of the people s mentality, if we want to achieve something at all. Yet, this problem does not concern Romanians alone. The West generally regards Romania as a source of crime and, at least for the moment, does not even want to talk to Romania about our integration into the European Union, although the negotiations have been started with all potential candidates at the same time. Recently, when about 500 gypsies created problems in Austria, the country asked Hungary and the Czech Republic to introduce the visa-system for Romanian citizens. They obviously wanted the Romanians to be even more humiliated than they already were, lining up also at Hungary s and the Czech Republic s embassies in order to be able to travel to those countries. Mister Andrei Plesu, the Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister, said: If 500 gypsies are able to destabilise Austria, they are either first-hand merchandise or Austria is a little bit frail . On the other hand, one cannot deny that Romanian citizens keep causing trouble to western European countries. But the problem is that dubious people manage somehow to get visas, while honest people are denied the basic right of travelling to foreign countries only because a few of their fellow citizens are being considered troublemakers. If no visas were required, only a small, negligible margin of the Romanian citizens travelling abroad would be denied the permission to travel to western European countries again. Then, there is the problem of culture. If you ask a Romanian citizen about the capital of a western European state, it is less possible that he will not know it than if you asked a western European about Romania s capital. For instance, many Frenchmen are convinced that Budapest is Romania s capital. A French band performing in Bucharest was warmly welcome and acclaimed until its members shouted: I love you, Budapest! . Of course, the fact that western Europeans do not know eastern European capitals does not mean that people in western Europe are not civilised. Romania [...]

Spreading democracy abroad or protecting business at home: this book offers a new look at the history of the contest between isolationalism and internationalism that is as current as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as old as America itself, with profiles of the people, policies, and events that shaped the debate.