Religion and Poverty
Title | Religion and Poverty PDF eBook |
Author | Peter J. Paris |
Publisher | Duke University Press |
Total Pages | 386 |
Release | 2009-11-25 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0822392305 |
A Ghanaian scholar of religion argues that poverty is a particularly complex subject in traditional African cultures, where holistic worldviews unite life’s material and spiritual dimensions. A South African ethicist examines informal economies in Ghana, Jamaica, Kenya, and South Africa, looking at their ideological roots, social organization, and vulnerability to global capital. African American theologians offer ethnographic accounts of empowering religious rituals performed in churches in the United States, Jamaica, and South Africa. This important collection brings together these and other Pan-African perspectives on religion and poverty in Africa and the African diaspora. Contributors from Africa and North America explore poverty’s roots and effects, the ways that experiences and understandings of deprivation are shaped by religion, and the capacity and limitations of religion as a means of alleviating poverty. As part of a collaborative project, the contributors visited Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa, as well as Jamaica and the United States. In each location, they met with clergy, scholars, government representatives, and NGO workers, and they examined how religious groups and community organizations address poverty. Their essays complement one another. Some focus on poverty, some on religion, others on their intersection, and still others on social change. A Jamaican scholar of gender studies decries the feminization of poverty, while a Nigerian ethicist and lawyer argues that the protection of human rights must factor into efforts to overcome poverty. A church historian from Togo examines the idea of poverty as a moral virtue and its repercussions in Africa, and a Tanzanian theologian and priest analyzes ujamaa, an African philosophy of community and social change. Taken together, the volume’s essays create a discourse of mutual understanding across linguistic, religious, ethnic, and national boundaries. Contributors. Elizabeth Amoah, Kossi A. Ayedze, Barbara Bailey, Katie G. Cannon, Noel Erskine, Dwight N. Hopkins, Simeon O. Ilesanmi, Laurenti Magesa, Madipoane Masenya, Takatso A. Mofokeng, Esther M. Mombo, Nyambura J. Njoroge, Jacob Olupona, Peter J. Paris, Anthony B. Pinn, Linda E. Thomas, Lewin L. Williams
Lifting Up the Poor
Title | Lifting Up the Poor PDF eBook |
Author | Mary Jo Bane |
Publisher | Rowman & Littlefield |
Total Pages | 193 |
Release | 2003-10-10 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 0815796137 |
People who participate in debates about the causes and cures of poverty often speak from religious conviction. But those convictions are rarely made explicit or debated on their own terms. Rarely is the influence of personal religious commitment on policy decisions examined. Two of the nation's foremost scholars and policy advocates break the mold in this lively volume, the first to be published in the new Pew Forum Dialogues on Religion and Public Life. The authors bring their faith traditions, policy experience, academic expertise, and political commitments together in this moving, pointed, and informed discussion of poverty, one of our most vexing public issues. Mary Jo Bane writes of her experiences running social service agencies, work that has been informed by "Catholic social teaching, and a Catholic sensibility that is shaped every day by prayer and worship." Policy analysis, she writes, is often "indeterminate" and "inconclusive." It requires grappling with "competing values that must be balanced." It demands judgment calls, and Bane's Catholic sensibility informs the calls she makes. Drawing from various Christian traditions, Lawrence Mead's essay discusses the role of nurturing Christian virtues and personal responsibility as a means of transforming a "defeatist culture" and combating poverty. Quoting Shelley, Mead describes theologians as the "unacknowledged legislators of mankind" and argues that even nonbelievers can look to the Christian tradition as "the crucible that formed the moral values of modern politics." Bane emphasizes the social justice claims of her tradition, and Mead challenges the view of many who see economic poverty as a biblical priority that deserves "preference ahead of other social concerns." But both assert that an engagement with religious traditions is indispensable to an honest and searching debate about poverty, policy choices, and the public purposes of religion.
Global Political Demography
Title | Global Political Demography PDF eBook |
Author | Achim Goerres |
Publisher | Springer Nature |
Total Pages | 459 |
Release | 2021-08-10 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 3030730654 |
This open access book draws the big picture of how population change interplays with politics across the world from 1990 to 2040. Leading social scientists from a wide range of disciplines discuss, for the first time, all major political and policy aspects of population change as they play out differently in each major world region: North and South America; Sub-Saharan Africa and the MENA region; Western and East Central Europe; Russia, Belarus and Ukraine; East Asia; Southeast Asia; subcontinental India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; Australia and New Zealand. These macro-regional analyses are completed by cross-cutting global analyses of migration, religion and poverty, and age profiles and intra-state conflicts. From all angles, this book shows how strongly contextualized the political management and the political consequences of population change are. While long-term population ageing and short-term migration fluctuations present structural conditions, political actors play a key role in (mis-)managing, manipulating, and (under-)planning population change, which in turn determines how citizens in different groups react.
Poverty and the Poor in the World's Religious Traditions
Title | Poverty and the Poor in the World's Religious Traditions PDF eBook |
Author | William H. Brackney |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing USA |
Total Pages | 445 |
Release | 2018-12-01 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 1440844461 |
This detailed book is a resource for students, practitioners, and leaders interested in how the major world religions have understood poverty and responded to the poor. Poverty is a universal phenomenon across history, regardless of country or culture. Today, the demographics of the poor are on the rise globally: it is a critical issue. Religious traditions are another universal aspect of human societies, and nearly all religions include directives on how to respond to the poor and systemic poverty. How do the various religious traditions conceptualize poverty, and what do they view as the proper response to the poor? Poverty and the Poor in the World's Religious Traditions: Religious Responses to the Problem of Poverty brings together specialists on the religions of the world and their diverse viewpoints to identify how different religious traditions interact with poverty and being poor. It also contains excerpts of religious texts that readers can use as primary documents to illustrate themes such as identifying the poor, religious reasons for being poor, and responses (like charity and development) to the existence of poverty. This book serves as a powerful resource for students of subjects like international development, missiology, comparative religion, theology, social ethics, economics, and organizational leadership as well as for any socially concerned clergy of various faiths.
Religion and Poverty
Title | Religion and Poverty PDF eBook |
Author | Susan Crawford Sullivan |
Publisher | Taylor & Francis |
Total Pages | 167 |
Release | 2024-04-09 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 1040015395 |
This book offers a timely and compelling look at religion and poverty, focusing primarily on the two largest world religions, Christianity and Islam, and considering religion and poverty in the United States and international contexts. Written by social scientists, the book incorporates relevant theology with a focus on how theology is lived in relation to issues of poverty. Topics include religion as it relates to social service provision, lived religion, philanthropy, faith-based social movements, public policy, and more. This volume synthesizes existing research on religion and poverty and includes new original research. It is an essential resource for upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses focused on religion and poverty and is also an outstanding supplementary text for broader courses in religion, poverty, social welfare, philanthropy, and non-profit organizations.
Poverty and Wealth in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Title | Poverty and Wealth in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam PDF eBook |
Author | Nathan R. Kollar |
Publisher | Springer |
Total Pages | 345 |
Release | 2016-07-27 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 1349948500 |
This book gathers scholars from the three major monotheistic religions to discuss the issue of poverty and wealth from the varied perspectives of each tradition. It provides a cadre of values inherent to the sacred texts of Jews, Christians, and Muslims and illustrates how these values may be used to deal with current economic inequalities. Contributors use the methodologies of religious studies to provide descriptions and comparisons of perspectives from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on poverty and wealth. The book presents citations from the sacred texts of all three religions. The contributors discuss the interpretations of these texts and the necessary contexts, both past and present, for deciphering the stances found there. Poverty and Wealth in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam identifies and details a foundation of common values upon which individual and institutional decisions may be made.
Religion and Poverty
Title | Religion and Poverty PDF eBook |
Author | Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi |
Publisher | Neofelis Verlag |
Total Pages | 155 |
Release | 2015-09-23 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 3943414949 |
Nowadays religions are especially important for those who are living in countries of the formerly so-called 'Third World'. The miseries of life seem to be so hard that just an afterlife in a transcendent paradise is promising relief. Consequently, there seems to be a close connection between religion and poverty, especially in the 21st century, when the hope for a better afterlife has become a driving force of the poor population of the world. However, what could be interpreted as a proof of the Marxist doctrine of religion as opium of the people, for sure deserves a more multiperspectival approach, which would not just cover the recent years of human history, but past centuries as well as the different religions around the globe. Therefore the second issue of Global Humanities traces the interrelationship between religion and poverty not only from a historical, but also from a sociological, religious and artistic perspective.