Overview

What is the relationship between evangelical Christianity and democracy in America? In Good News for Common Goods, sociologist Wes Markofski explores how multicultural evangelicals across the United States are addressing race, poverty, inequality, politics, and religious and cultural difference in America's increasingly plural and polarized public arena. Based on extensive original research on multicultural evangelicals active in faith-based community organizing, community development, political advocacy, and public service organizations across the country-including over 90 in-depth interviews with racially diverse evangelical and non-evangelical activists, community leaders, and neighborhood residents-Markofski shows how the varieties of public religion practiced by evangelical Christians are not always bad news for non-evangelicals, people of color, and those advancing ethical democracy in the United States.Markofski argues that multicultural evangelicals can and do work with others across race, class, religious, and political lines to achieve common good solutions to public problems, and that they can do so without abandoning their own distinctive convictions and identities or demanding that others do so. Just as ethical democracy calls for a more reflexive evangelicalism, it also calls for a more reflexive secularism and progressivism.

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9780197659700

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Reviews

Markofski has written an ambitious and wide-ranging book mapping new terrain in the study of American evangelicalism and marking future directions for that broad religious movement so critical to American and global society. The book's compelling argument will matter for the future of evangelical Christianity, for the future of democracy, and for how we understand 'public religion' generally. We need this book for meeting the current historical moment. * Richard L. Wood, Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico, author of A Shared Future: Faith-based Organizing for Racial Equity (with Brad Fulton) * Markofski's ethnography on multicultural evangelicalism is much needed, deeply nuanced, and highly accessible. A must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of race, politics, and evangelicals in America. * John Inazu, Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion, Washington University in St. Louis *

Markofski has written an ambitious and wide-ranging book mapping new terrain in the study of American evangelicalism and marking future directions for that broad religious movement so critical to American and global society. The book's compelling argument will matter for the future of evangelical Christianity, for the future of democracy, and for how we understand 'public religion' generally. We need this book for meeting the current historical moment. * Richard L. Wood, Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico, author of A Shared Future: Faith-based Organizing for Racial Equity (with Brad Fulton) * Markofski's ethnography on multicultural evangelicalism is much needed, deeply nuanced, and highly accessible. A must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of race, politics, and evangelicals in America. * John Inazu, Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion, Washington University in St. Louis * This maybe the most important book in years on US evangelical Christianity, both for scholars concerned about anti-democratic trends and for students personally committed to evangelical religion. Morebroadly,this book will shape future conversations regarding public religion in the United States and globally, particularly the role religion can play in the defense and deepening of democracy. * Social Forces *

Author Information

Wes Markofski is Chair and Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton College and received his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of New Monasticism and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism.

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