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Product Description 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 generation of religious leaders is re-envisioning religion in public life, leading grassroots movements to go beyond partisan politics to work for a more just and inclusive society. Progressive & Religious tells the dynamic stories of these leaders. Through nearly 100 in-depth interviews with Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist leaders, this book explains how they are tapping the deep connections between religion and social justice to work on issues like poverty and worker's rights, the environment, health care, pluralism, and human rights. Interviewees include David Saperstein, Michael Lerner, Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren, Feisal Abdul Rauf, Eboo Patel, Kecia Ali, Lama Surya Das, Robert Thurman, and E. J. Dionne. From Publishers Weekly Much attention has been paid to the role of the religious right in American politics, but this work offers an account of religious progressives who are seeking to make their own impact on public life. Jones, a scholar at the Center for American Progress, interviewed nearly 100 leaders from the four religious groups enumerated in the subtitle and discovered a diverse and vibrant community committed to issues like social justice, inclusion and economic fairness-a pluralistic hodgepodge Jones describes as "the other religious America." The author briefly depicts the long history of religious progressivism in America, but his book concentrates on contemporary activists, such as Jewish Funds for Justice or the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. Each faith has its own distinctive theological basis for its progressive politics, yet Jones also shows common characteristics, including a relational approach to truth and a belief in the unity of all humanity. This book will cheer religious progressives who believe their voices are underrepresented in the current conversation about faith and politics in America. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review By seeking out and presenting American opinion leaders who are committed to human rights and social justice from their respective religious perspectives, Progressive & Religious is particularly timely in these perilous times of polarization and social regression among religious communities. A pioneering initiative for social change. -- Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Emory University School of Law Through his work with Third Way, Robert Jones has been working hard to heal religious fractures, bringing together political progressives and conservative Christians so they stop culture warfare and start behaving more Christianly toward one another, collaborating for the common good. In Progressive & Religious, he engenders hope for a new day by identifying the growing chorus of voices seeking―in the words of the Hebrew prophets―to beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. -- Brian McLaren, author, speaker, and activist No one who reads this book will end up doubting the breadth and depth of commitment to progressive visions that are deeply rooted in the wisdoms of the whole spectrum of American religious life; and everyone who reads it will end up knowing a great deal more about both progressive thought and religious life. Hallelu-yah! -- Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director, The Shalom Center; author, Down-to-Earth Judaism Let's face it: Jesus was a rabble-rouser. The Hebrew prophets castigated the rich. Muhammad challenged Arabian elites. The Buddha opposed the status quo. By insisting that social injustices and not just personal moral infractions are matters of concern for any religiously grounded ethics, the people and organizations profiled in Robert Jones's Progressive & Religious are challenging dominant visions of religious activism as in