Recent years have seen unprecedented attention to faith-based institutions as agents of social change, spurred in part by cuts in public funding for social services and accompanied by controversy about the separation of church and state. The debate over faith-based initiatives has highlighted a small but growing segment of churches committed to both saving souls and serving society. What distinguishes faith-based from secular activism? How do religious organizations express their religious identity in the context of social services? How do faith-based service providers interpret the connection between spiritual methodologies and socioeconomic outcomes? How does faith motivate and give meaning to social ministry? Drawing on case studies of fifteen Philadelphia-area Protestant churches with active outreach, Saving Souls, Serving Society seeks to answer these and other pressing questions surrounding the religious dynamics of social ministry. While church-based programs often look similar to secular ones in terms of goods or services rendered, they may show significant differences in terms of motivations, desired outcomes, and interpretations of meaning. Church-based programs also differ from one another in terms of how they relate evangelism to their social outreach agenda. Heidi Rolland Unruh and Ronald J. Sider explore how churches navigate the tension between their spiritual mission and the constraints on evangelism in the context of social services. The authors examine the potential contribution of religious dynamics to social outcomes as well as the relationship between mission orientations and social capital. Unruh and Sider introduce a new vocabulary for describing the religious components and spiritual meanings embedded in social action, and provide a typology of faith-based organizations and programs. Their analysis yields a framework for Protestant mission orientations that makes room for the diverse ways that churches interrelate spiritual witness and social compassion. Based on their observations, the authors offer a constructive approach to church-state partnerships and provide a far more objective understanding of faith-based social services than previously available.

Saving Souls, Serving Society: Understanding the Faith Factor in Church-Based Social Ministry

Religion & Spirituality

Heidi Rolland Unruh

ronald-j-sider

Christian Books & Bibles

Oxford University Press

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Rich Christians in Age & Hunger

Business & Money

Economics

Trafalgar Square Publishing

Exploring the Limits of Non-violence

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Hodder & Stoughton Religious Division

Live Justly is a series of in-depth scriptural and practical studies to help people live justly in six key areas of life: prayer, advocacy, consumption, generosity, relationships, and creation care.

Live Justly

rene-padilla

Jason Fileta

Nicholas Wolterstoff

Sunia Gibbs

Tearfund USA

The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (Why Are Christians Living Just Like The Rest Of The World

Baker Books

What does Jesus have to say about violence, just war, and killing? Does Jesus ever want his disciples to kill in order to resist evil and promote peace and justice? This book by noted theologian and bestselling author Ronald J. Sider provides a career capstone statement on biblical peacemaking. Sider makes a strong case for the view that Jesus calls his disciples to love, and never kill, their enemies. He explains that there are never only two options: to kill or to do nothing in the face of tyranny and brutality. There is always a third possibility: vigorous, nonviolent resistance. If we believe that Jesus is Lord, then we disobey him when we set aside what he taught about killing and ignore his command to love our enemies. This thorough, comprehensive treatment of a topic of perennial concern vigorously engages with the just war tradition and issues a challenge to all Christians, especially evangelicals, to engage in biblical peacemaking. The book includes a foreword by Stanley Hauerwas.

If Jesus Is Lord: Loving Our Enemies in an Age of Violence

Baker Academic

Concerned to promote an authentic, biblical faith, this book suggests ways to combine evangelism with social action for effective witness in today's world.

Good News and Good Works: A Theology for the Whole Gospel

Recent surveys show that the lives of evangelicals often prove to be no different than non-believers. This book offers solutions to the disconnect between Christians' beliefs and day-to-day lives.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World?

Evangelicals today probably have more political influence in the U.S. than at any time in the last century--but they may not be certain what to do with it. It has been difficult to develop a unified voice on pressing issues such as social justice and moral renewal. The Scandal of Evangelical Politics provides evangelical Christians with a systematic political philosophy to guide and sustain political activism. Soundly based in biblical principles and guided by a careful study of society, this book will guide readers into more thoughtful and effective political activity. Practical, balanced, and nonpartisan, The Scandal of Evangelical Politics will be a welcome resource during the race for the 2008 presidential election.

The Scandal of Evangelical Politics: Why Are Christians Missing the Chance to Really Change the World?

History

World

Among the various lines drawn between people in the church--male and female, young and old, black and white, rich and poor, Republican and Democrat--there is the line between the urban and the suburban. The stereotypes of the edgy, socially active, multicultural urban Christian and the middle-class, comfortable, upwardly mobile suburban Christian mix fact and fiction. Linking Arms, Linking Lives looks beyond stereotypes and makes a compelling case for partnership that crosses urban and suburban for effective ministry among the poor. Drawing from a growing network of development practitioners, pastors, and theologians, this book focuses on the experiences of partnership between urban and suburban entities to provide both theological foundations and practical guidelines for those who desire to partner effectively. All who want to find viable ways to help the poor will welcome this thoughtful and hope-filled book. Includes a Foreword by Noel Castellanos.

Linking Arms, Linking Lives: How Urban-Suburban Partnerships Can Transform Communities

John M. Perkins

Wayne L. Gordon

F. Albert Tizon

Sociology

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Books by ronald-j-sider