The text, translated and introduced by James Skillen, was originally a speech by Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) that opened the first Christian Social Congress in The Netherlands on 9 November 1891. His words not only illuminate with stark simplicity many of the enduring problems of poverty, they also bring a strong and pointed biblical message that has outlived Kuyper's time and place. Roger Henderson's essay "How Abraham Kuyper Became a Kuyperian" is included in the appendix.

Should welfare be abolished because it fosters dependency, or should it be expanded to offer more effective help? Are people poor due to their own irresponsibility or as a result of social injustice? Is the key welfare problem non-work or illegitimacy? Should government help the poor, or is aid a job for the church? Such polarized questions have hampered the quest for constructive welfare reform and have left Christians criticizing each other as mere advocates of a bogus compassion or of a "tough love" that actually lacks love. This book moves beyond such polarities by developing a fuller biblical understanding of personhood, the multiple institutions of society, and the limited yet constructive responsibilities of government. It argues that assistance should aim to restore people and institutions to their diverse responsibilities in a healthy society. For shalom to replace poverty and social decay, families, churches, schools, government, and other institutions must each fulfill its own responsibilities. The topics range from family dysfunction to global economic restructuring, from constitutional disputes about government support for faith-based charities to social science's confusion about causation, and from welfare program changes to policy initiatives to revitalize civil society.

Assumptions and institutions that we have taken for granted for fifty years are proving inadequate for the world now emerging. Moreover, mono-casual explanations of rapid global change do not work. Religious as well as economic dynamics, cultural as well as political forces, environmental as well as military constraints, are frequently working at cross-purposes in shaping a globe we cannot yet fathom. The essays in this volume reach beyond the mere description of phenomena to explore deeper currents of institutional breakdown and competing cultural drives that are radically reshaping our world. Covering topics ranging from the New Silk Road to changes in school governance around the world, the authors offer a critical, historically-informed assessment of the diverse dynamics that are undermining or nullifying current paradigms of thought and action. Drawing on their diverse backgrounds in economics, international affairs, ethics, history, education, and religion, the authors share the conviction that long-standing assumptions about a state-centered, secular-tending, economically converging world are in large measure mistaken. A paradigm shift is required if we are to understand and constructively shape the twenty-first century world.

Assumptions and institutions that we have taken for granted for fifty years are proving inadequate for the world now emerging. Moreover, mono-casual explanations of rapid global change do not work. Religious as well as economic dynamics, cultural as well as political forces, environmental as well as military constraints, are frequently working at cross-purposes in shaping a globe we cannot yet fathom. The essays in this volume reach beyond the mere description of phenomena to explore deeper currents of institutional breakdown and competing cultural drives that are radically reshaping our world. Covering topics ranging from the New Silk Road to changes in school governance around the world, the authors offer a critical, historically-informed assessment of the diverse dynamics that are undermining or nullifying current paradigms of thought and action. Drawing on their diverse backgrounds in economics, international affairs, ethics, history, education, and religion, the authors share the conviction that long-standing assumptions about a state-centered, secular-tending, economically converging world are in large measure mistaken. A paradigm shift is required if we are to understand and constructively shape the twenty-first century world.

Christianity and Civil Society responds to the crisis of American democracy as perceived by such diverse thinkers as Christopher Lasch, Michael Sandel, Mary Ann Glendon, and Robert Putnam. Despite their philosophical differences, these thinkers highlight a common theme: a decline in the institutions of civil society once held to be the vital center of the American polity. In place of these institutions-such as the family, neighborhood, church, and civic associations-one finds a disturbingly reduced socio-political stage, dominated by an abstract triumvirate of the individual, state, and market as prime actors. Whether taking their inspiration from the political theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and papal encyclicals or from John Calvin and his heirs in the Reformed traditions, the authors assembled here find the doctrinal resources of Christianity indispensable to defending the irreducible identity and value of the social institutions that serve as the connective tissue of a political community. By drawing upon a treasury of social thought little known to most Americans, Christianity and Civil Society offers a fresh vantage point from which to assess the crisis of our polity as well as the best prospects for its renewal.

The events of 9/11, followed by the Bush administration's actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, have fueled a new debate about America's foreign and defense policies in the post-Cold War world. The debate has produced a torrent of books. This book argues that current policy making and reactions to terrorism cannot be understood properly without going back to the roots of America's civil-religious nationalism as well as to the Muslim roots of radical Islamism. After setting that stage in Chapters One and Two, the book goes on in the next three chapters to uncover the political and religious roots of the modern state, a western invention now dominant throughout the world. Chapters Six through Eight focus on the United States-at its founding, in the era of Woodrow Wilson and World War I, and today, post-9/11. The aim here, at the core of the book, is to show how a modest, constitutionally limited state became the carrier of a grandiose, civil-religious, nationalism (city on a hill; redeemer nation; American exceptionalism) that accounts for much of the ambivalence of America's approach to international relations to the present day. Chapter Nine focuses on contemporary questioning of just war doctrine, and Chapter Ten argues for a new priority of international institution building in America's approach to world affairs.

This is a series of eight essays on diverse public policy concerns that asks the questions: What does racial justice, or environmental protection, or family policy look like when approached from a Christian-democratic perspective? And what about the civil-society questions of welfare, education, and political participation? The author, James W. Skillen, argues that the roots of a Christian-democratic approach are neither liberal nor conservative, but pluralistic, opening the way to a healthy regard for both social complexity and government's responsibility to uphold political community. Published in cooperation with the Center for Public Justice