A pastor who is also a politics professor examines current issues pertaining to sexuality and society and asks, What kind of world are we creating? And is it the world we want to live in? With no finger-pointing, and a cordial openness to responses from all points of view, Dale Kuehne contrasts the "tWorld," in which traditional morality reigned and recent innovations would have been inconceivable, with the post-Enlightenment "iWorld," in which these innovations are promoted because the perceived immediate needs of the individual are paramount. Both, he finds, fall short of the "rWorld," the larger web of healthy and nourishing social relationships that provides the context for a biblical understanding of individual sexuality. This book will transform the conversation on sexuality among college students, campus ministers, church and ministry leaders, and all readers with an eye on culture and public policy.
EXCERPT
Even as the broader culture has deviated from the traditional understanding of sexual ethics and marriage, so have Christians. . . . Given the rapid shift in the sexual behavior of Christians, it should come as no surprise that when the church attempts to respond to the questions posed by the Sexual Revolution, it does so with mixed messages, a muted voice, and little impact. . . . The answer for the church is not to withdraw permanently from the public debate about sexual morality. Instead we need to step back, think deeply about what we believe, and rearticulate it in a better way. Most of all, we need to practice what we profess and in doing so, reengage the culture in a dialogue about the meaning of sexuality.

In this seminal work in the fields of political history and political theory, Jean Bethke Elshtain shows how the powerful notion of sovereignty,complete independence and self-government,has irrevocably sculpted contemporary notions of God, state and self. Elshtain examines the conceptual underpinnings of sovereignty, considering the early modern ideas of God that formed the basis for the modern paradigm of the sovereign state, and making the unprecedented claim that political theories of state sovereignty fuel contemporary understandings of sovereignty of the self,arguing, in other words, that when we understand why we have the politics we have, we will understand what makes humans themselves tick. The implications of Elshtain's monumental thesis go as far as to suggest that self-sovereignty, which understands the self to be an independent, self-sufficient entity, undermines the bedrock on which human communities are fundamentally sustained. In thoughtful, provocative prose, Elshtain explores the connections between our political and ethical convictions, changing forever the way we understand the notion of sovereignty.

In this eagerly anticipated interpretation of the life and work of quintessential "public intellectual" Jane Addams (1860-1935), Jean Bethke Elshtain explores Addams's legacy thematically and chronologically, recounting her embrace of "social feminism," her challenge to the usual cleavage between "conservative" and "liberal," and the growth of Chicago's famed Hull House into a thriving cultural and intellectual center. Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy is a rich and revealing portrait of one of the most extraordinary figures in American history.