Today’s post is courtesy of regular visitor to Gladstone’s Library, author Greg Garrett. His latest book on religion and politics, ‘Faithful Citizenship’, is out this week. It is dedicated to Gladstone’s Library and references the Library within the text.
Since October 2010, I've been writing a weekly column for Patheos on the intersection of religion and public life. For the past two summers, I've been Residential Scholar at Gladstone Library, one of the world's great research centers exploring theology and politics. During that time, I've been thinking theologically about the issues that show up in the news everyday and about the ways we try to address them in our politics.
Those of us who try to be theological about our life together feel that America has gone badly off the rails; even those of us who call ourselves religious don't seem to be living differently from the rest of the culture. That's why Patheos asked me to write a book about what it might mean to approach political life from the standpoint of our religious beliefs instead of from the standpoint of partisan politics, and ‘Faithful Citizenship’, a full-length e-book from Patheos Press, is the result. I hope that my book might prompt others to reflect about what it means to be a faithful citizen.
Read an extract from the first chapter of his book here.