Faith in the Public Square
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Narrated by:
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David George
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By:
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Rowan Williams
About this listen
Archbishop Rowan Williams is the most gifted Anglican priest of his generation. His views are consistent and orthodox and yet he has been consistently misunderstood - especially in relation to his views on contemporary society, public morality, and the common good.
In this, the final published work of his Archepiscopate, Dr Williams has assembled a series of chapters on matters of immediate public concern and the relationship of Christianity to these issues. Among his topics are "Has Secularism Failed?: Europe, Faith and Culture", "Human Rights and Religious Faith", "Changing the Myths We Live By", "Housekeeping: The Economic Challenge", "The Gifts Reserved for Age: Perceptions of the Elderly", and "Analysing Atheism".
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Since his retirement as Archbishop of Canterbury and his return to academic life (Master of Magdalene College Cambridge), Rowan Williams has demonstrated a massive new surge of intellectual energy. In this new audiobook, he turns his attention to St Augustine. St Augustine not only shaped the development of Western theology, he also made a major contribution to political theory ( The City of God) and, through his Confessions, to the understanding of human psychology.
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thoughtful take.
- By Michael McGuire on 04-17-22
By: Rowan Williams
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The Great Delusion
- Liberal Dreams and International Realities
- By: John J. Mearsheimer
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In this major statement, the renowned international-relations scholar John Mearsheimer argues that liberal hegemony, the foreign policy pursued by the United States since the Cold War ended, is doomed to fail. It makes far more sense, he maintains, for Washington to adopt a more restrained foreign policy based on a sound understanding of how nationalism and realism constrain great powers abroad.
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Dense, fact filled, sober analysis and prescription
- By John Brynjolfsson on 12-15-18
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The End of History and the Last Man
- By: Francis Fukuyama
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.
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An important discussion expertly narrated
- By Kevin Teeple on 06-27-19
By: Francis Fukuyama
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Why You Think the Way You Do
- The Story of Western Worldviews from Rome to Home
- By: Glenn S. Sunshine
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Why You Think the Way You Do traces the development of the worldviews that underpin the Western world. Professor and historian Glenn S. Sunshine demonstrates the decisive impact that the growth of Christianity had in transforming the outlook of pagan Roman culture into one that—based on biblical concepts of humanity and its relationship with God—established virtually all the positive aspects of Western civilization.
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"Christian's view of the western world"
- By Bradley on 03-21-10
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What Are We Doing Here?
- By: Marilynne Robinson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Alexis de Tocqueville, inform our political consciousness or discussing how beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson's peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.
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Unpersuasive and a bit repetitive
- By Adam Shields on 03-07-18
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Between Past and Future
- Eight Exercises in Political Thought
- By: Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Hannah Arendt's insightful observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, constitute an impassioned contribution to political philosophy. In Between Past and Future, Arendt describes the perplexing crises modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, and glory. Through a series of eight exercises, she shows how we can redistill the vital essence of these concepts and use them to regain a frame of reference for the future.
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Just stunning
- By Peter Stephens on 02-26-18
By: Hannah Arendt
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The God Argument
- The Case Against Religion and for Humanism
- By: A. C. Grayling
- Narrated by: William Roberts
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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What are the arguments for and against religion and religious belief - all of them - right across the range of reasons and motives that people have for being religious, and do they stand up to scrutiny? Can there be a clear, full statement of these arguments that once and for all will show what is at stake in this debate? Equally important: what is the alternative to religion as a view of the world and a foundation for morality?
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Fascinating Topic Made Mind Numbingly Dull
- By m.emery on 06-17-15
By: A. C. Grayling
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Culture and Imperialism
- By: Edward Said
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 19 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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A landmark work from the intellectually auspicious author of Orientalism, this book explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. This classic study, the direct successor to Said's main work, is read by Peter Ganim ( Orientalism).
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BRAVO, AUDIBLE!! WE NEED MORE SAID!! REAL BOOKS!!
- By AnthonyStevens on 02-27-11
By: Edward Said
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Philosophy
- Who Needs It
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Who needs philosophy? Ayn Rand's answer: Everyone. This collection of essays was the last work planned by Ayn Rand before her death in 1982. In it, she summarizes her view of philosophy and deals with a broad spectrum of topics. According to Ayn Rand, the choice we make is not whether to have a philosophy, but which one to have: a rational, conscious, and therefore practical one, or a contradictory, unidentified, and ultimately lethal one.
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Deep and provocative
- By Sierra Bravo on 05-21-09
By: Ayn Rand
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Truth and Truthfulness
- By: Bernard Williams
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? No philosopher is better suited to answer these questions than Bernard Williams. Writing with his characteristic combinationof passion and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine.
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Content is excellent but the sound quality falters
- By Andy B. on 09-08-23
By: Bernard Williams
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Moral Politics
- How Liberals and Conservatives Think, 3rd Edition
- By: George Lakoff
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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When Moral Politics was first published two decades ago, it redefined how Americans think and talk about politics through the lens of cognitive political psychology. Today, George Lakoff's classic text has become all the more relevant, as liberals and conservatives have come to hold even more vigorously opposed views of the world, with the underlying assumptions of their respective worldviews at the level of basic morality.
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extremely insightful. awful to get through.
- By Dave on 05-09-18
By: George Lakoff
What listeners say about Faith in the Public Square
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Adam Shields
- 01-31-17
Mixed bag
Some authors are more aural in their writing style. They write in a method where reading it out loud is the best method. Neil Gaiman, Eugene Peterson, Rob Bell all are authors that I immediately go to the audiobook first. And then maybe later re-read their books in a print format.
Rowan Williams I have decided is the opposite. I do like his writing, but he writes in a style that has lots of asides and subtle nuance that makes audiobooks difficult. I am always assuming that there is a footnote or some other feature from the print book that would help make sense of the context that is unavailable to the audiobook listener. (Although some of these essays were originally lectures and those are much easier to hear and understand.) And that is unfortunate for me, both because for some reason almost all of Williams books are cheaper on audiobook than in print and because I tend to listen to more audiobooks these days.
Faith in the Public Square was published just before Rowan Williams left office as Archbishop of Canterbury. As the most visible public voice in the church in the UK, he has a unique place to discuss how faith should work in the public realm. As a brilliant academic, he has the philosophical chops to actually discuss the religious and philosophical grounding of that interaction. And after 10 years of serving in the position with a number of public controversies, he has the background on the actual areas where problems occur.
Faith in the Public Square is made up of essays, sometimes talks, that were meant to address specific issues. Those specific issues are occasionally grounded in UK specific current event or legal issues or longer history. But even when I knew I wasn’t getting the full nuance of the discussion, I was mostly able to follow along with the argument.
The essays are groups into seven sections, secularism, pluralism and the law, the environment, economics, justice, religious diversity and ‘rediscovering religion’. Not everything has aged particularly well. He has a discussion on India as an example of successful religious pluralism, but in the six years since publication, India has moved almost uniformly in a direction against religious pluralism. But for the most part, I think getting the ideas of someone that is outside of our US context for a discussion of religion and the public life helps to break down some of the particular cultural issues that are focused on religious and political issues in the United States.
There is a fascinating discussion about human rights and how they have been previously grounded in religious understanding but are increasingly grounded in legal code divorced from religious or even philosophical moorings. Again, I think that because Williams was writing as the Archbishop of Canterbury there is a recognition of how legal and religious interactions matter, in slightly different ways than they matter in the US. An earlier essay discussed the problems of how we defined humanity (particularly the problems of grounding it in capacity.)
The overly simplistic summary of his argument around human rights is that they should be grounded in recognition of all people’s common humanity and not grounded in a shifting legal recognition of a particular list of rights. The list will always be inadequate to fully define another person’s humanity. But framing the legal recognition of wrongs against a person, or even better, against an identified group of people, as a lack of recognition of their full humanity better allows the flexibility of ways that minority groups are kept from being full members of society. His concern is that when rights are a list and the society is individualistic, then the legal weight is not on recognition of full humanity of all people, but on the exceptions.
For instance, in discussing the legal right to die for elderly or disabled individuals, Williams is concerned that the legal focus would shift from protection of the weakness of those that are sick, dying or aged against abuse, to the minority of people that seek out control of their deaths. Would the legal focus on the individual seeking death, necessarily shift the focus from prevention of abuse of a group enabling the rights of the individual, which may result in additional abuse of that group?
The sections on pluralism, economics and religious diversity were the strongest. The section on justice was mixed, with some excellent thoughts on what justice entails, but also some weaknesses when it comes to specific suggestions. The section on the environment was fairly uninspiring, but not bad. The first section on secularism, although with flashes of brilliance was the hardest to translate into audiobook because it was the densest writing. I would like to read that section again in print.
For the most part, Williams and his brilliance is on full display. In wide ranging essays like in this book many theologians stray outside of their areas of expertise into areas where they have legitimate theological or ethical concerns, but not a lot of specific background. Economics is one of the areas that many theologians like to comment on, because economics is theologically important. But it is also an area with its own academic content and economists almost always complain about the lack of actual economic understanding by theologians.
Williams tends to do a good job at looking at places where theology and ethics have roles within a field, say criminal justice reform or ecology or senior care, without straying into the academic discussions of the area itself. When he occasionally steps over the line into specific issues where I have some knowledge, he can show some weakness. But most of the time Williams is an example of how to bring the weight of his theological office and background into areas of secular vocation or politics without losing track of the point of the Christian reason for his comments.
I am not sure this is the best book I have read on the interaction of politics and faith. For one thing, it is a book of essays that was compiled, not a specific book on how faith and the public square interact. But it was worth looking at how someone that has a public voice can speak about their Christian faith into a secular culture and political world even if you may not always agree with where he ends up.
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