Princeton theologian Mark Taylor analyzes right-wing Christian movements in the United States amid the powers of religion, politics, empire, and corporate classes in post-9/11 USA. The real gift of Taylor's book is his argument that this militant Christian faith must be viewed against a backdrop of the American political romanticism and corporatist liberalism of U.S. past and present. Taylor uses the best of cultural and historical studies, while deftly drawing lessons for American readers from theologian Paul Tillich's analysis of power and religion during the rise of fascism and nationalism in Germany of the 1930s. The result is an innovative framework for interpreting how Christian nationalists, Pentagon war planners and corporate institutions today are forging alliances in the U.S. that have dramatic and destructive global impact. Moving beyond lament, Taylor also leaves readers with a new romance of revolutionary traditions and a new more radical liberalism, revitalizing American visions of spirit that are both prophetic and public for U.S. residents today.
Mark Lewis Taylor is Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Theology and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. His most recent book is entitled, _The Theological and the Political: On the Weight of the World_ (Fortress Press, 2011).
Previously, his most recent book was _Religion, Politics and the Christian Right: Post-9/11 Politics and American Empire_ (2005), and currently is speaking on themes of that volume. In his book, _The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America_(2000), Taylor developed a Christology in response to U.S. empire in relation to issues of the contemporary prison-industrial complex, police brutality and the death penalty. He is also founder, and now co-coordinator, of "Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal," a group of teachers from all levels of education university teachers organizing for a new trial for Abu-Jamal, a journalist on Pennsylvania's death row since 1982. He has also been an activist in other movements to end U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan, to reform radically U.S. prisons, to abolish the death penalty, while pressing for immigration rights and reform, and for change in US policy toward Mexico and Latin America. He also serves on the board for the Masters degree in Community Organizing, offered by the U.S.-Mexico Solidarity Organization and accredited with the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee.
