Ronald H. Stone – författare

In this book, Ronald Stone breaks new ground by providing a fresh survey of Reinhold Niebuhr as a professor, demonstrating that this vocation was central to Niebuhr's lifework. This book reveals Niebuhr's passion for the development of an intellectually equipped, socially concerned Christian ministry.

Moral Reflections on Foreign Policy in a Religious War argues that foreign policy thinkers and actors must take religion more seriously than they have in analysis and action. The tragedy of U.S. policy in Iraq is in part due to the dangers of ignoring religious conflicts in that country until it was too late, and then responding too lightly. Working as a philosopher of religion and politics, Stone shows how both in the United States and the Middle East unreflective religion in a dialogic relationship with politics power has proven hazardous. Stone proposes policy changes for the United States based on his analysis and calls for reform in the ways that both politics and religion are understood. Without peace between religions, there will be no peace in the Middle East. Without understanding how religion functions in international politics, the United States is doomed to repeat disastrous policies in the Middle East.

Protestantism, at its best, grounds both its religious and its social critique in the faith of the prophets and the life and teachings of Jesus Christ as understood and lived by the church. Its teachings and desired practice stand in start contrast to complacent religion that seems to be at ease with imperial greed, domination, and violence. Resistance and Theological Ethics collects the edited and updated essays that emerged from the meeting of the Theological Educators for Presbyterian Social Witness in Geneva, Switzerland and southern France in 1999. Inspired there by the sixteenth century forces of renewal unleashed through resistance to an imperial church and society, the writings of these educators and ethicists combine to sound a clarion call for the church to stand in resistance to social, economic and political forces that threaten—while embracing those that foster—social justice, peace and human welfare. Each author emphasizes a specific call to nonviolent resistance against powers grounded in particular forms of sin: religious pride, greed, violence and domination. Divided into three parts, the book details social forces to be resisted, presents historical and biblical examples of resistance, and concludes with theological analysis and advocacy for action in contemporary American society.

The Political Crisis and Christian Ethics addresses themes in political philosophy in the context of a crisis in democracy after the denial of the 2020 election by the Republican candidate for president. The refusal to accept the results of the election divided the electorate and drove the president''s followers to fail in their attempted coup attempt in January of 2020. Democracy is defended in Reinhold Niebuhr''s writing on politics and in Barack Obama''s use of the theologian''s thought. It is developed further in the political theory of Paul Tillich. The themes of just peacemaking are reviewed in Paul Tillich''s critique of John Foster Dulles'' work and in the author''s critique of just peacemaking in the work of Glen Stassen. Domestically the issues of race, inequality, ecology, and healthcare are addressed from the perspective of prophetic realism. The book concludes in terms of Alfred North Whitehead''s philosophy of education and religion and a vision of the good president. In summary, The Political Crisis and Christian Ethics is a volume of American, Christian political theory in a period of overcoming the trauma of 2016 with Christian ethics and political philosophy.

This is Ronald Stone''s fifth book on his mentor and friend Reinhold Niebuhr. For the first time he analyzes all of Niebuhr''s writings on race to correct the academic work of critics of Niebuhr who have ignored Niebuhr''s creation of institutions fighting white supremacy in the South and who commented on Niebuhr while not reading his complete works. It also publishes the text of his work as chairman of the mayor''s committee on race in the strife-torn Detroit of 1926. Stone argues that Niebuhr''s work in total provides a complex theory for white and Black leaders to overcome white supremacy. Niebuhr combines idealism and realism in the bulk of his work, which is summarized in the two words of his well-known social theory: Christian Realism. Both words need to be recognized to understand the depth of Niebuhr''s synthesis. As early as 1932, Niebuhr recognized the need for minorities to use economic power and Gandhian nonviolent strategies to overcome color or caste discrimination. As late as the year of his death in 1971 he recommended to the Bicentennial Commission, as one of three national priorities, the overcoming of the racial discrimination that threatened American democracy. Racism as sin is central to his theology, and the breaking of white supremacy is essential to his hundreds of essays and editorials against racial discrimination and to democratic theory. As editor of Social Action in 1968 Stone published "The Fate of the Negro in a Self-Righteous Nation," widely regarded as Niebuhr''s best essay on the subject and marking Niebuhr''s late analysis and his development between the two commission reports of 1926 and 1968. Another relatively unknown source of Niebuhr on racism is the seminar he taught from 1966 to 1968. It is reconstructed by Stone from the class notes of the seminar in which he served as class assistant. To complete the circle, James Cone asked Stone to lecture in his seminar the last three years he offered the seminar on Reinhold Niebuhr.

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Originally published by Abingdon Press in 1972, this interpretation of the more than half a century in which Reinhold Niebuhr criticized the conduct of U.S. foreign policy and sought to define the nature of responsible statesmanship offers an understanding of his thoughts on American foreign policy and his perspectives on religious faith.

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