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Lifting Up the Poor: A Dialogue on Religion, Poverty, Welfare Reform (The Pew Forum Dialogues on Religion and Public Life)
Lifting Up the Poor A Dialogue on Religion Poverty Welfare Reform - The Pew Forum Dialogues on Religion and Public Life Author:Mary Jo Bane, Lawrence M. Mead People who participate in debates about povertyand its causes and curesoften speak from religious conviction. But those underlying commitments are rarely made explicit or debated on their own terms. And rarely are the public implications of religious commitments brought to bear on specific policy choices. Two of the nations ... more »foremost scholars and policy advocates break the mold in this lively volume. They bring their faith traditions, policy experience, academic expertise, and political commitments together in this moving, pointed, and informed discussion of one of our most vexing public issues. Mary Jo Bane writes of her experiences running social service agencies, work that has been informed by , of "Catholic social teaching, and the Catholic sensibility that is shaped every day by prayer and worship." Drawing from the various Christian traditions, Lawrence Meads essay discusses the role of nurturing Christian virtues and personal responsibility as a means of combating poverty. Theologians, he writes, are among the unacknowledged legislators of mankind. Bane emphasizes the social justice claims of her tradition, and Mead draws from virtue theory. But both assert that an engagement with religious traditions is indispensable to an honest and searching debate about poverty.« less