Steve Tipton
God Goes to Washington -- American Religion and Politics Today

July 25 - 31 

Steve Tipton was prophetic when he wrote these remarks in an article that appeared in Christian Century during the 1984 elections:
“In a republic, morality is public because it has more or less good reasons and coherent ideals, truthfulness to tradition and to the present. Public life takes the form of a moral argument, a dramatic conversation. It is a forum, not a pulpit, or a mere marketplace for exchanging ideas and brokering interests, or an arena where power blocs fight it out.

For religion to deserve its place in this forum, it must tell and enact sacred stories and teach universal ideals, defining what it means to be a good person, and what makes life worth living and a society worth living in and working for. It must bring these ideals to bear on particular issues, illuminating their moral meaning in the light of Scriptures, the life of Jesus, the laws of nature and the Kingdom of God. This kind of reasoned, argued, exemplified and Bible-supported moral illumination -- not electioneering and lobbying -- is what American public life needs from religion.”

Public discourse about fundamental issues is part of the warp and weave of a democracy. Religion – especially as espoused by what has come to be called “the religious right” -- has become so enmeshed in political discourse that the proper interaction between religion and politics has become muddied -- for me at least. Sorting through some of the key issues around religion and politics sounds like a great idea to me. Who better to help us make some sense of American religion and politics than Steve Tipton, someone who has been examining the subject for over thirty years? So, we welcome Steve to Ring Lake Ranch.
– Carl Koch, Director

Public Pulpits: Methodists and Mainline Churches in the Moral Argument of Public Life

Since the 2000 presidential election, debate over the role of religion in public life has followed a narrow course as pundits and politicians alike have focused on the influence wielded by conservative Christians. But what about more mainstream Christians? Here, Steven M. Tipton examines the political activities of Methodists and mainline churches in this groundbreaking investigation into a generation of denominational strife among church officials, lobbyists, and activists. The result is an unusually detailed and thoughtful account that upends common stereotypes while asking searching questions about the contested relationship between church and state.

Documenting a wide range of reactions to two radically different events—the invasion of Iraq and the creation of the faith-based initiatives program—Tipton charts the new terrain of religious and moral argument under the Bush administration from Pat Robertson to Jim Wallis. He then turns to the case of the United Methodist Church, of which President Bush is a member, to uncover the twentieth-century history of their political advocacy, culminating in current threats to split the Church between liberal peace-and-justice activists and crusaders for evangelical renewal. Public Pulpits balances the firsthand drama of this internal account with a meditative exploration of the wider social impact that mainline churches have had in a time of diverging fortunes and diminished dreams of progress.

An eminently fair-minded and ethically astute analysis of how churches keep moral issues alive in politics, Public Pulpits delves deep into mainline Protestant efforts to enlarge civic conscience and cast clearer light on the commonweal and offers a masterly overview of public religion in America.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said this about Steve Tipton’s book Public Pulpits: "We cannot answer the call to discern and do God's will on earth, among the nations, without loving our diverse neighbors and engaging them in public argument as members one of another in one body. To discover how this demanding drama unfolds in America today, enter into the tumult, wisdom, and grace that fill this brilliant book."

"Tipton's rich, revelatory study of conflict and crisis in the United Methodist Church at the heart of mainline Protestantism enables us to grasp the place of churches in the American polis, and judge their political moves and moral advocacy, as no nonpartisan has done to date. With a gift for finding the issues behind the issues, this book brings into full focus the churches' seething struggles. All the way from the Cold War through the culture wars to the war in Iraq, it shows how alive these struggles have come to be for the faithful on every side, and how fateful for our society."-Martin Marty

“Steven Tipton's Public Pulpits is a rarity in the literature of recent years, a book that focuses on the politics of mainline churches rather than those of the religious right or the evangelical left. Tipton's most important contribution is his discerning sociological portrait of American mainline Protestantism at the beginning of the 21st century, and he combines this with a strong sense of history and an ability to bring moral questions into sharper focus.” – Robin Lovin, Christian Century

More about Steve Tipton

If you would like to hear Steven speak on religion and politics – based on Public Pulpits, you can go to http://media.uoregon.edu Steve’s speech at the University of Oregon School of Law is available in its entirety.

Family Transformed: Religion, Values, and Society in American Life

Statistics on the American family are sobering. From 1975 to 2000, one-third of all children were born to single mothers, and one-half of all marriages ended in divorce. While children from broken homes are two to three times more likely to develop behavioral and learning difficulties, two-parent families are not immune to problems.

The cost of raising children has increased dramatically, and married couples with children are now twice as likely as childless couples to file for bankruptcy. Clearly, the American family is in trouble. But how this trouble started, and what should be done about it, remain hotly contested. In a multifaceted analysis of the current state of a complex institution, Family Transformed brings together outstanding scholars from the fields of anthropology, demography, ethics, history, law, philosophy, primatology, psychology, sociology, and theology.

Demonstrating that the family is both distinctive in its own right and deeply interwoven with other institutions, the authors examine the roles of education, work, leisure, consumption, legal regulation, public administration, and biology in shaping the ways we court and marry, bear and raise children, and make and break family bonds. International in approach, this wide-ranging volume situates current American debates over sex, marriage, and family within a global framework.

Weighing mounting social science evidence that supports a continued need for the nuclear family while assessing the challenges posed by new advocacy for same-sex marriage, and delegalized coupling, the authors argue that only by reintegrating the family into a just moral order of the larger community and society can we genuinely strengthen it. This means not simply upholding traditional family values but truly grasping the family's growing diversity, sustaining its coherence, and protecting its fragility for our own sake and for the common good of society.

View other books by Steven Tipton at Amazon