Includes bibliographical references and index.

Pt. I. The social gospel and Niebuhrian realism. Society as the subject of redemption : Washington Gladden, Walter Rauschenbusch, and the social gospel -- Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, and the crises of war and capitalism -- The Niebuhrian legacy : Christian realism as theology, social ethics, and public intellectualism -- Ironic complexity : Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, modernity, and racial justice -- Pt. II. Economic democracy in question. Norman Thomas and the dilemma of American socialism -- Michael Harrington and the "left wing of the possible" -- Christian socialism as tradition and problem -- Breaking the oligarchy : globalization, turbo-capitalism, economic crash, economic democracy -- Rethinking and renewing economic democracy -- Pt. III. Neoconservatism and American empire. The neoconservative phenomenon : American power and the war of ideology -- Imperial designs : neoconservatism and the Iraq War -- Militaristic illusions : the Iraq debacle and the crisis of American empire -- Empire in denial : American exceptionalism and the community of nations -- Pt. IV. Social ethics and the politics of difference. The feminist difference : Rosemary R. Ruether and eco-socialist Christianity -- Pragmatic postmodern prophecy : Cornel West as social critic and public intellectual -- As purple to lavender : Katie Cannon and womanist ethics -- Religious pluralism as a justice issue : Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and ecumenism -- The Obama phenomenon and presidency -- Social ethics in the making : history, method, and White supremacism.

Description based on print version record.