{"product_id":"spiritual-socialists-9780812251654","title":"Spiritual Socialists","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRefuting the common perception that the American left has a religion problem, Vaneesa Cook highlights an important but overlooked intellectual and political tradition that she calls spiritual socialism. Spiritual socialists emphasized the social side of socialism and believed the most basic expression of religious values-caring for the sick, tired, hungry, and exploited members of one's community-created a firm footing for society. Their unorthodox perspective on the spiritual and cultural meaning of socialist principles helped make leftist thought more palatable to Americans, who associated socialism with Soviet atheism and autocracy. In this way, spiritual socialism continually put pressure on liberals, conservatives, and Marxists to address the essential connection between morality and social justice.   Cook tells her story through an eclectic group of activists whose lives and works span the twentieth century. Sherwood Eddy, A. J. Muste, Myles Horton, Dorothy Day, Henry Wallace, Pa\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[I]n her thought-provoking new book . . . Cook finds in the past ample evidence that the intersection of Christianity and radicalism in the modern United States has been quite bustling . . . Cook has done . . . a tremendous service . . . in lifting up a spiritual-socialist tradition that has languished too long in obscurity.\" * \u003ci\u003eChristianity Today\u003c\/i\u003e *\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSpiritual Socialists \u003c\/i\u003eshould fundamentally change the way we tell the story of the twentieth-century Left.. In [Cook's] careful retelling, the 1930s–1950s were generative years for radicalism in the United States....The book, which is an intellectual history of the major figures of the religious left, makes a number of important contributions.\u003c\/p\u003e \" * Journal of Church and State *\u003cbr\u003e\"In this bold, incisive book, Vaneesa Cook makes an important contribution to the growing body of scholarship on the American ‘Religious Left.’ She argues that the most effective movements of the political left in the twentieth-century United States were thoroughly suffused with religious values… Cook’s study makes a compelling argument that religion has profoundly shaped American society, not merely guiding radical politics but being inextricably embedded in them.\" * American Religion *\u003cbr\u003e\"Writing gracefully and powerfully, Vaneesa Cook draws on her understanding of history to speak to today's concerns without jargon or cant. \u003ci\u003eSpiritual Socialists\u003c\/i\u003e is a sweeping and refreshingly independent contribution to the study of the religious left in the modern United States.\" * Doug Rossinow, author of \u003ci\u003eVisions of Progress: The Left-Liberal Tradition in America\u003c\/i\u003e *\u003cbr\u003e\"This is a courageous book. At a time when elected officials in the highest public offices refer to one another by offensive nicknames and attribute to each other the most self-seeking motives, and groups on the Left often attack each other in rigidly ideological invective, Vaneesa Cook seeks to recover 'the moral core of socialist belief.' She does so by examining the work of a group of figures, among them Dorothy Day, Sherwood Eddy, A. J. Muste, Myles Horton, Henry Wallace, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Pauli Murray. Her work exhibits diligence and empathy.\" * Staughton Lynd, author of \u003ci\u003eDoing History from the Bottom Up: On E.P. Thompson, Howard Zinn, and Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below\u003c\/i\u003e *","brand":"University of Pennsylvania Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48737446527319,"sku":"9780812251654","price":40.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780812251654.jpg?v=1723811205","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/spiritual-socialists-9780812251654","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}