Download e-book for kindle: Moral Ambition: Mobilization and Social Outreach in by Omri Elisha

In this evocative ethnography, Omri Elisha examines the hopes, frustrations, and activist innovations of yank evangelical Christians as they interact socially with neighborhood groups. concentrating on Tennessee megachurches, Moral Ambition reaches past political controversies over matters similar to abortion, same-sex marriage, and public prayer to spotlight the ways in which evangelicals on the grassroots of the Christian correct advertise faith-based reasons meant to enhance the nation of social welfare. The publication indicates how those ministries either aid churchgoers embrace non secular virtues and create provocative new possibilities for evangelism on a public scale. Elisha demanding situations traditional perspectives of U.S. evangelicalism as narrowly individualistic, elucidating as an alternative the inherent contradictions that activists face of their efforts to reconcile spiritual conservatism with a renewed curiosity in compassion, poverty, racial justice, and concrete revivalism.

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Did I compromise that agenda in any way? Were my actions as a volunteer—such as serving hot meals to homeless people, delivering donated furniture to shut-ins, and repairing a screen door at a domestic violence shelter—actions that meant something more than what I might have personally intended because of the fact that at those precise moments I was basically an evangelical representative? It was apparent to me that I could not fully account for the symbolic import of my presence in the eyes of other volunteers, social workers, welfare clients, and recipients of charitable aid, and that it was not the purview of my project to attempt to do so.

Applied to evangelicalism, the notion of lived religion further highlights the fact that religious orthodoxy often reveals varying degrees of plasticity as well as constancy. This does not mean that evangelical beliefs and practices lack coherence or consistency, but simply that as a lived experience evangelicalism entails a host of quotidian dilemmas, aspirations, innovations, and frustrations that are not always easily explained (or dismissed) by a single, cohesive, uniformly authorized system of doctrine.

The altar is a velvet-carpeted stage adorned with decorative flowers and chairs, a wooden lectern, and a baptismal font. At the back of the stage sits the church choir, dressed in black robes, singing classical hymns accompanied by a massive pipe organ, along with a band of hired musicians playing wind, percussion, and string instruments, including electric guitar and bass. The presence of modern instruments and trained audiovisual technicians is a conspicuous reminder of the megachurch’s deliberate incorporation of contemporary elements into its worship services, including the expansion of the musical repertoire to include folk-influenced “praise choruses” thought to be popular among younger churchgoers.

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