Faithful Presence: The Promise and the Peril of Faith in the Public Square
Recommended by: Bruce Borgerson
Posted in: Bridging Divides
Purchase →Stumbled across this book when I discovered the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy.
https://www.vanderbilt.edu/unity/
Haslam is a co-chair along with Samar Ali and noted presidential historian Jon Meacham. Some of this book is fluffy memoir that can be skimmed, but there is sufficient substance here to confront and perhaps overturn “deep blue” stereotypes of a white evangelical Republican governor of a Southern state. He makes a good argument that Christian faith can be a moderating and even a progressive force in promoting justice and equality, and in healing national wounds.
My fellow Christian brothers and sisters would do well to read this book. Too often our strong beliefs have made us speak and act in the public square in ways that go against those very beliefs. A question posed by the author hit home: “Do our political actions match our theology or has our theology been taken captive to our political beliefs?”