Reinventing Civil Society ─ The Emerging Role of Faith-Based Organizations

With the administration of Barack Obama continuing to promote expanded federal support for faith-based organizations (FBOs) involved in the delivery of social services (a policy once seen as an aberration of the George W. Bush administration), there is a need to understand and analyze how the public service activities of FBOs actually play out on the ground. This is the task the authors of this work (all of Michigan State U.) take on, focusing on the areas of housing and community development and considering the ways in which FBOs interact with the political system and the political implications of such activities and interactions, in particular as concerns the differences between faith-based service provision versus secular service provision and the impact of faith-based service provision on governing civil society. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)