Aaron Stauffer
Biographic Data
| ID | 1192081 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aaron Stauffer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aaron |
| FAMILY NAME | Stauffer |
| SIGNATURE | STAUFFER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vanderbilt University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7155-3495 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Under-Connected
Many pastors, faith leaders, and community organizers are isolated and under-connected to communities of praxis that can accompany them as they go about their social change work, helping them to ground their organizing in their faith lives. There is a crisis of leadership development and training. This paper argues for a rethinking of leadership development as grounded in conceptions of relational power, value-based organizing, and deep solidarit…
Religion and Socialism
While religion and socialism are often seen at odds, there are many examples of religion and socialism engaging and supporting each other. This chapter explores the life and work of B.R. Ambedkar (Buddhism), Rev. George Washington Woodbey (Christianity), and Ali Shariati (Islam). Ambedkar was one of the architects of the Indian constitution and Woodbey, an often under appreciated figure in the Black Social Gospel, worked in close solidarity with …
Listening to the Spirit
Broad-based community organizing (BBCO) is perhaps the most successful and most widely used form of political participation supported by American religious institutions. As organizing groups become more religiously diverse, however, so do the conceptions of sacred value that ground organizing in the first place. It may seem that to hold something as sacred—human life, a land, or a natural resource, for example—only serves to further entrench us i…
Making Moral Citizens
Journal Article Making Moral Citizens: How Faith-Based Organizers Use Vocation for Public Action. By Jack Delehanty Get access Making Moral Citizens: How Faith-Based Organizers Use Vocation for Public Action. By Jack Delehanty. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2023. 173pp. $24.95 paper. Aaron Stauffer Aaron Stauffer Vanderbilt University Nashville, Tennessee, USA [email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7155-3495 Searc…
Power in the Social Gospel
This essay explores how social gospelers in the U.S. South organized for relational power by building institutions for economic and political democracy in the 1930s and 1940s. In their organizing, Howard Kester and Claude Williams built relational power and institutions that fed the institutional ecology of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s. While it might be surprising to find a worthwhile analysis of power by social gospelers like Kester a…
Stories of Domination
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Lloyd, Black Dignity, 2.2 Ibid., 37.3 Ibid., 10.4 Ibid., 10.5 Ibid., 10.6 Ibid., 14.7 Ibid., 14.8 Ibid., 15.9 Ibid., 4.10 Ibid., 45.11 Ibid., 58.12 Ibid., 65.13 Ibid., 72.14 Ibid., 92.15 Ibid., 98.16 Ibid., 99.17 Ibid., 115.18 Lloyd, Religion of the Field Negro.19 Lloyd, Black Dignity, 125.20 As Annabel Brett and Phillip Pettit have shown, non-obstruction i…
Consumer Ethics in a Global Economy
The Theology of Liberalism
Eric Nelson claims that political liberals following in John Rawls's footsteps are unwittingly participating in the theodicy debate. Luck egalitarians, institutional egalitarians, and left libertarians all fail to offer convincing arguments for egalitarianism, in part due to the theological premises that are basic to—though unrecognized in—their arguments. Calls for egalitarian redistribution from political liberals are actually veiled Pelagian a…
Radical Democracy and Sacred Values
John Dewey envisioned the “American experiment” of democracy as a moral and ethical ideal, lived out in personal habits and “in our daily walk and conversation.”1 More than mere external political forms or institutional arrangements, Deweyan democracy is a “personal way of life.”2 Democratic political organizing is typically captured in campaigns focused on single issues, but broad-based community organizing (BBCO) is more closely aligned to Dewe…
Round Table Discussion
The Relational Meeting as a Political and Religious Practice
Broad-based community organizing (BBCO) is about organizing the relationships and values of working people for greater democratic power in their communities. The best organizers that I've known and witnessed ground their power building in their own and their fellow leaders' sacred values. It is the relational meeting—and specifically when organizers seek to agitate others—where a tension between values and power building can erupt, and where the …
Power in the Social Gospel
This essay explores how social gospelers in the U.S. South organized for relational power by building institutions for economic and political democracy in the 1930s and 1940s. In their organizing, Howard Kester and Claude Williams built relational power and institutions that fed the institutional ecology of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s. While it might be surprising to find a worthwhile analysis of power by social gospelers like Kester a…
Consumer Ethics in a Global Economy
The Theology of Liberalism
Eric Nelson claims that political liberals following in John Rawls's footsteps are unwittingly participating in the theodicy debate. Luck egalitarians, institutional egalitarians, and left libertarians all fail to offer convincing arguments for egalitarianism, in part due to the theological premises that are basic to—though unrecognized in—their arguments. Calls for egalitarian redistribution from political liberals are actually veiled Pelagian a…
Radical Democracy and Sacred Values
John Dewey envisioned the “American experiment” of democracy as a moral and ethical ideal, lived out in personal habits and “in our daily walk and conversation.”1 More than mere external political forms or institutional arrangements, Deweyan democracy is a “personal way of life.”2 Democratic political organizing is typically captured in campaigns focused on single issues, but broad-based community organizing (BBCO) is more closely aligned to Dewe…
Round Table Discussion
The Relational Meeting as a Political and Religious Practice
Broad-based community organizing (BBCO) is about organizing the relationships and values of working people for greater democratic power in their communities. The best organizers that I've known and witnessed ground their power building in their own and their fellow leaders' sacred values. It is the relational meeting—and specifically when organizers seek to agitate others—where a tension between values and power building can erupt, and where the …
Stories of Domination
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Lloyd, Black Dignity, 2.2 Ibid., 37.3 Ibid., 10.4 Ibid., 10.5 Ibid., 10.6 Ibid., 14.7 Ibid., 14.8 Ibid., 15.9 Ibid., 4.10 Ibid., 45.11 Ibid., 58.12 Ibid., 65.13 Ibid., 72.14 Ibid., 92.15 Ibid., 98.16 Ibid., 99.17 Ibid., 115.18 Lloyd, Religion of the Field Negro.19 Lloyd, Black Dignity, 125.20 As Annabel Brett and Phillip Pettit have shown, non-obstruction i…
Religion and Socialism
While religion and socialism are often seen at odds, there are many examples of religion and socialism engaging and supporting each other. This chapter explores the life and work of B.R. Ambedkar (Buddhism), Rev. George Washington Woodbey (Christianity), and Ali Shariati (Islam). Ambedkar was one of the architects of the Indian constitution and Woodbey, an often under appreciated figure in the Black Social Gospel, worked in close solidarity with …
Listening to the Spirit
Broad-based community organizing (BBCO) is perhaps the most successful and most widely used form of political participation supported by American religious institutions. As organizing groups become more religiously diverse, however, so do the conceptions of sacred value that ground organizing in the first place. It may seem that to hold something as sacred—human life, a land, or a natural resource, for example—only serves to further entrench us i…
Making Moral Citizens
Journal Article Making Moral Citizens: How Faith-Based Organizers Use Vocation for Public Action. By Jack Delehanty Get access Making Moral Citizens: How Faith-Based Organizers Use Vocation for Public Action. By Jack Delehanty. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2023. 173pp. $24.95 paper. Aaron Stauffer Aaron Stauffer Vanderbilt University Nashville, Tennessee, USA [email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7155-3495 Searc…
Power in the Social Gospel
This essay explores how social gospelers in the U.S. South organized for relational power by building institutions for economic and political democracy in the 1930s and 1940s. In their organizing, Howard Kester and Claude Williams built relational power and institutions that fed the institutional ecology of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s. While it might be surprising to find a worthwhile analysis of power by social gospelers like Kester a…
Under-Connected
Many pastors, faith leaders, and community organizers are isolated and under-connected to communities of praxis that can accompany them as they go about their social change work, helping them to ground their organizing in their faith lives. There is a crisis of leadership development and training. This paper argues for a rethinking of leadership development as grounded in conceptions of relational power, value-based organizing, and deep solidarit…
Political science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Politics (6 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (5 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (4 works) · Religious studies (4 works) · Theology (4 works) · Democracy (3 works)