9781501750755-1501750755-Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America

Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America

ISBN-13: 9781501750755
ISBN-10: 1501750755
Author: Theresa Keeley
Publication date: 2020
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Format: Hardcover 352 pages
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ISBN-13: 9781501750755
ISBN-10: 1501750755
Author: Theresa Keeley
Publication date: 2020
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Format: Hardcover 352 pages

Summary

Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America (ISBN-13: 9781501750755 and ISBN-10: 1501750755), written by authors Theresa Keeley, was published by Cornell University Press in 2020. With an overall rating of 3.7 stars, it's a notable title among other Christian Books & Bibles books. You can easily purchase or rent Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America (Hardcover) from BooksRun, along with many other new and used Christian Books & Bibles books and textbooks. And, if you're looking to sell your copy, our current buyback offer is $1.67.

Description

In Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns, Theresa Keeley analyzes the role of intra-Catholic conflict within the framework of U.S. foreign policy formulation and execution during the Reagan administration. She challenges the preponderance of scholarship on the administration that stresses the influence of evangelical Protestants on foreign policy toward Latin America. Especially in the case of U.S. engagement in El Salvador and Nicaragua, Keeley argues, the bitter debate between U.S. and Central American Catholics over the direction of the Catholic Church shaped President Reagan's foreign policy.

The flash point for these intra-Catholic disputes was the December 1980 political murder of four American Catholic missionaries in El Salvador. Liberal Catholics described nuns and priests in Central America who worked to combat structural inequality as human rights advocates living out the Gospel's spirit. Conservative Catholics saw them as agents of class conflict who furthered the so-called Gospel according to Karl Marx. The debate was an old one among Catholics, but, as Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns contends, it intensified as conservative, anticommunist Catholics played instrumental roles in crafting U.S. policy to fund the Salvadoran government and the Nicaraguan Contras.

Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns describes the religious actors as human rights advocates and, against prevailing understandings of the fundamentally secular activism related to human rights, highlights religion-inspired activism during the Cold War. In charting the rightward development of American Catholicism, Keeley provides a new chapter in the history of U.S. diplomacy and shows how domestic issues such as contraception and abortion joined with foreign policy matters to shift Catholic laity toward Republican principles at home and abroad.

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