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For years, people have asked Gail Song Bantum and Brian Bantum to reveal the secret to their marriage as a multiracial Christian couple, each with a high-profile ministry calling. This book reveals the lessons, mistakes, and principles that have helped the Bantums navigate race, family history, and gender dynamics in their twenty-plus years of marriage, while inspiring readers to pursue mutual flourishing in their marriages and relationships. Marriage is about more than constant bliss or unending sacrifice, say the Bantums. It's about exploring your own story, seeing the other for who they are (even as they change), and being flexible in discovering how those differences and stories come ali...
Brian Bantum says that race is not merely an intellectual category or a biological fact. Much like the incarnation, it is a Òword made flesh,Ó the confluence of various powers that allow some to organize and dominate the lives of others. In this way racism is a deeply theological problem, one that is central to the Christian story and one that plays out daily in the United States and throughout the world. In The Death of Race, Bantum argues that our attempts to heal racism will not succeed until we address what gives rise to racism in the first place: a fallen understanding of our bodies that sees difference as something to resist, defeat, or subdue. Therefore, he examines the question of race, but through the lens of our bodies and what our bodies mean in the midst of a complicated, racialized world, one that perpetually dehumanizes dark bodies, thereby rendering all of us less than God's intention.
The theological attempts to understand Christ's body have either focused on "philosophical" claims about Jesus' identity or on "contextual" rebuttals--on a culturally transcendent, disembodied Jesus of the creeds or on a Jesus of color who rescues and saves a particular people because of embodied particularity. But neither of these two attempts has accounted for the world as it is, a world of mixed race, of hybridity, of cultural and racial intermixing. By not understanding the true theological problem, that we live in a mulatto world, the right question has not been posed: How can Christ save this mixed world? The answer, Brian Bantum shows, is in the mulattoness of Jesus' own body, which i...
How do we remain faithful to and work within a Christian church that has been historically complicit in racism and that still exhibits racist actions in its communal life? While there have been numerous recent accounts addressing why the Christian church of the West is marked by racism and whiteness, there has been less attention given to how we reconcile the church's racial inequities with the belief that God works through God's people. In Bonhoeffer and the Racialized Church, Ross Halbach seeks to reframe the question within Dietrich Bonhoeffer's conception of the ultimate and penultimate. Bonhoeffer's acute sense of God's continual speaking offers a prophetic challenge to the church: inst...
J. Kameron Carter argues that black theology's intellectual impoverishment in the Church and the academy is the result of its theologically shaky presuppositions, which are based largely on liberal Protestant convictions, and he critiques the work of such noted scholars as Albert Raboteau, Charles Long and James Cone.
Divine Variations offers a new account of the development of scientific ideas about race. Focusing on the production of scientific knowledge over the last three centuries, Terence Keel uncovers the persistent links between pre-modern Christian thought and contemporary scientific perceptions of human difference. He argues that, instead of a rupture between religion and modern biology on the question of human origins, modern scientific theories of race are, in fact, an extension of Christian intellectual history. Keel's study draws on ancient and early modern theological texts and biblical commentaries, works in Christian natural philosophy, seminal studies in ethnology and early social scienc...
Developing out of a series of public lectures given to a large audience of non-theologians, this is one of the most attractive introductions to theology which has appeared so far. Perhaps, as Dorothee Soelle points out, in fact, "introduction" is not the right word, for this is above all an invitation to share her enthusiasm for theology, her delight in the beauty and the power of religious and theological language and the themes it expresses. The book covers all the major areas of modern theology. After discussing the nature of systematic theology and comparing orthodox, liberal, and radical approaches, it looks at the use of the Bible in theology. Then follow chapters on creation, sin, feminist liberation theology, the understanding of grace, Black theology, Jesus, cross and resurrection, the kingdom of God and the church, the theology of peace, the end of theism, and the question of God. Each chapter is followed by a bibliography, and Dorothee Soelle, who is familiar with theology on both sides of the Atlantic, has herself revised these for the English-language edition.
This volume puts Barth and liberation theologies in critical and constructive conversation. With incisive essays from a range of noted scholars, it forges new connections between Barth's expansive corpus and the multifaceted world of Christian liberation theology. It shows how Barth and liberation theologians can help us to make sense of – and perhaps even to respond to – some of the most pressing issues of our day: race and racism in the United States; changing understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality; the ongoing degradation of the ecosphere; the relationship between faith, theological reflection, and the arts; the challenge of decolonizing Christian thought; and ecclesial and political life in the Global South.
We are constantly engaged in processing data and sensory inputs all around us, even when we are not conscious of the many neural pathways our minds are traveling. So taking a step back to ponder the dimensions and practices of a particular way of thinking is a challenge. Even more important, however, is cultivating the habits of mind necessary in a life of ministry. This book, therefore, will grapple with the particular ways that the theological disciplines invite students to think but also the ways in which thinking theologically shapes a student’s sense of self and his or her role in a wider community of belief and thought. Thinking theologically is not just a cerebral matter; thinking theologically invokes an embodied set of practices and values that shape individuals and communities alike. Thinking theologically demands both intellect and emotion, logic and compassion, mind and body. In fact, this book—as part of the Foundations for Learning series—will contend that these binaries are actually integrated wholes, not mutually exclusive options.
Being a pastor is a complicated calling. Pastors are often pulled in multiple directions and must "become all things to all people" (1 Cor. 9:22). What does the New Testament say (or not say) about the pastoral calling? And what can we learn about it from the apostle Paul? According to popular New Testament scholar Scot McKnight, pastoring must begin first and foremost with spiritual formation, which plays a vital role in the life and ministry of the pastor. As leaders, pastors both create and nurture culture in a church. The biblical vision for that culture is Christoformity, or Christlikeness. Grounding pastoral ministry in the pastoral praxis of the apostle Paul, McKnight shows that nurturing Christoformity was at the heart of the Pauline mission. The pastor's central calling, then, is to mediate Christ in everything. McKnight explores seven dimensions that illustrate this concept--friendship, siblings, generosity, storytelling, witness, subverting the world, and wisdom--as he calls pastors to be conformed to Christ and to nurture a culture of Christoformity in their churches.