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In the early 1880s, proponents of what came to be called “the social gospel” founded what is now known as social ethics. This ambitious and magisterial book describes the tradition of social ethics: one that began with the distinctly modern idea that Christianity has a social-ethical mission to transform the structures of society in the direction of social justice. Charts the story of social ethics - the idea that Christianity has a social-ethical mission to transform society - from its roots in the nineteenth century through to the present day Discusses and analyzes how different traditions of social ethics evolved in the realms of the academy, church, and general public Looks at the wide variety of individuals who have been prominent exponents of social ethics from academics and self-styled “public intellectuals” through to pastors and activists Set to become the definitive reference guide to the history and development of social ethics Recipient of a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2009 award
This book is a primary resource in the new and growing field of Christian Ethnography. In response to a variety of critical intellectual currents (post-colonial, post-modern, and post-liberal), scholars in Christian theology and ethics are increasingly taking up the tools of ethnography as a means to ask fundamental moral questions and to make more compelling and credible moral claims. Privileging particularity, rather than the more traditional effort to achieve universal or at least generalizable norms in making claims regarding the Christian life, echoes the most fundamental insight of the Christian tradition - that God is known most fully in Jesus of Nazareth. Echoing this 'scandal of particularity' at the heart of the Christian tradition, theologians and ethicists involved in ethnographic research draw on the particular to seek out answers to core questions of their discipline: who God is and how we become the people we are, how to conceptualize moral agency in relation to God and the world, and how to flesh out the content of conceptual categories such as justice that help direct us in our daily decisions and guiding institutions.
Ought we conceive of theological ethics as an activity that draws from a community's vision of human goodness and that has implications for the kind of person each of us is to be? Or, can students of the discipline map the ethical implications of what Christians confess about God, themselves, and the world while remaining indifferent to these claims? Habituated by modern moral theories such as consequentialism and deontology, Mark Ryan argues, we too often assume that Christian ethics makes no claim on the character of its students and teachers. It is rather like yet another department store within the shopping mall of ideas and ideologies to which advanced education provides access. By argu...
Stanley Hauerwas is a distinctive and controversial theologian. His work demands attention in every debate on theological ethics today. His project is to transform Christian ethics from the fate of the individual in crisis to the destiny of the Church in its faithfulness. In this critical evaluation of Hauerwas' work, Samuel Wells sets out the drama and debate of Hauerwas' new agenda. He agrees that the Christian story is at the heart of the Church's practice. Yet he goes beyond Hauerwas. He draws attention to the neglect, in narrative ethics, of the way the Church's story ends. Wells intends that Christians finally see their lives in the context, not of blind fate, but of divine destiny.
How can the church navigate the challenges of our secular age? In The Church in a Secular Age, Norwegian and Pentecostal scholar Silje Kvamme Bjørndal takes on three dynamic thinkers, each in their own way, in search for insights to this question. Philosopher Charles Taylor offers the backdrop for the conversation, as Bjørndal carefully sifts out some of his most central tenets for understanding our secular age. Bjørndal then turns to the theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas and critically engages his notion of the church as a community set apart from our secular age. By bringing several of Hauerwas’s interlocutors into the conversation, Bjørndal manages to bring out both the acute...
This book marks the first detailed engagement with the work of Stanley Hauerwas in a British context.An important group of theologians including Colin Gunton, Duncan Forrester, Gerard Loughlin, Ann Loades, Enda McDonagh, Nigel Biggar, Linda Woodhead, John Milbank and Stephen Sykes considers issues prominent in Hauerwas' work such as war and pacifism, urban deprivation, mental health, gender, abortion, the Church and cinema, and Church politics.The collection concludes with a response from Hauerwas himself.
Theological Reflections: Methods, offers a comprehensive collection of models of theological reflection. By bringing this diverse collection together in one place, the editors create a unique reference work that allows a clear and visible contrast and comparison as each model is treated formally and in a standard format. Throughout each chapter the distinguishing features of the model are examined, the geneology and origins are discussed, worked examples of the model applied to contemporary theology are provided, and critical commentary, future trends and exercises and questions are provided. Now firmly established as an essential text on theological reflection, this new edition has been revised and updated with a new introduction, updated examples, and refreshed bibliographies
Social postmodernism and systematic theology can be considered the new pair in some of the most creative discussions on the future of theological method on a global scale. Both in the academy and in the public square, as well as in the manifold local and pastoral moments of ministry and community social activism, the social, the postmodern, and the theological intermingle in engaging and border-crossing ways. The Community of the Weak presents a new kind of jazzy fundamental theology with a postmodern touch, using jazz as a metaphor, writing ethnographically messy texts out of the personal windows of lived experiences, combining fragments of autobiography with theological reconstruction. A comparative perspective on North American and European developments in contemporary systematic theology serves as a hermeneutical horizon to juxtapose two continents in their very different contexts. The author proposes a systematic and fundamental theology that is more jazzy, global, and narrative, deeply embedded in pastoral ministry to tell its postmodern story.
A solid and suggestive foundation for the future of ethnic-racial minority biblical criticism This volume, edited by Tat-siong Benny Liew and Fernando F. Segovia, expands the work begun in They Were All Together in One Place? Toward Minority Biblical Criticism (2009) by focusing on specific texts for scholarly engagement and exchange. Essays by scholars of racial/ethnic minoritized criticism of the Bible highlight the various factors and dynamics at play in the formation of power relations within and through four biblical texts: two from the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 21 and 1 Kings 12) and two from the New Testament (John 4 and Revelation 18). Contributors include Ahida Calderón Pilarski, Ronald Charles, Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, Lynne St. Clair Darden, Steed Vernyl Davidson, Mary F. Foskett, Jione Havea, Tat-siong Benny Liew, Roberto Mata, Henry W. Morisada Rietz, Raj Nadella, Miranda N. Pillay, David Arthur Sánchez, Timothy J. Sandoval, Fernando F. Segovia, Mitzi J. Smith, Angeline M. G. Song, Linzie M. Treadway, Nasili Vaka’uta, Demetrius K. Williams, and Gale A. Yee. Each essay expands our understandings of minoritization from a global perspective.
Christianity without an omnipotent god, without a divine savior, without an afterlife? In this bold and hopeful book, theologian Daniel C. Maguire writes that traditional, supernatural aspects of Christianity can be comforting, but are increasingly questionable. A century of scholarly research has not been supportive of the dogmatic triad of personal god, incarnate savior, and life after death. Demonstrating that these beliefs have questionable roots in historical traditions, Maguire argues for a return to that brilliant and revolutionary moral epic of the Hebrew and Christian Bible. Rescued from god, Christianity can offer a realistic global ethic to heal a planet sinking under the effects of our ungrateful mismanagement.