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Issues that are drawn from, and bear on, disciplines including philosophy, law and legal studies, feminist studies, social and political theory, communication studies, critical theory and cultural studies.
This book focuses upon two themes: the definition of 'family' and the impact of the expansion of the concept of 'family' in law: and family fights over wills and estates - what recourse family members may have in challenging an estate. The first part, `The challenge of the "new family" for Law', considers the challenge both in the inter vivos and the postmortem contexts in the United States, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. A particular focus is upon the dramatic expansion of the definition of family from the traditional nuclear family consisting of a husband, wife and their mutual children to a definition that includes unmarried heterosexual and same sex couple...
This book brings the emerging fields of practical theology and theology of the arts into a dialogue beyond the bias of modern systematic and constructive theology. The authors draw upon postmodern, post-secular, feminist, liberation, and dialogical/dialectical philosophy and theology, and their critiques of the narrow modern emphases on reason and the scientific method, as the model for all knowledge. Such a practical theology of the arts focuses the work of theology on the actual practices that engage the arts in their various forms as the means of interpreting and understanding the nature of the communities and their members, as well as the mechanisms through which these communities engage...
This book explores the entanglements of gender and power in spiritual practices and analyzes strategies used by spiritual practitioners to attain what to social scientists might seem an impossible goal: creating spiritual communities without creating gendered hierarchies. What strategies do people within these networks use to attain gender equality and gendered empowerment? How do they try to protect and develop individual freedom? How do gender and power nevertheless play a role? The chapters in this book together and separately demonstrate that, in order to understand contemporary spirituality, the analytical lenses of gender and power are essential. Furthermore, they show that it is not p...
Winner of the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, 2009 This book argues that the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo sets up a support system for a "logic of domination" over others. It follows a genealogical method in examining how the concept of creation out of nothing materializes in the world throughout different periods in the history of the Christian West.
There are contrasting theories that deal with different aspects of human religiosity - some focus on religious beliefs, while others focus on religious actions, and still others on the origin of religious ideas. While these theories might share a similar focus, there is plenty of disagreement in the explanations they offer. This volume examines the diversity of new scientific theories of religion, by outlining the logical and causal relationships between these enterprises. Are they truly in competition, as their proponents sometimes suggest, or are they complementary and mutually illuminating accounts of religious belief and practice?
In The Entangled God, Kirk Wegter-McNelly addresses the age-old theological question of how God is present to the world by constructing a novel, scientifically informed account of the God–world relation. Drawing on recent scientific and philosophical work in "quantum entanglement," Wegter-McNelly develops the metaphor of "divine entanglement" to ground the relationality and freedom of physical process in the power of God’s relational being. The Entangled God makes a three-fold contribution to contemporary theological and religious discourse. First, it calls attention to the convergence of recent theology around the idea of "relationality." Second, it introduces theological and religious readers to the fascinating story of quantum entanglement. Third, it offers a robust "plerotic" alternative to kenotic accounts of God’s suffering presence in the world. Above all, this book takes us beyond the view of theology and science as adversaries and demonstrates the value of constructively relating these two important areas of intellectual investigation.
This collection considers how religious identity interplays with other forms and contexts of identity, specifically those related to sexual identity. It asks how these intersections are formed, negotiated and resisted across time and places, including the UK, Europe, North America, Australia, and the Global South. Questions around ‘queer’ engagements in same-sex marriages, civil partnerships and other practices (e.g. adoption) have created a number of provoking stances and policy provisions – but what remains unanswered is how people experience and situate themselves within sometimes competing, or ‘contradictory’, moments as ‘religious queers’ who may be tasked with ‘queering...
Aquinas and Radical Orthodoxy is a clearly written critique of John Milbank's and Catherine Pickstock's controversial portrayal of Aquinas as a forerunner of Radical Orthodoxy. It sketches the genesis of the movement, probes the nature and limits of its appeal to Aquinas, and investigates the range of key epistemological, metaphysical and dogmatic issues at stake.
The rising importance of community organizing in the US and more recently in Britain has coincided with the developing significance of social movements and identity politics, debates about citizenship, social capital, civil society, and religion in the public sphere. At a time when participation in formal political process and membership of faith groups have both declined dramatically, community organizing has provided a new opportunity for small community groups, marginalized urban communities, and people of faith to engage in effective political action through the developments of inter-faith and cross-cultural coalitions of groups. In spite of its renewed popularity, little critical attent...