Church And World A Theology Of Engagement

This ground-breaking book challenges readers to rethink the dividebetween liberal and orthodox approaches which characterisesChristianity today. Provides an alternative to the liberal / orthodox divide incontemporary Christianity. Defends Christianity’s engagement with non-Christiantraditions. Includes important discussion of theological method. Illustrated with case studies involving human rights,interfaith tolerance, economics, and ethics.

Offers many helpful ways to theologize about culture with missional intent. Public Theology in Cultural Engagement offers foundational and programmatic essays exploring helpful ways to theologize about culture with missional intent. The book opens with three chapters taking steps towards developing a general theology of culture. Part two explores the contribution of key biblical themes to a theology of culture - creation, law, election, Christology, and redemption. The final section considers theological proposals for engagement with culture past and present with contemporary reflections on nationalism and on drug culture. Contributors include Colin Gunton, Robert Jenson, Stephen Holmes, Christoph Schwobel, Colin Greene, Luke Bretherton, and Brian Horne.

This collection of essays examines the relationship between theology, church, state, politics and civil society.

Though called to partner in God’s holy work of transformation, the church has often responded with resignation rather than hope in the face of a broken, hurting, and violent world. In Authentic Engagement, Dieumeme and Mirlenda Noëlliste remind us that the church was never meant to content itself with faith in the hereafter. However, to fulfill its God-given role in society, it must know what and whose it is, and situate itself accordingly. The authors explore questions of ecclesiology and establish the theological foundations for social engagement as they examine what it means to be a people defined by relationship with the triune God. Arguing that the church has a mandate to see the world transformed, they suggest a model of engagement that would empower believers to act as agents of transformation in all realms of society, while remaining deeply rooted in their calling as ambassadors of a heavenly kingdom. This book brings hope and conviction in equal measures as it reawakens the church to a consciousness of its identity, its calling, and its powerful potential to bring change in the here and now.

How should the church relate to the public sphere? The body politic? The state? The economic order? The natural world? For too many Christians and churches, being "in the world but not of it" has resulted in either a theocratic impulse to seize the reins of secular power or a quietistic retreat from the world and its material concerns. The Church in the Public shows how this dualism has corrupted the church's social witness and allowed neoliberal and neocolonial ideas to assert control of public and political life. Dualism has rendered the church not only indifferent to but also complicitous with the state's bio- and power-politics. Because of this outdated framework of the church's political theology, the church has been reluctant to engage in challenging structural and systemic injustice in this world. But rather than counseling despair or making a case for Christendom, Ilsup Ahn argues for a public church, one that collaborates and cooperates with other public actors and entities in the promotion of a just social order. The book traces this "third way" back to the apostolic age and offers practical approaches for enacting it today. Central to this vision is the analogy of the rhizome--that strange, unique form of life that lives underground, grows horizontally, and is capable of regeneration. The Church in the Public draws on this image to develop a political theology for engaging the world, identifying with the oppressed, and binding up the broken.

Drawing on the writings of German pastor-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jennifer M. McBride constructs a groundbreaking theology of public witness for Protestant church communities in the United States. In contrast to the triumphal manner in which many Protestants have engaged the public sphere, The Church for the World shows how the church can offer a nontriumphal witness to the lordship of Christ through repentant activity in public life. After investigating current Christian conceptions of witness in the United States, McBride offers a new theology for repentance as public witness, based on Bonhoeffer's thought concerning Christ, the world, and the church. McBride takes up Bonhoeffer's proposal that repentance may be reinterpreted "non-religiously," expanding and challenging common understandings of the concept. Finally, she examines two church communities that exemplify ecclesial commitments and practices rooted in confession of sin and repentance. Through these communities she demonstrates that confession and repentance may be embodied in various ways yet also discerns distinguishing characteristics of a redemptive public witness. The Church for the World offers important insights about Christian particularity and public engagement in a pluralistic society as it provides a theological foundation for public witness that is simultaneously bold and humble: when its mode of being in the world is confession of sin unto repentance, the church demonstrates Christ's redemptive work and becomes a vehicle of concrete redemption.

Tilling the Church is a theology for the pilgrim church. In this book, Richard Lennan shows how the ecclesial community looks toward the fullness of God’s reign but lives within the flux of history, the site of its relationship to the trinitarian God. In this way, God’s grace “tills” the church, constantly refreshing the tradition of faith and prompting the discipleship that embodies the gospel. Tilling the Church explores the possibilities for a more faithful, just, and creative church, one responsive to the movement of grace. Fruitful engagement with grace requires the church’s conversion, the ongoing formation of a community whose words and actions reflect the hope that grace engenders.