On Being Human Religiously Selected Essays In Religion And Society

Adams speaks passionately and lucidly on religion's ties to everyday life.

Publisher Description

The phenomenological method in the study of religions has provided the linchpin supporting the argument that Religious Studies constitutes an academic discipline in its own right and thus that it is irreducible either to theology or to the social sciences. This book examines the figures whom the author regards as having been most influential in creating a phenomenology of religion. Background factors drawn from philosophy, theology and the social sciences are traced before examining the thinking of scholars within the Dutch, British and North American 'schools' of religious phenomenology.

Endorsements: Wipf and Stock is to be congratulated for making Beverly Wildung Harrison's Our Right to Choose newly available. Recognized as a classic in its field from its publication in 1983, Our Right to Choose is as compelling--and needed--today as it was then. - Nyla Rasmussen, RN, Maternal Child Health Larry Rasmussen, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics, Union Theological Seminary, New York City ""This historic book is as incisive, pertinent, timely and morally compelling as it was twenty-eight years ago. Harrison has both ethical purchase and feminist vision on 'The Issue of Our Age.' Read it, learn, be convicted and act!"" - Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary ""Decades after its initial publication, Beverly Wildung Harrison's sex-positive, justice and social welfare affirming study of abortion remains a unique and trailblazing contribution to the field of Christian ethics. From the treatment of women's procreation in the history of Western Christianity to the rhetoric of 1970s abortion politics, she offers meticulous critiques and constructive feminist Christian ideas sorely needed in today's debates about abortion rights."" Traci C. West, author of Disruptive Christian Ethics: When Racism and Women's Lives Matter About the Contributor(s): Two years after Our Right to Choose appeared in 1983, the world of Christian ethics was again impacted by Beverly Wildung Harrison's second groundbreaking book, Making the Connections: Essays in Feminist Social Ethics, edited by Carol S. Robb (Beacon: 1985). Over the next fifteen years, until retiring in 1999 as the Carolyn Williams Beaird Professor of Christian Ethics at New York's Union Theological Seminary, Harrison continued to teach and shape a methodology in feminist social ethics which attracted scores of graduate students, both men and women, who currently occupy professorships in ethics throughout the United States and elsewhere in the world. Her former students also include pastors in the United States and Europe and around the globe in countries as diverse as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Kenya, and Korea. Since her retirement, Beverly Harrison has continued to consult with former and current graduate students. In 2004, six of her former students worked with Harrison in publishing a commentary on her methodology, Justice in the Making: Feminist Social Ethics (Westminster/John Knox Press). Since 1999, Beverly Harrison has lived in an intentional community in the mountains of western North Carolina where, along with her longtime companion Carter Heyward and several other friends, she continues to work for justice in every venue possible, including active involvement in the Democratic Party and in movements for racial, economic, sexual, and gender justice. She has been particularly devoted to pro-choice work and LGBT justice efforts in the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches and in society at large. Harrison delights in the companionship of several dogs, cats, and horses!

The nature and role of positive law has largely been neglected in recent Protestant theology and social ethics. Modern Protestantism and Positive Law introduces and critically summarizes a tradition in Continental Protestant thought about human law, drawing on writings of Barth, Brunner, Ellul, Thielicke, Wolf, Pannenberg, Huber, and Kreβ, many of which have not been translated into English. The book argues that law is an essential political and social institution within developed societies, one that is normative and dependent on an encompassing vision of justice but that also necessarily reflects the contemporary pluralism of those societies. Modern Protestantism and Positive Law argues that theological and ethical perspectives on positive law developed by Protestant thinkers have a place in reflection on positive law, provided they are conceived and expressed in a manner appropriately respectful of the diversity of contemporary opinion regarding the expression of religious perspectives in the public arena.

In The Spirit in Public Theology, Bacote shows how Dutch politician and church leader Abraham Kuyper lived a thoroughly Christian life, and explains why Christians need to follow Kuyper by taking their faith into the public sphere. Identifying the characteristics of a true Christian worldview, Bacote demonstrates the need for a public theology that stresses engagement between the church and the world. The Spirit in Public Theology should be required reading for pastors, students, and all Christians who want to take their faith beyond the four walls of the Church.