Social Constructionism And Theology Electronic Resource

Practical theology starts its theological reflections from practices, aims at analyzing empirically practices, and is directed towards the transformation of these practices. From this practice-orientation there is a strong connection between practical theology and the social sciences. Social constructionism is a growing theory within the social sciences. This volume offers a theological and social scientific reflection on this emerging concept of social constructionism.

This work suggests that it is possible to maintain that Paul had a lively interest in the salvation of the individual, without having to revert to traditional Lutheran interpretations of the text. It focuses on three important texts in Romans.

Christianity regards teaching as one of the most foundational and critically sustaining ministries of the Church. As a result, Christian education remains one of the largest and oldest continuously functioning educational systems in the world, comprising both formal day schools and higher education institutions as well as informal church study groups and parachurch ministries in more than 140 countries. In The Encyclopedia of Christian Education, contributors explore the many facets of Christian education in terms of its impact on curriculum, literacy, teacher training, outcomes, and professional standards. This encyclopedia is the first reference work devoted exclusively to chronicling the unique history of Christian education across the globe, illustrating how Christian educators pioneered such educational institutions and reforms as universal literacy, home schooling, Sunday schools, women’s education, graded schools, compulsory education of the deaf and blind, and kindergarten. With an editorial advisory board of more than 30 distinguished scholars and five consulting editors, TheEncyclopedia of Christian Education contains more than 1,200 entries by 400 contributors from 75 countries. These volumes covers a vast range of topics from Christian education: History spanning from the church’s founding through the Middle Ages to the modern day Denominational and institutional profiles Intellectual traditions in Christian education Biblical and theological frameworks, curricula, missions, adolescent and higher education, theological training, and Christian pedagogy Biographies of distinguished Christian educators This work is ideal for scholars of both the history of Christianity and education, as well as researchers and students of contemporary Christianity and modern religious education.

This reader introduces a number of important viewpoints central to social constructionism and charts the development of social constructionist thought.

George Santayana (1862-1952) of Spanish descent, and generally claimed to be in the canon of American philosophers, was substantially influenced by his Roman Catholic origins in his philosophical disposition toward the value of tradition, religious symbols and dogma. His philosophical project sustained a respectful attitude toward the spiritual value of orthodox religion while the thrust of his philosophy was naturalistic and materialistic throughout. There is a perception by some scholars that Santayana’s philosophy evolved from a humanistic perspective to a more spiritual one in his later years. It is the position of this thesis that his philosophy, at the “core” depicting a harmonious striving toward individual happiness, remained essentially consistent from his earliest publication of Interpretations of Poetry and Religion and The Life of Reason through his later works of Scepticism and Animal Faith, Realms of Being, Dominations and Powers and The Idea of Christ in the Gospels. Santayana’s philosophical approach is both phenomenological and social constructionist in its methodology, significantly preempting the methodology of social constructionist theology and a post-modern interpretation of religion. His idiosyncratic phenomenological approach is compared with a “benchmark” methodology of Edmund Husserl, the generally accepted founder of the phenomenological method. There are also important similarities between Santayana’s phenomenological approach and those of Charles Sanders Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead. The basis for the comparison of the phenomenological methodology of Santayana and Husserl is their mutually similar fundamental theory of intuited essence. Santayana’s contribution to religious studies is not only philosophical but also theological where he has utilized Christian theological language in transposing and interpolating his philosophy of religion to the Christian drama of the salvational Christ. Santayana’s essay “Ultimate Religion” reflects his perspective of a disillusioned but still spiritual vision incorporating the piety, discipline, and spirituality; of a life of reason. Within the framework of this “model” Santayana’s philosophy of religion is developed and explored. Finally, the relevance of Santayana’s philosophy of religion to contemporary religious studies and selected religious issues is addressed with a delineation and discussion of some important aspects of his philosophical vision.

A Scientific Theology is a groundbreaking work of systematic theology in three volumes: Nature, Reality and Theory. Now available as a three volume set.

A watershed event in the field of sociology, this text introduced “a major breakthrough in the sociology of knowledge and sociological theory generally” (George Simpson, American Sociological Review). In this seminal book, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann examine how knowledge forms and how it is preserved and altered within a society. Unlike earlier theorists and philosophers, Berger and Luckmann go beyond intellectual history and focus on commonsense, everyday knowledge—the proverbs, morals, values, and beliefs shared among ordinary people. When first published in 1966, this systematic, theoretical treatise introduced the term social construction,effectively creating a new thought and transforming Western philosophy.

In present-day pluralistic and individualized societies, the question of how individuals appropriate religious traditions has become particularly relevant. In this volume, psychologists, anthropologists, and historians examine the presence of religious voices in narrative constructions of the self. The focus is on the multiple ways religious stories and practices feature in self-narratives about major life transitions. The contributions explore the ways in which such voices inform the accommodation and interpretation of these transitions. In addition to being inspired by Dan McAdams’ approach to life stories as ‘personal myths’ that inform us about the quests of individuals for a satisfactory balance between agency and communion, most of the contributors have found the theory of ‘the dialogical self’ developed by Hubert Hermans particularly useful. Thus the contributions explore the ways in which identity formation is shaped by internal dialogues between personal and collective voices in the context of the specific constellations of power in which these voices are embedded. The volume is divided into three parts addressing theoretical and methodological considerations, religious resources in narratives on life transitions, and religious positioning in diaspora.