The landscape of American religion is changing dramatically, Millennials are dropping out of church, and new experimental types of Christianity such as the Emerging Church are coming to the fore. But what is the future of religion in America, and what role will Millennials play in that? The results of three years of scholarly inquiry, this collection of essays looks at the Emerging Church and Millennial religious responses and seeks to define and explore both phenomena, always on the lookout for their intersection. Bringing together a diverse collection of scholars in theology, sociology, history and comparative religion, this book highlights the importance of both the Emerging Church and the Millennial generation's future for religion.
This collection brings together prominent thinkers from numerous disciplines to address the legacy of Gillian Rose for political theology today. Rose's work is notorious for its eclectic range, difficult style, and iconoclastic defiance of the conventions of postmodern critical theory. The theologians, religious scholars, ethicists, and theorists in this collection discuss Rose's relationship to such topics as the Frankfurt School, social theory, feminism, literature, law, Hegel, Kant, and psychoanalysis. They situate her work within the wider context of political theology, as it is understood in religious studies and continental philosophy. Though attentive to the theoretical issues raised by Rose's work, these essays are also engage the role that work may play in political action today, examining issues such as refugee immigration in Europe, the rise of nationalism, and anticapitalist political organizing. The collection is a vital contribution to the rising body of literature on Rose and her importance to political philosophy, ethics, and theology, but it will also serve as an important orienting guide for readers new to Rose's work and its demanding style.
The humanities offer insights into the highest (and lowest) capabilities of our own natures and, at their best, they function as prophetic champions of human dignity and as inspired celebrants of beauty. Envisioning God in the Humanities pays tribute to the career of Melissa Harl Sellew, a scholar and teacher who embodies the ideals of these academic disciplines. The collaboration of these essays attests to the potentialities for transcendence that emerge from rigorous and collective reflection on the texts, images, and ideas produced in ancient societies. Taking its cue from Professor Sellew's own distinguished scholarship, this collection of studies begins with analyses of the New Testament Gospels, then moves more broadly toward the religious life of the ancient world as attested both in literature and materiality, among Jews and Christians, Greeks and Romans. Just as Sellew has done throughout her career, so this volume invites us into to the joy of exploring distant societies and, in so doing, into the fuller discovery of one's own self.
This volume gathers together twelve essays on the doctrine of the Trinity. It includes the work of systematic theologians, analytic theologians, and biblical scholars who address a range of issues concerning the Christian doctrine of God. Contributors include Jeremy Begbie, Julie Canlis, Douglas Campbell, William Hasker, and Christoph Schwobel. The volume also includes a new essay written by the late Robert W. Jenson shortly before his death.
The trailers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens made a strong impression on fans. Many were excited by what they saw as a return to the spirit of George Lucas's 1977 creation. Others–including several white supremacy groups–were upset and offended by key differences, most notably the shift away from a blond, blue-eyed, male protagonist. When the film was finally released, reactions similarly seemed to hinge on whether or not The Force Awakens renewed the «mythic» aspects of the original trilogy in ways that fans approved of. The Myth Awakens examines the religious implications of this phenomenon, considering the ways in which myth can function to reinforce «traditional» social and political values. In their analyses the authors of this book reflect on fan responses in relation to various elements of (and changes to) the Star Wars canon–including toys, video games, and novels, as well as several of the films. They do so using a variety of critical tools, drawing from studies of gender, race, psychology, politics, authority, music, ritual, and memory.
In light of the numerous challenges posed by globalization, living together as humanity on one planet needs to be reinvented in the twenty-first century. To create a new, peaceful, just, and sustainable world order is vital to the survival of us all. In this regard, humankind will have to expand the limited scope of its moral imagination beyond the borders of family, tribe, class, religion, nation, and culture. Will the cultivation of compassion, as scholars like Martha Nussbaum and Karen Armstrong, and religious leaders like the Dalai Lama maintain, contribute to a more just world? A global movement to cultivate and extend compassion beyond the immediate circle of concern may indeed find inspiration from many different religious traditions.
The question at the heart of this book is whether the Christian legacy provides us with sources of moral imagination needed to guide us into the global era. Can the Christian practice of faith contribute to a more compassionate world? If so, how? And is it true that compassion is what we need, or do we need something else (justice, for example)? In Considering Compassion, colleagues from different theological disciplines at Stellenbosch, South Africa, and Groningen, Netherlands, take up these challenging questions from a variety of interdisciplinary angles.
Evangelical discourse on the role of arts in the church can be radioactive, and the twenty-one contributors to this book walk right into the «hot zone» to pick up on twenty contentious questions. The volume is a series of written dialogues, each one keyed to a cranky question, one that a skeptic might raise (hence the title). Herein, the gainsayers are taken seriously and given their voice. They even find support in some of the contributors' comments. But apologists for greater use of arts and artists in the church have their say, and things can get edgy.
Topics range from the biblically august (the Second Commandment; the regulative principle; Great Commission priorities) to the prudential (expense; «bohemian» influence; weaker brothers) to the programmatic (Christmas festivities; committee makeup). Some of the parties to the discussion are church staffers (pastors and ministers of music); some are professors; several are doctoral students; one is a college student; another, a gallery owner; yet another, a denominational ethicist; and there's a Canadian and a Korean in the mix. The collection of speakers and opinions is illuminating and bracing, and the fruit of their thinking makes for great reading and discussion.
We human beings are mortal. Our lives in this world inevitably terminate in death. This reality, however, need not cause us to despair, since Jesus Christ has gone before us into the far country of death, giving us hope that this defining feature of our earthly lives is not the end, but instead is an entrance into Christ's presence and a path to the fullness of the Spirit's new creation in which God will be all in all. Christian Dying: Witnesses from the Tradition is a collection of essays containing reflections from Christian authors–whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant–on the meaning and appropriation of Christian hope in the face of death in conversation with a number of great voices from the Christian tradition.
CONTRIBUTORS: Michel Rene Barnes, John C. Cavadini, Marc Cortez, Brian E. Daley, S.J., Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Matthew Levering, David Luy, Mark McIntosh, Gilbert Meilaender, Cyril O'Regan, Marcus Plested, Brent Waters.
Irish Anglican clergymen played an important role in the creation of a nineteenth-century «Greater Ireland,» a term denoting a diasporic movement in which the Irish transformed into a global people, actively participating in British imperial expansion and colonial nation building. These essays address the formative influences and circumstances that informed the mental world and disposition of Irish Anglicans, particularly clergy who were graduates of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), an institution pivotal in the formation of attitudes among the Irish Anglican elite. TCD was the gathering point for Anglicans of different backgrounds, and as such acted as a great leveler and formative center where laity and aspirant clergy were educated together under a common curriculum. In common with the Irish as a whole, TCD graduate clergy exerted an influence on colonial life in the religious, cultural, intellectual, and political spheres out of all proportion to their numbers. Faced with its dismantling in the old world, adherents of the Church of Ireland availed of opportunities for its reconstruction in the new and in the process bequeathed an important legacy in the colonial church.
We live in an ecological age. Science in the last few hundred years has given us a picture of nature as blind to the future and mechanical in its workings, even while ecology and physics have made us aware of our interconnectedness and dependency upon the web of life. As we witness a possible sixth great mass-extinction, there is increasing awareness too of the fragility of life on this planet. In such a context, what is the nature of Christian hope? St Paul declares that all of creation «will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.» How are we to imagine this «freedom» when death and decay are essential to biological life as we currently experience it, and when the scientific predictions for life are bleak at best? This book explores these questions, reflecting on how our traditions shape our imagination of the future, and considering how a theology of hope may sustain Christians engaged in conservation initiatives. The essays in this volume are partly in dialogue with the ground-breaking work of Celia Deane-Drummond, and are set in the context of global and local (Aotearoa New Zealand) ecological challenges.