Религия: прочее
Различные книги в жанре Религия: прочееLiving Devotions
Living Devotions explores how a particular community has creatively negotiated its religious bonds of connection in the context of immigration. These matters cannot be studied in the abstract. Religious practice is not something separate from the economic, cultural, and psychological dimensions of life, but rather something integral, which shapes and is being shaped by all of these other realities. The author examines these dynamics through an ethnographic case study of the living devotions of a group of Italian Catholic immigrants to San Pedro, California. The narrative describes how the group's historical experiences of immigration and fishing find expression in their particular forms of prayer, art, artifacts, and food. The healing and transformative power of these shared religious practices is explored.
As contemporary theologians, pastors, and congregations seek to welcome and care for immigrants and other strangers in a shifting social landscape, we need ways to engage in care-full and attentive relationships. The ethnographic method employed here suggests a way to lift up the voices of ordinary people, allowing them to tell their own stories, while piecing together emerging bits of theological wisdom and compelling care practices. While the particular insights of any community are situated and specific, theological reflection in one context can animate a broader discussion of transformative pastoral theology and practice.
The Trinitarian Self
The Trinitarian Self argues that the insights of three key authors–Soren Kierkegaard, Eric Voegelin, and Rene Girard–can be synthesized to produce a Trinitarian theological anthropology. Their reflections on the deep roots of human behavior illuminate three structural dimensions of human existence: the temporal trajectory of selfhood, the vertical axis (God and nature), and the horizontal plane of cultural formation. An understanding of these dimensions and how they interrelate proves very fruitful in making sense of a wide variety of pathological forms of behavior that human beings have engaged in during the modern era. This work links together in thought-provoking ways various realms of thought, such as Trinitarian theology, a plea for a «New Copernican Revolution» that will result in a broadly held psychological understanding of violence, the ethics of war and peace, atonement theologies, and critical commentaries on terrorism and the war on terror. The interplay between these topics will likely prove very stimulating to a wide variety of readers.
Coram Deo
"In order to adequately address the issues of atonement and christology, we must understand how it is that we think about the relationship between God and the human being. The way in which we understand and interpret the life and death of Jesus and his role within that relationship then impacts our theology of the sacraments, particularly the eucharist. "Further, the questions continue to confront and be confronted by my inescapable identity as a Lutheran Christian. I use the term 'inescapable' because I find myself working from and with theologies and theologians that are unabashedly critical of patriarchal religious doctrine and paternal theological construction, yet I cannot be convinced that the tradition which formed me is irretrievable or irrelevant. . . . "I am seeking to use Luther as one of my sources, but I am working to reinterpret him and offer a more adequate constructive alternative that embodies what is useable in his tradition. I find the potential for a liberating message within Christian theology, and I find a critical theological resource in Luther." –from the Introduction
From the Margins
Recognized as a leading interpreter of major movements in American Christianity such as Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, and the Holiness movement, Donald W. Dayton has produced a body of work spanning four decades and diverse areas of inquiry. In From the Margins, friends and colleagues respond to major essays by Dayton (several published here for the first time) so as to celebrate and reflect on this diverse and rich body of work. The essays highlight the breadth of Dayton's contribution while also revealing a methodological core. The latter could be described as Dayton's deconstructive reading of standard scholarly narratives in order to short-circuit their domesticating effects on the more radical aspects of American Christianity. Dayton's work has challenged long-held assumptions about the «conservative» nature of American Christianity by showing that both in their history and in their deeper theological substructures, traditions such as Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism are far more radical and productive of social change than was previously imagined.
Risking Truth
Ours is a world characterized by change. Often the most fundamental changes in our lives result from experiences of profound suffering and loss as we are wrenched from our familiar world and driven into one that is alien. In the midst of such loss, we are compelled to choose between trying to cling to the remnants of a reality that is passing away and trying to make a home in a strange new world. Biblical prayers of lament wait for us at this crossroad of loss and newness. Prayers of lament are marked both by loss and by the inexplicable silence of God. Everything we believe about God's justice and goodness is placed in doubt by his hiddenness. The cry of lament is an act of tremendous risk. To lament is to abandon the sinking ship of religious certainty and strike out in a small dingy, amidst stormy seas, in search of a hidden God. Faced with God's silence, the biblical writers are willing to place at risk their most fundamental beliefs and to lament. The Psalm writers risk the loss of the Exodus story by crying out to a God who has failed to save, demanding that he once more part the chaotic waters and make a way in the desert. Job risks the loss of a moral God by confronting God with his injustice. Jeremiah risks the loss of the covenant by calling out for God to return yet again to a faithless partner and a failed marriage. Matthew and John the Revelator recognize that the coming of Messiah is impelled by the cries of innocent sufferers. Throughout the Bible, lament risks the possible loss of relationship with God and presses for a new, though uncertain, experience of God's presence.
Theology as Hope
Hope is the leitmotiv of Jurgen Moltmann's theology. Not merely one aspect of his project, hope is the whole of it, the supreme doctrine interpenetrating all others. Indeed, hope is his method. The present study is both historical and developmental while also being analytical and interrogative. This chronological exploration seeks to show the nature, composition, and development of Moltmann's doctrine of hope, as the distinctive doctrine of his theology, implicating all others. Part I establishes Moltmann's doctrine of hope as grounded in God's faithfulness in the cross and resurrection. Part II investigates major doctrines in his project in light of this ground. This design seeks to take advantage of the chronological approach while also integrating the best elements of a topical approach.
The Ubuntu God
In 1948, the Afrikaner Nationalist Government became the ruling party in South Africa and instituted the brutal system known as apartheid. To maintain their power, Afrikaners drew on Christian scripture and traditions to create self-justifying religious narratives that supported their oppressive ideologies, prohibiting inclusion and suppressing pluralism. In time these Afrikaner-Christian narratives began to unravel as counter-narratives within the Christian tradition influenced the Black church to demand equality and democracy. This socio-political and cultural transformation is best understood and interpreted through the vision of ubuntu: a mode of thought in African culture that places a value on humanity in community and shifts the focus from singularity to plurality in South African society.
In The Ubuntu God, Samuel A. Paul traces how the dismantling of apartheid led to recognition of the religious other, the recovery of alternate narratives, and the reappearance of ubuntu perspective and practice in the political and public sphere. After the peaceful transition to a democratically elected government, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission created a platform for multiple voices, stories, and religious narratives to be shared in a public political context. This multiplicity of voices resulted, ultimately, in the formation of a new constitution for South Africa that sought to uphold African values of community and inclusion in its institutions. While South Africa's apartheid system and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are both rooted in the biblical narrative, the former used its theology to enforce an iron rule while the latter combined Christian and African concepts to create a pluralistic and open society. Such a society is characterized by a culture that emphasizes communality and interdependence.
The Heart of the Gospel
The Fourfold Gospel, most often associated with Albert B. Simpson, founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, which focuses on the doctrines of Christ as Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King, has been identified as a key contributing factor to the birth and development of the modern Pentecostal movement. Through a close observation of the doctrinal themes of select and renowned Evangelical leaders in America (A. J. Gordon of Boston, D. L. Moody of Chicago, A. T. Pierson of Philadelphia/Detroit, and A. B. Simpson of New York), this work shows that the Fourfold Gospel and, therefore, the theological source for modern Pentecostalism, rather than being a marginal movement within late nineteenth-century Evangelicalism was, instead, its very heart.
System and Story
System and Story is intended to develop a means for bridging the gap between critics of system and those who may find value in doing systematics from a Biblically oriented context. Narrative theologians have rightly identified and critiqued the development of system in academic theology. Unfortunately, they have not identified the ways in which systematic elements have always played a role in theological knowledge. This study demonstrates the inherent systematic tendencies that still exist in narrative approaches to theology, while at the same time acknowledging the appropriateness of aspects of the narrative critique of system. The reaction against Enlightenment modernism is examined from the perspective of the heightened role of system in religious epistemology. The work of Stanley Hauerwas serves to carry much of the conversation regarding the critique of system and a narrative alternative as it is discovered in communal formation. After «summarizing» Hauerwas' theology, if such a thing is possible, the final chapters explore the ecclesiological concerns of narrative theologians according to a more systematic rendering of pneumatology. A Biblical rendering of pneumatology from the perspective of the Spirit's role in ecclesiology allows for a modest (i.e., pre-modern) systematic presentation commensurate with narrative communal formation. Thus, the narrative attempt to once again «do» theology for the church is seen as compatible with a Scriptural (i.e., modestly systematic) theology of the Spirit.
Religion and the Politics of Peace and Conflict
The connections between religion and violence are complex and multifaceted. From the conflicts in Middle East and the Balkans to those in Southeast Asia and beyond, religion frames and legitimates political violence. Moreover, in international relations since 9/11, religious language and metaphors have acquired a new significance. In this context the emerging consensus appears to be not only that violence is intrinsic to religion, but also that religions incite, legitimate, and intensify political violence. However, such an unambiguous indictment of religions is incomplete in that it fails both to appreciate significant counter examples and to recognize the diversity that exists within religions on the issue of violence, particularly the religious roots of pacifism and the ethics of non-violence. This collection explores aspects of this ambivalence between religion and violence. It focuses on traditions of legitimation and pacifism within the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and concludes with an examination of this ambivalence as it unfolds in each tradition's engagement with the politics of gender.