Church, State and Public Justice

Church, State and Public Justice
Author: P. C. Kemeny
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2009-09-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830874747

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Abortion. Physician-assisted suicide. Same-sex marriages. Embryonic stem-cell research. Poverty. Crime. What is a faithful Christian response? The God of the Bible is unquestionably a God of justice. Yet Christians have had their differences as to how human government and the church should bring about a just social order. Although Christians share many deep and significant theological convictions, differences that threaten to divide them have often surrounded the matter of how the church collectively and Christians individually ought to engage the public square. What is the mission of the church? What is the purpose of human government? How ought they to be related to each other? How should social injustice be redressed? The five noted contributors to this volume answer these questions from within their distinctive Christian theological traditions, as well as responding to the other four positions. Through the presentations and ensuing dialogue we come to see more clearly what the differences are, where their positions overlap and why they diverge. The contributors and the positions taken include Clarke E. Cochran: A Catholic Perspective Derek H. Davis: A Classical Separation Perspective Ronald J. Sider: An Anabaptist Perspective Corwin F. Smidt: A Principled Pluralist Perspective J. Philip Wogaman: A Social Justice Perspective This book will be instructive for anyone seeking to grasp the major Christian alternatives and desiring to pursue a faithful corporate and individual response to the social issues that face us.

The Church in the Public

The Church in the Public
Author: Ilsup Ahn
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2022-08-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1506467970

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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.

The Church for the World

The Church for the World
Author: Jennifer McBride
Publisher: OUP USA
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2012-01-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 019975568X

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Drawing on the work of German pastor-theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jennifer McBride constructs a new theology of public witness for American Protestant church communities based on the public expression of repentance and redemption.

Public Church

Public Church
Author: Cynthia Moe-Lobeda
Publisher: Augsburg Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004
Genre: Church and state
ISBN: 9780806649870

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The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America professes to be a public church constituted by God for its public vocation. Moe-Lobeda explores what it means for the ELCA to play a role in public life today. Sections focus on what it means to be a public church, obstacles to being a public church in public life, power for being public church, and providing public leadership. For the followers of Jesus, the ''way of living'' in public is a gift of God to the church. It is costly and dangerous, but yet gives life abundant, now and forever.

A Public Faith

A Public Faith
Author: Miroslav Volf
Publisher: Brazos Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2011-08-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1441232079

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Covering such timely issues as witness in a multifaith society and political engagement in a pluralistic world, this compelling book highlights things Christians can do to serve the common good. Now in paperback. Praise for the cloth edition Named one of the "Top 100 Books" and one of the "Top 10 Religion Books" of 2011 by Publishers Weekly "Accessible, wise guidance for people of all faiths."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Highly original. . . . The book deserves a wide audience and is one that will affect its readers well after they have turned the final page."--Christianity Today (5-star review)

A Free Church, a Holy Nation

A Free Church, a Holy Nation
Author: John Bolt
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2001
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

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"In addition to considering such key issues as poverty, wealth and power, theocracy and pluralism, civil religion, the culture wars and political cooperation between evangelicals and Roman Catholics. Bolt also draws extended comparisons between Kuyper's views and the thought of Alexis de Tocqueville, Lord John Acton, Pope Leo XIII, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Jonathan Edwards. A distinctive feature of this study is its focus on the rhetorical, poetic character of Kuyper's public theology and practice as a political leader. Bolt shows how focusing on Kuyper's rhetorical and mythopoetic perspective, rather than on his theological and philosophical ideas, provides contemporary evangelicals with a more credible and effective theology for the public square."--Jacket.

Radical Discipleship

Radical Discipleship
Author: Jennifer M. McBride
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2017-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1506401902

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Reminiscent of Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship, Jennifer McBride’s Radical Discipleship utilizes the liturgical seasons as a framework for engaging the social evils of mass incarceration, capital punishment, and homelessness, arguing that to be faithful to the gospel, Christians must become disciples of, not simply believers in, Jesus. The book arises out of McBride’s extensive experience teaching theology in a women’s prison while participating in a residential Christian activist and worshipping community. Arguing that disciples must take responsibility for the social evils that bar “beloved community,” Martin Luther King’s term for a just social order, the promised kingdom of God, McBride calls for a dual commitment to the works of mercy and the struggle for justice. This work seeks to form readers into an understanding of the social and political character of the good news proclaimed in the Gospels. Organically connecting liturgy with activism and theological reflection, McBride argues that discipleship requires that privileged Christians place their bodies in spaces of social struggle and distress to reduce the distance between themselves and those who suffer injustice, and stand in solidarity with those whom society deems guilty, despises, and rejects—which makes discipleship radical as Christians take seriously the Jesus of the Gospels.

Separating Church and State

Separating Church and State
Author: Steven K. Green
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2022-03-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1501762087

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Steven K. Green, renowned for his scholarship on the separation of church and state, charts the career of the concept and helps us understand how it has fallen into disfavor with many Americans. In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson distilled a leading idea in the early American republic and wrote of a wall of separation between church and state. That metaphor has come down from Jefferson to twenty-first-century Americans through a long history of jurisprudence, political contestation, and cultural influence. This book traces the development of the concept of separation of church and state and the Supreme Court's application of it in the law. Green finds that conservative criticisms of a separation of church and state overlook the strong historical and jurisprudential pedigree of the idea. Yet, arguing with liberal advocates of the doctrine, he notes that the idea remains fundamentally vague and thus open to loose interpretation in the courts. As such, the history of a wall of separation is more a variable index of American attitudes toward the forces of religion and state. Indeed, Green argues that the Supreme Court's use of the wall metaphor has never been essential to its rulings. The contemporary battle over the idea of a wall of separation has thus been a distraction from the real jurisprudential issues animating the contemporary courts.

That Was The Church That Was

That Was The Church That Was
Author: Andrew Brown
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2016-07-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1472921658

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The Church of England still seemed an essential part of Englishness, and even of the British state, when Mrs Thatcher was elected in 1979. The decades which followed saw a seismic shift in the foundations of the C of E, leading to the loss of more than half its members and much of its influence. In England today 'religion' has become a toxic brand, and Anglicanism something done by other people. How did this happen? Is there any way back? This 'relentlessly honest' and surprisingly entertaining book tells the dramatic and contentious story of the disappearance of the Church of England from the centre of public life. The authors – religious correspondent Andrew Brown and academic Linda Woodhead – watched this closely, one from the inside and one from the outside. That Was the Church, That Was shows what happened and explains why.

Unleashing the Church

Unleashing the Church
Author: Frank R. Tillapaugh
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 1982
Genre:
ISBN:

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