Faiths in Green addresses the complex and fraught relationship between religious identity and environmental concern in the United States, particularly how that relationship has changed over time. Examining the effects of religious upbringing, belonging, and disaffiliation on environmental concern across multiple religious groups over several decades, the author shows where, when, how, and why religious groups and their memberships have responded constructively to environmental change over time. The author also visits the effects of gender, social class, race, and politics on both religion and environmental concern in the U.S. Faiths in Green offers an in-depth and accessible guide to understanding the at-times incongruous relationship between religious beliefs and motivations, as well as ways to follow cultural shifts that both drive and are driven by religious persons and institutions. In examining how religious and cultural factors are linked to environmental concern over time, Faiths in Green demonstrates the importance of morality and worldviews in confronting global hazards of unprecedented scale.

Where is the voice of theology in the public discourse around anthropogenic climate change? How do we understand the human relationship to Earth and the ecology of which we are a part? How can we account for the human attempt to dominate nature and the devastation we have caused to our own home? Dianne Rayson addresses these questions. She uses the creation theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to examine what it means to be human in the post-Holocene age. Employing a range of Bonhoeffer's texts, Rayson posits that Bonhoeffer's Christological theology and this-worldly ethical orientation provide the tools for an Earthly Christianity. She responds to Bonhoeffer's question, "who actually is Jesus Christ, for us, today?" and proposes a Bonhoefferian ecoethic.

In Indigenous and Christian Perspectives in Dialogue, Allen G. Jorgenson asks what Christian theologians might learn from Indigenous spiritualties and worldviews. Jorgenson argues that theology in North America has been captive to colonial conceits and has lost sight of key resources in a post-Christendom context. The volume is especially concerned with the loss of a sense of place, evident in theologies written without attention to context. Using a comparative theology methodology, wherein more than one faith tradition is engaged in dialogical exploration, Jorgenson uses insights from Indigenous understandings of place to illumine forgotten or obstructed themes in Christianity. In this constructive theological project, "kairotic" places are named as those that are kenotic, harmonic, poetic and especially enlightening at the margins, where we meet the religious other.

The Holy Spirit and Moral Action in Thomas Aquinas is a detailed study of how, according to one of Christianity's greatest visionary thinkers, God's Holy Spirit is continuously at work in and through humanity's moral activity. Jack Mahoney, SJ, documents, notably from Aquinas's commentaries on scripture, how "the grace of the Holy Spirit" prompts and influences people's minds, as well as their decisions to act, occasionally in unexpected ways. Through the gift of connatural wisdom, the Spirit empowers humans to appreciate God's own wise and loving design for the whole of creation, and enables them to cooperate freely in fulfilling their unique part in it.

The Other Black Church: Alternative Christian Movements and the Struggle for Black Freedom examines the movements led by Father Divine, Charles Mason, and Albert Cleage (later known as Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman) as alternative Christian movements in the middle of the twentieth century that radically re-envisioned the limits and possibilities of Black citizenship. These movements not only rethink the value and import of Christian texts and reimagined the role of the Black Christian prophetic tradition, but they also outlined a new model of protest that challenged the language and logic of Black essentialism, economic development, and the role of the state. By placing these movements in conversation with the long history of Black theology and Black religious studies, this book suggests that alternative Christian movements are essential for thinking about African American critiques of and responses to the failures of U.S.-based democracy. These prophets of Black theological thought and their attention to the limits of the state and traditional Black religious formations are most fully appreciated when studied in light of their conversations and interactions with other key Black prophetic and theological figures of the mid-twentieth century. Ultimately, The Other Black Church will use those conversations and archives from these movements to highlight their protest of the racial state, to explore the limits of the Black church, and to argue for their continued significance for thinking about the variety and vibrancy of Black protest, specifically Black religious protest, during the twentieth century.

The Trauma of Doctrine is a theological investigation into the effects of abuse trauma upon the experience of Christian faith, the psychological mechanics of these effects, their resonances with Christian Scripture, and neglected research-informed strategies for cultivating post-traumatic resilience. Paul Maxwell examines the effect that the Calvinist belief can have upon the traumatized Christian who negatively internalizes its superlative doctrines of divine control and human moral corruption, and charts a way toward meaningful spiritual recovery.

This book explores the different types of compromises Indian people were forced to make and must continue to do so in order to be included in the colonizer's religion and culture. The contributors in this collection are in conversation with the contributions made by Tink Tinker, an American Indian scholar who is known for his work on Native American liberation theology. The contributors engage with the following questions in this book: How much of one's identity must be sacrificed in order to belong in the world of the colonizer? How much of one's culture requires silencing? And more importantly, how can the colonized survive when constantly asked and forced to compromise? Specifically, what is uniquely Indian and gets completely lost in this interaction? Scholars of religious studies, American studies, American Indian studies, theology, sociology, and anthropology will find this book particularly useful.

Necropolitics: The Religious Crisis of Mass Incarceration in America explores the pernicious and persistent presence of mass incarceration in American public life. Christophe D. Ringer argues that mass incarceration persists largely because the othering and criminalization of Black people in times of crisis is a significant part of the religious meaning of America. This book traces representations from the Puritan era to the beginning of the War on Drugs in the 1980s to demonstrate their centrality in this issue, revealing how these images have become accepted as fact and used by various aspects of governance to wield the power to punish indiscriminately. Ringer demonstrates how these vilifying images contribute to racism and political economy, creating a politics of death that uses jails and prisons to conceal social inequalities and political exclusion.

Critically surveying various approaches to Christian ecological ethics alongside the vexing moral ambiguities of the Anthropocene, Ecology of Vocation offers an integrative approach to responsible living vis a vis one of Protestantism's key theological resources- the doctrine of vocation. Drawing on H. Richard Niebuhr's germinal ethical framework with a decidedly ecofeminist perspective, Kiara A. Jorgenson demonstrates how vocation's emphasis on right relationship practically speaks to the embodied realities of planetary interrelatedness. By excavating the ecological promise of the early Reformers' democratized renderings of calling and linking their concerns to the contemporary context, she argues that vocation cannot be reduced to the particular aim of monetized work, nor to an elitist escape from it. Rather, vocation must be recast as the dynamic and vibrant space among the myriad roles any of us inhabits at any given time in a particular place. When understood in this light, vocation signals much more than a job, a passion, or a quest for self-discovery. An alternative understanding of vocation's very ecology can extend Christian conceptions of the neighbor beyond the human and lead the church to more faithfully pursue lives characterized by humility, restraint, wisdom, justice, and love.

Volatile social dissonance in America's urban landscape is the backdrop as Valerie A. Miles-Tribble examines tensions in ecclesiology and public theology, focusing on theoethical dilemmas that complicate churches' public justice witness as prophetic change agents. She attributes churches' reticence to confront unjust disparities to conflicting views, for example, of Black Lives Matter protests as "mere politics," and disparities in leader and congregant preparation for public justice roles. As a practical theologian with experience in organizational leadership, Miles-Tribble applies adaptive change theory, public justice theory, and a womanist communitarian perspective, engaging Emilie Townes's construct of cultural evil as she presents a model of social reform activism re-envisioned as public discipleship. She contends that urban churches are urgently needed to embrace active prophetic roles and thus increase public justice witness. "Black Lives Matter times" compel churches to connect faith with public roles as spiritual catalysts of change.

In 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer-a theologian and pastor-was executed by the Nazis for his resistance to their unspeakable crimes against humanity. He was only 39 years old when he died, but Bonhoeffer left behind volumes of work exploring theological and ethical themes that have now inspired multiple generations of scholars, students, pastors, and activists. This book highlights the ways Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work informs political theology and examines Bonhoeffer's contributions in three ways: historical-critical interpretation, critical-constructive engagement, and constructive-practical application. With contributions from a broad array of scholars from around the world, chapters range from historical analysis of Bonhoeffer's early political resistance language to accounts of Bonhoeffer-inspired, front-line resistance to white supremacists in Charlottesville, VA. This volume speaks to the ongoing relevance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work and life in and out of the academy.

In Complicity and Moral Accountability, Gregory Mellema presents a philosophical approach to the moral issues involved in complicity. Starting with a taxonomy of Thomas Aquinas, according to whom there are nine ways for one to become complicit in the wrongdoing of another, Mellema analyzes each kind of complicity and examines the moral status of someone complicit in each of these ways. Mellema's central argument is that one must perform a contributing action to qualify as an accomplice, and that it is always morally blameworthy to perform such an action. Additionally, he argues that an accomplice frequently bears moral responsibility for the outcome of the other's wrongdoing, but he distinguishes this case from cases in which the accomplice is tainted by the wrongdoing of the principal actor. He further distinguishes between enabling, facilitating, and condoning harm, and introduces the concept of indirect complicity. Mellema tackles issues that are clearly important to any case of collective and shared responsibility and yet are rarely discussed in depth, and he always presents his arguments clearly, concisely, and engagingly. His account of the nonmoral as well as moral qualities of complicity in wrongdoing-especially of the many and varied ways in which principles and accomplices can interact-is highly illuminating. Liberally sprinkled with helpful and nuanced examples, Complicity and Moral Accountability vividly illustrates the many ways in which one may be complicit in wrongdoing.

The concept of moral injury emerged in the past decade as a way to understand how traumatic levels of moral emotions generate moral anguish experienced by some military service members. Interdisciplinary research on moral injury has included clinical psychologists (Litz et al., 2009; Drescher et al., 2011), theologians (Brock & Lettini, 2012; Graham, 2017), ethicists (Kinghorn, 2012), and philosophers (Sherman, 2015). This project articulates a new key concept-moral orienting systems- a dynamic matrix of meaningful values, beliefs, behaviors, and relationships learned and changed over time and through formative experiences and relationships such as family of origin, religious and other significant communities, mentors, and teachers. Military recruit training reengineers pre-existing moral orienting systems and indoctrinates a military moral orienting system designed to support functioning within the military context and the demands of the high-stress environment of combat, including immediate responses to perceived threat. This military moral orienting system includes new values and beliefs, new behaviors, and new meaningful relationships. Recognizing the profound impact of military recruit training, this project challenges dominant notions of post-deployment reentry and reintegration, and formulates a new paradigm for first, understanding the generative circumstances of ongoing moral stress that include moral emotions like guilt, shame, disgust, and contempt, and, second, for responding to such human suffering through compassionate care and comprehensive restorative support. This project calls for more effective participation of religious communities in the reentry and reintegration process and for a military-wide post-deployment reentry program comparable to the encompassing physio-psycho-spiritual-social transformative intensity experienced in recruit-training boot camp.

Set against an ethical-theological-philosophical framework of the role of love in the Abrahamic tradition (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity), The Ethics of Hospitality highlights the personal witness of refugee families seeking asylum from the Northern Triangle in Central America to the U.S. Their heart-wrenching stories include why they fled their homelands, their experiences along the arduous overland journey, and their inhospitable reception when they arrived to the U.S. and requested asylum. It includes an overview of the systemic connections between the U.S. and the violence which catapults these families to seek safety. The voices of the families join the witness of interreligious volunteers of greater San Antonio who assist the refugee families in diverse capacities and who testify to the mutual blessing they receive when love of God, expressed as love of neighbor, becomes central to the immigration conversation. Ultimately, the proposal is that the interreligious community has the privilege and responsibility to respond in love with refugees seeking asylum, while also leading the outcry in the public square for their radical welcome.

The essays gathered here provide a panoramic view of current thinking on biblical texts that play important roles in contemporary struggles for social justice - either as inspiration or impediment. Here, from the hands of an ecumenical array of leading biblical scholars, are fresh and compelling resources for thinking biblically about what justice is and what it demands. Individual essays treat key debates, themes, and texts, locating each within its historical and cultural settings while also linking them to the most pressing justice concerns of the twenty-first century. The volume aims to challenge academic and ecclesiastical complacency and highlight key avenues for future scholarship and action.

Divided into four parts-Earth, Air, Fire, and Water-this book takes an elemental approach to the study of religion and ecology. It reflects recent theoretical and methodological developments in this field which seek to understand the ways that ideas and matter, minds and bodies exist together within an immanent frame of reference. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Nature focuses on how these matters materialize in the world around us, thereby addressing key topics in this area of study. The editors provide an extensive introduction to the book, as well as useful introductions to each of its parts. The volume's international contributors are drawn from the USA, South Africa, Netherlands, Norway, Indonesia, and South Korea, and offer a variety of perspectives, voices, cultural settings, and geographical locales. This handbook shows that human concern and engagement with material existence is present in all sectors of the global community, regardless of religious tradition. It challenges the traditional methodological approach of comparative religion, and argues that globalization renders a comparative religious approach to the environment insufficient.

In this brilliant theological essay, Paul J. Griffiths takes the reader through all the stages of regret. To various degrees, all human beings experience regret. In this concise theological grammar, Paul J. Griffiths analyzes this attitude toward the past and distinguishes its various kinds. He examines attitudes encapsulated in the phrase, "I would it were otherwise," including regret, contrition, remorse, compunction, lament, and repentance. By using literature (especially poetry) and Christian theology, Griffiths shows both what is good about regret and what can be destructive about it. Griffiths argues that on the one hand regret can take the form of remorse-an agony produced by obsessive and ceaseless examination of the errors, sins, and omissions of the past. This kind of regret accomplishes nothing and produces only pain. On the other hand, when regret is coupled with contrition and genuine sorrow for past errors, it has the capacity both to transfigure the past-which is never merely past-and to open the future. Moreover, in thinking about the phenomenon of regret in the context of Christian theology, Griffiths focuses especially on the notion of the LORD's regret. Is it even reasonable to claim that the LORD regrets? Griffiths shows not only that it is but also that the LORD's regret should structure how we regret as human beings. Griffiths investigates the work of Henry James, Emily Dickinson, Tomas Transtroemer, Paul Celan, Jane Austen, George Herbert, and Robert Frost to show how regret is not a negative feature of human life but rather is essential for human flourishing and ultimately is to be patterned on the LORD's regret. Regret: A Theology will be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy, theology, and literature, as well as to literate readers who want to understand the phenomenon of regret more deeply.

The crisis of multiculturalism in the West and the failure of the Arab uprisings in the Middle East have pushed the question of how to live peacefully within a diverse society to the forefront of global discussion. Against this backdrop, Indonesia has taken on a particular importance: with a population of 265 million people (87.7 percent of whom are Muslim), Indonesia is both the largest Muslim-majority country in the world and the third-largest democracy. In light of its return to electoral democracy from the authoritarianism of the former New Order regime, some analysts have argued that Indonesia offers clear proof of the compatibility of Islam and democracy. Skeptics argue, however, that the growing religious intolerance that has marred the country's political transition discredits any claim of the country to democratic exemplarity. Based on a twenty-month project carried out in several regions of Indonesia, Indonesian Pluralities: Islam, Citizenship, and Democracy shows that, in assessing the quality and dynamics of democracy and citizenship in Indonesia today, we must examine not only elections and official politics, but also the less formal, yet more pervasive, processes of social recognition at work in this deeply plural society. The contributors demonstrate that, in fact, citizen ethics are not static discourses but living traditions that co-evolve in relation to broader patterns of politics, gender, religious resurgence, and ethnicity in society. Indonesian Pluralities offers important insights on the state of Indonesian politics and society more than twenty years after its return to democracy. It will appeal to political scholars, public analysts, and those interested in Islam, Southeast Asia, citizenship, and peace and conflict studies around the world. Contributors: Robert W. Hefner, Erica M. Larson, Kelli Swazey, Mohammad Iqbal Ahnaf, Marthen Tahun, Alimatul Qibtiyah, and Zainal Abidin Bagir

In 21st century America, personhood is under daily assault, sometimes with dire consequences. Scientist, ethicist, and ordained minister Craig C. Malbon encourages the reader to consider such assaults on personhood endured by victims of abortion, ageism, Alzheimer's disease, drug addiction, mental and physical disabilities, gender, gender orientation, racism, sexual preference, identity politics, and our will-to-power over the "other." In exploring personhood status, Malbon poses difficult questions for us. Is personhood assigned as all-or-nothing, or is it a sliding scale based upon criteria arbitrarily aimed at our vulnerabilities? Does the voiceless embryo and fetus have advocates who can speak to the moral question of abortion? Is the personhood of an economically insecure pregnant woman degraded to the point where lack of access to early termination of pregnancy results in "coercive childbearing?" Does being a member of the LGBTQI+ community target one for assaults on personhood, to the extreme of being killed? In delving into the biology and psychology of assaults of "self" upon the "other," Malbon sees powerful linkages of everyday assaults on personhood to darker, profound "original sins" that are foundational to the rise of the American empire, i.e., assaults on the indigenous Native Americans and assaults derivative to the institution of slavery upon Africans, African Americans, and their descendants.