In this book, leading American Lutheran theologians, inspired by the Scandinavian emphasis on theology as embodied practice, ask how Christian communities might be mobilized for resistance against systemic injustices. They argue that the challenges we confront today as citizens of the United States, as a species in relation to all the other species on the planet, and as members of the body of Christ require an imaginative reconceptualization of the inherited tradition. The driving force of each chapter is the commitment to truth-telling in naming the church's complicity with social and political evils, and to reorienting the church to the truth of grace that Christianity was created to communicate. Contributors ask how ecclesial resources may be generatively repurposed for the church in the world today, for church-building grounded in Christ and for empowering the church's witness for justice. The authors take up the theme of resistance in both theoretical and pragmatic terms, on the one hand, rethinking doctrine, on the other, reconceiving lived religion and pastoral care, in light of the necessary urgencies of the time, and bearing witness to the God whose truth includes both justice and hope.

Christians in the United States and around the world are politically polarized today, unable to speak to one another across deep divisions regarding urgent social issues. Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times: Justification and the Pursuit of Justice addresses this dire reality by offering a theological framework for Christian justice-seeking. Amy Carr and Christine Helmer draw on Paul's theology to center the idea of justification by faith in Christ as the primary ground of Christian belonging and community.This approach yields a theology of ordinary faith that resists the temptation to equate Christian identity with the performance of a heroic "here I stand" posture against moral and political positions felt to be inimical to a properly Christian life. An ordinary faith situates Christian identity on a baptismal belonging to Christ. Baptism draws Christians into the messy process of discerning together the shape of justice in and through the Beloved Community. With justification by faith as the touchstone of Christian unity, Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times reveals how Christians who inhabit different ethical and political positions can navigate the disorientations and reorientations that arise when they debate what justice-seeking looks like from within the body of Christ. Carr and Helmer articulate ways that justification by faith grounds Christian practices of affective listening and storytelling, even on the most contentious ethical questions today, with the hope that mutual conversation in and through the Beloved Community can get Christians who disagree oriented towards each other again for the good of the world.

In this book, leading American Lutheran theologians, inspired by the Scandinavian emphasis on theology as embodied practice, ask how Christian communities might be mobilized for resistance against systemic injustices. They argue that the challenges we confront today as citizens of the United States, as a species in relation to all the other species on the planet, and as members of the body of Christ require an imaginative reconceptualization of the inherited tradition. The driving force of each chapter is the commitment to truth-telling in naming the church's complicity with social and political evils, and to reorienting the church to the truth of grace that Christianity was created to communicate. Contributors ask how ecclesial resources may be generatively repurposed for the church in the world today, for church-building grounded in Christ and for empowering the church's witness for justice. The authors take up the theme of resistance in both theoretical and pragmatic terms, on the one hand, rethinking doctrine, on the other, reconceiving lived religion and pastoral care, in light of the necessary urgencies of the time, and bearing witness to the God whose truth includes both justice and hope.