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How might the Christian church effectively engage today's
politically charged, profit-motivated world while remaining
faithful to its biblical and theological roots? The contributors in
this book argue that public theology provides a promising pathway
forward. The public theology emerging from these pages has been
influenced by the theological interests and commitments of Gary M.
Simpson, Lutheran pastor and systematic theologian. His approach to
public theology is intersectional and global; he artfully weaves
together Lutheran theology and the civil society arena of Critical
Social Theory. These essays provide three angles of vision on faith
active in twenty-first century public contexts: contextual,
ethical, and theological. While not mutually exclusive, these
distinct strands of thought engage and challenge the church to
substantial reflection on the challenging and often bewildering
circumstances of the twenty-first century social world. Some
reflect on God's activity within particular global contexts, others
offer new perspectives on Lutheran confessional traditions, still
others step boldly into innovative theological assertions. As the
Christian church is ever forming and reforming, this book urges it
to grapple with the "publicness" of its timely and timeless
mission.
In dialogue with Jurgen Habermas's communicative ethics, Covenant
and Communication constructively explores a
covenantal-communicative model of Christian ethics. Hak Joon Lee
analyzes themes of freedom, equality, and reciprocity in Habermas's
theory of communication from the perspective of Reformed Christian
doctrines of covenant and the Trinity. This reconstruction of
Christian ethics based upon communicative rationality has profound
implications for the reinterpretation of Christianity and its
relationship with liberal political institutions. It offers fresh
perspectives on important Christian theological concepts, such as
divine economy, church, communion, conscience, law and gospel, and
the social sphere. A communicative ethics rooted in a rich
Christian spiritual tradition provides new energies for the kind of
revitalization of democracy and human rights advocated by Habermas
against the colonizing power of money and bureaucracy. This work
tests its plausibility in dialogue with contemporary theories of
Christian ethics, such as narrative ethics, Catholic human rights
theory, and liberation ethics.
Racism. Immigration. Gun violence. Sexuality. Health care. The
number of ethical issues that demand a response from Christians
today is almost dizzying. How can Christians navigate such matters?
What are faithful responses to these questions? Edited by two
theologians with pastoral experience, this volume invites
engagement with these issues and more by drawing on real-life
experiences and offering a range of responses to some of the most
challenging moral questions confronting the church today. With an
unflinching yet irenic approach, this resource can help Christians
as they seek to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.
For decades, the multiple, interlocking forces of technological
advances, neoliberal capitalism, and globalization have been
transforming the very moral fabric and institutional underpinnings
of global society. The effects of these challenges include soaring
economic inequality, a widely experienced social fragmentation, and
increasing disenchantment with liberal democracy and its social
arrangements. This unraveling can be seen in the rise of illiberal
democracy, a deepening ecological crisis, and failures of
governance in coping with natural disasters and social tumults
alike.In response to this crisis of democracy and eroding
community, a growing number of people have been attracted to Saul
D. Alinsky's grassroots method of community organizing. God and
Community Organizing: A Covenantal Approach is written in this
cultural milieu; it brings Alinsky's community organizing into
conversation with the biblical vision of of covenant. Hak Joon Lee
argues that, theologically, covenant reflects the life of the
triune God who eternally organizes Godself as the Father, Son, and
Spirit, while politically, covenant captures the inherent passion
for justice that underlies Jewish and Christian faith. At its heart
is the attempt to structure a wholesome, close-knit community of
love, justice, and power. He points out that not only is covenant
instrumental in the formation of God's people as a community, but
the concept has also played an important role in the rise of modern
Western ideas of democracy, constitutionalism, and human rights. To
demonstrate the political plausibility of covenantal organizing,
Lee incorporates four examples of covenantal organizing in
different historical and social contexts: Exodus, Jesus, Puritans,
and Martin Luther King Jr. Critically engaging with Saul Alinsky's
method, Lee seeks to highlight how the two different streams of
political praxis-covenantal organizing and Alinsky's community
organizing-can complement each other to develop a more vigorous and
effective method of faith-based community organizing. Finally, Lee
explores the political and moral meanings and implications of his
study for the current struggle against the neoliberal corporate
oligarchy by presenting covenantal organizing as an alternative
political philosophy and practice to secular liberal philosophy,
postmodernism, identity politics, and communitarianism.
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