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Around the world people are leaving Islam for Christianity in unprecedented numbers. This book seeks to look into the world of some of these converts, trying to discern the shape of their newfound faith. Why do they convert? What challenges do they face? And ultimately, what do they in their own complex and sometimes difficult circumstances claim to have understood about God that, while in Islam, they had not? In other words, what is the content of their contextual theology? In seeking to answer these questions, Miller looks into the world of an unintentional church plant in the Arab world consisting of believers from a Muslim background, visits with groups of Iranian converts in the diaspora, and examines the written testimonies of still other converts. In a world where Muslim-Christian relations are increasingly important and sometimes tendentious, this book examines the lived faith and contextual theology of people who have chosen to leave Islam and embrace Christianity.

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Playing off a five-year-old boy's question concerning whether parents would put their son to death on a cross, this book plunges headlong into the ongoing debate about the character of God. Following the historic faith confession that God is revealed in Jesus, the book's first chapter sketches the life and teaching of Jesus. That life, which reveals Jesus' rejection of violence, calls for an understanding of God in nonviolent terms. Weaver thus invites us to embrace a nonviolent atonement image, which stands as a direct challenge to the inherited atonement images. Deriving theology from the narrative of Jesus also leads Weaver into discussions about the very nature of theology, the character of the Bible, the divine violence in the Old Testament (as well as the purported divine violence in the book of Revelation), and a rethinking of historic Christology. Each of these discussions has implications for life today–implications for economics, forgiveness, violence, gender discrimination, racism, and more. The book is thus an introduction to foundational issues of theology and ethics, suitable for church discussion groups and introductory college classrooms.

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Too many Christians are afraid of beauty. This fear disconnects these Christians from their larger culture, a culture that is increasingly visual, increasingly aware of the presence and power of images, and more commonly fascinated by the power of beauty and form. This historical-theological overview presents the thought of ten theologians and one philosopher in an attempt to give Christians helpful vocabulary concerning beauty and aesthetics. It is time to use beauty and aesthetics for the mission of Christ! And yet rather than simply parrot the larger post-Christian culture, Christians and churches need to employ beauty and aesthetics in a manner that echoes God's own revelation: creation and redemption through Jesus Christ. We need to develop a sensitivity that can perceive beauties ignored. We need theological framing that both respects the glory of God's handiwork and keeps it from becoming idolatrous. We need to live with wonder for the bounty that routinely surrounds us. In short, we need eyes to see.

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CONTENTS
PART 1: METHODS, MODELS, AND COMPARATIVE STUDIES What Does Sociology Have to Do with The Bible? The Bible and Economic Ethics Social Class as an Analytic and Hermeneutical Category in Biblical Studies Social Class and Ideology in Isaiah 40-55: An Eagletonian Reading Ideology and Ideologies in Israelite Prophecy Periodization, Interactive Power Networks, and Teleogical Constraints in Hebrew Bible Studies Icelandic and Israelite Beginnings: A Comparative Probe Structure and Origin of the Early Israelite and Iroquois «Confederacies» PART 2: TRIBUTES TO COLLEAGUES James Muilenburg: Superlative Teacher David Jobling: Fearless Frontiersman Marvin L. Chaney, Master Social Critic Jack Elliott: Breacher of Boundaries

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Over the past two centuries the Christian faith has spread to all continents. Although more global than ever, Christians are religious minorities in most societies. Religious freedom is hardly universal. In the past fifty years, millions of people have been uprooted from their traditional homelands in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Some have emigrated to Western Europe and North America. The West has become the scene of cultural, linguistic, and religious variety on a scale unimagined in 1900. Today, the full range of faiths and religious practices from all continents are present in Europe and North America. Christians are challenged to come to terms with this changed situation. These developments have intensified religious plurality. Christians all over the world are being urged to understand and engage with this new situation. This volume highlights this new reality and specifies some sources for engagement, not least among them the Judeo-Christian scriptures–fundamental to all «Christianities»–that emerged out of religious plural contexts. On the basis of their faith in the Triune God disclosed in this text, all followers of Jesus Christ must interact with these opportunities in today's radically context-sensitive world.

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Communication is the key to all successful human interactions. In light of the expanding use of texting and other forms of electronic communication, we risk losing the personal, face-to-face meetings that have been the mainstay of positive relationships between individuals and groups for thousands of years.
Lavery shows how the circle process is a powerful tool for overcoming this worrisome situation, as it offers a way to enhance communications, build and rebuild relationships, and improve problem-solving capabilities within families, neighborhoods, schools, corporations, and civic organizations.
Narratives by participants in the Community Circles program attest to the capacity of people and groups to work together to resolve contentious issues, especially when they are provided with a safe place in which to tell their stories and be listened to by others–without judgment.
The circle process has been used successfully for thousands of years in indigenous cultures. With the help of the insights in this book, we now have the opportunity to use circles today to resolve many of the challenging issues that confront our society. The Power of Circles is a valuable guide for the journey ahead.

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This book's findings are rich and intriguing: In his death, Jesus–the chief architect in the production of space in the Christian realm–founds an alternative community that reorders space and creates a new reality for believers. This new community, which dwells in this radical new space, successfully resists the domination of oppressive regimes and mindsets, such as the Roman Empire. Suffering is transformed here. Many recent biblical studies have utilized various methodologies and historical-critical viewpoints, which have been helpful. However, drawing on theories of space and postcolonial approaches, Dr. Ajer breaks new ground in Johannine studies, a new terrain that will yield much fruit. The new understandings of «space» provide a key with which we may unlock more of the mysteries of the Fourth Gospel, as Ajer here demonstrates with powerful new discoveries and insights into John's Passion narrative.

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This book offers a critical and constructive analysis of the contribution of Jurgen Moltmann to the field of ecotheology. Moltmann is one of the foremost and influential contemporary theologians of our time, but his specific contribution to ecotheology has received relatively scant attention in the secondary literature. The author deals sensitively with the relevant scientific aspects necessary in order to develop an adequate theology of the natural world. She also offers a careful and constructive analysis of the specific systematic theologies of creation, humanity, eschatology, and Trinity that are woven into Moltmann's rich interpretation of the relationship between God and creation.

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In this book Martyn Smith addresses the issue of God's violence and refuses to shy away from difficult and controversial conclusions. Through his wide-ranging and measured study he reflects upon God and violence in both biblical and theological contexts, assessing the implications of divine violence for understanding and engaging with God's nature and character. Jesus too, through his dramatic actions in the temple, is presented as one capable of exhibiting a surprising degree of violent behavior in the furtherance of God's purposes. Through a reappropriation of the ancient Christus Victor model of atonement, with its dramatic representation of God's war with the Satan, Smith proposes that Christian understanding of both God and salvation has to return to its long-neglected past in order to move forward, both biblically and dynamically, into the future.

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An exploration of the development of a contextualized Roman Catholic moral theology in an African context is warranted in our day. This book is a study of the work of Benezet Bujo, an African moral theologian. An analysis of Bujo's work shows the various aspects of an African Catholic moral theology. Bujo's work is viewed here as critically bridging African moral theology and the development of moral theology in the Catholic Church, especially in the West. An African moral theology in this work builds on the elements of the renewal of moral theology after the Second Vatican Council. The renewal elements reflected in Bujo's work and other African Catholic theologians include, among others, the use of Scripture, the relevance of history, the debate on moral norms, the relevance of social sciences to moral discourse, the theory of natural moral law, and the relation between the theologian and the magisterium. This work, therefore, locates the theology of Bujo in the development of moral theology after the Second Vatican Council. The author establishes a relation between African traditional religions, African history, Christology, natural moral law, moral autonomy debate, the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, and political-liberation theological ethics.

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