LITMIR.BIZ

This book offers a comprehensive reflection on what it means that Christians claim that «Jesus is Lord» by engaging in a defense of Christian apocalyptic as the criterion for evaluating the «truth» of history and of history's relation to the transcendent political reality that theology calls «the Kingdom of God.» The heart of this work comprises an original genealogical analysis of twentieth-century theological encounters with the modern historicist problematic through a series of critical engagements with the work of Ernst Troeltsch, Karl Barth, Stanley Hauerwas, and John Howard Yoder. Bringing these thinkers into conversation at key points with the work of Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, John Milbank, and Michel de Certeau, among others, this genealogy analyzes and exposes the ideologically «Constantinian» assumptions shared by both modern «liberal» and contemporary «post-liberal» accounts of Christian «politics» and «mission.» On the basis of a rereading of John Howard Yoder's place within this genealogy, the author outlines an alternative «apocalyptic historicism,» which conceives the work of Christian politics as a mode of subversive, missionary encounter between church and world. The result is a profoundly original vision of history that at once calls for and is empowered by a Christian apocalyptic politics, in which the ideologically reductionist concerns for political effectiveness and productivity are surpassed by way of a missionary praxis of subversion and liberation rooted in liturgy and doxology.

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This book examines how repertoires of speech and action that are often considered to be mutually exclusive–those of church and state–clash or unite during the postdisaster period as local communities and cities struggle to establish a stable collective identity. Based on an analysis of forty in-depth interviews with disaster-response participants and over 325 print-media sources, this study explores, first, the extent to which ministers and citizens challenge statist narratives in order to publicly relay theological views; second, the cultural processes by which local places are nationalized and theologized; and third, the ecclesiological convictions necessary to peaceably advance the work of Christ's body after disasters.

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It is well known that Henri de Lubac's groundbreaking and highly controversial work on nature and grace had important implications for the Church's relationship to culture and was intended to remove a philosophical obstacle hindering Catholicism's faithful engagement with the secular world. This book addresses a too-often neglected dimension of de Lubac's theological renewal by examining the centrality and indispensability of spiritual exegesis in his oeuvre and making explicit its social and political significance for the Church's worship and witness. In addition to exploring the historical and ecclesial context within which he worked, the current work brings de Lubac into a critical engagement with the more recent theological movements of postliberalism and radical orthodoxy in order to demonstrate the enduring significance of his theological vision.

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Seek the Peace of the City provides a robust engagement with the theological foundations and practices of Christian social and political criticism. Richard Bourne identifies a theological realism found in the work of John Howard Yoder. This realism bases social and political criticism in the purposes of a nonviolent, patient, and reconciling God. Bourne develops this account and shows how it is consonant with aspects of the work of a range of contemporary theologians including Stanley Hauerwas, John Milbank, Karl Barth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In developing this theological realism, the book furnishes an account of Christian criticism capable of addressing key debates in contemporary theology and political theory.
Bourne begins by arguing for the public status of theological political claims. He demonstrates that only a vigorous theological realism, grounded in the universal lordship of Christ, is capable of providing a foundation for local, particular, and ad hoc practices of critique. The book concludes by developing an account of the impact such a theological realism and practice of critique might have on contemporary political theory–with explorations of the doxological nature of social change, the changing shape of the state, governmentality and political sovereignty, and the status and role of religious communities in civil society.

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Best-selling author Thomas Friedman says that globalization has made the world flat and that we cannot stop the process. But while it is right to say that globalization tends to flatten our world, it is wrong to say that there are no alternatives to current patterns of economic, ecological, political, and cultural integration. This book argues that the Christian liturgical calendar provides a constructive alternative to the globalization of economics, ecologies, politics, and cultures. It does so by incorporating the church into the fullness of time in the gospel narrative, thereby helping us escape from the dead end of Friedman's flat world so that we can improvise healthier ways of being globally integrated.

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The apostle Paul was a man of many journeys. We are usually familiar with the geographical ones he made in his own time. This volume traces others–Paul's journeys in our time, as he is co-opted or invited to travel (sometimes as abused slave, sometimes as trusted guide) with modern and recent Continental philosophers and political theorists. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Benjamin; Taubes, Badiou, Zizek, and Agamben–Paul journeys here among the philosophers. In these essays you are invited to travel with them into the regions of philosophy, hermeneutics, political theory, and theology. You will certainly hear the philosophers speak. But Paul will not remain silent. Above the sounds of the journey his voice comes through, loud and clear.

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The Death of Secular Messianism argues that, the claims of secularists notwithstanding, modernity did not so much abandon humanity's historic search for the divine, but rather transposed it into a new, innerworldly key. This «secret religion of high modernity» came in both positivistic and humanistic variants. The first sought to overcome finitude by means of scientific and technological progress. The second sought to overcome contingency by creating a collective Subject–the Modern Democratic State or the Communist Party–in and through which human beings would become the masters of their own destiny. In making his case for this thesis, the author outlines a new political-theological and social-theoretical perspective which saves what is best in modernity–its focus on human creative activity and its commitment to rational autonomy and democratic citizenship–while re-engaging humanity's great spiritual traditions.

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In The End of Evangelicalism? David Fitch examines the political presence of evangelicalism as a church in North America. Amidst the negative image of evangelicalism in the national media and its purported decline as a church, Fitch asks how evangelicalism's belief and practice has formed it as a political presence in North America. Why are evangelicals perceived as arrogant, exclusivist, duplicitous, and dispassionate by the wider culture? Diagnosing its political cultural presence via the ideological theory of Slavoj Zizek, Fitch argues that evangelicalism appears to have lost the core of its politic: Jesus Christ. In so doing its politic has become «empty.» Its witness has been rendered moot. The way back to a vibrant political presence is through the corporate participation in the triune God's ongoing work in the world as founded in the incarnation. Herein lies the way towards an evangelical missional political theology. Fitch ends his study by examining the possibilities for a new faithfulness in the current day emerging and missional church movements springing forth from evangelicalism in North America.

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Ought we conceive of theological ethics as an activity that draws from a community's vision of human goodness and that has implications for the kind of person each of us is to be? Or, can students of the discipline map the ethical implications of what Christians confess about God, themselves, and the world while remaining indifferent to these claims? Habituated by modern moral theories such as consequentialism and deontology, Mark Ryan argues, we too often assume that Christian ethics makes no claim on the character of its students and teachers. It is rather like yet another department store within the shopping mall of ideas and ideologies to which advanced education provides access. By arguing that theological ethics is an activity by nature «political,» the author endeavors to show us that to do Christian ethics is to be habituated into ways of talking and seeing that put us on a path toward the good.
The author thus affirms the claim that theological ethics is a life-changing practice. But why is it so? This book endeavors to display a philosophical basis for this claim, by articulating the political character of practical reason. Through rigorous conversation with G. E. M. Anscombe, Charles Taylor, Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Jeffrey Stout, Ryan provides an account of practical reasoning that enables us to rightly conceive theological ethics as a discipline that ought to change our lives.

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It's a simple claim, really – that for Christians, «being a Christian» should be their primary allegiance and identity. For those who proclaim Jesus as Lord, this identity should supersede all others, and this loyalty should trump all lesser ones. It may be a simple claim, but it is a controversial one for many people, Christians and non-Christians alike. The Borders of Baptism uses the idea of solidarity among Christians as a lens through which to view politics, economics, and culture. It offers Christians a fresh perspective capable of moving beyond sterile and dead-end debates typical of debates on issues ranging from immigration and race to war, peace, and globalization. The Borders of Baptism invites Christians of all traditions to reflect on the theological and political implications of first «being a Christian» in a world of rival loyalties. It invites readers to see what it might mean to be members of a community broader than the largest nation-state; more pluralistic than any culture in the world; more deeply rooted in the lives of the poor and marginalized than any revolutionary movement; and more capable of exemplifying the notion of ;e pluribus unum' than any empire past, present, or future.

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