LITMIR.BIZ

The project of developing a contextual theology for the Caribbean was first articulated in the early 1970s in Trinidad and Jamaica. In the years since, many evangelical churches and theologians in the Caribbean have been ambivalent about the validity of this project, assuming that an emphasis on context was somehow antithetical to the pure gospel. But the crisis of the times, along with a more mature hermeneutic, has led to a re-evaluation of this assumption.
Here a group of evangelical Caribbean theologians enter the discussion, with substantive proposals for how the gospel addresses the Caribbean context. They are joined by other theologians from mainline Protestant and Catholic traditions in the Caribbean. The result is an ecumenical dialogue on the diverse ways in which orthodox Christian faith may provide both challenge and hope for the Caribbean context. Half the essays in this volume were originally presented at the Forum on Caribbean Theology held in 2010 at the Jamaica Theological Seminary; the rest were invited especially for this volume.

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Preaching is a personal event: a minister or speaker prepares his or her sermon and presents it to the congregation. Preaching, however, also includes the Bible as a central source; this source comes from and provides a basis for the believing community. The preaching event is also personal for the members of the congregation, who are not simply recipients of the preacher's words based on a biblical text. The congregation is involved personally in that each individual interprets the words and the text. What is said in the text, in the sermon, and the listener's response represent parts of each one's testimony. Testimony runs throughout preaching, the Bible, and the congregation. It is in this interchange of preacher, text, and listener that not just one testimony develops but many testimonies are present.

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From all corners of the world, both inside cities and in the remote countryside, the cry for «just peace» rings out loud and strong. But, as many will note in this book, the cry for just peace isn't enough, for just peace requires active faith, working hands, and willing hearts.
Gathered in this volume are essays written from a wide variety of perspectives, religious traditions, nationalities, and ages (from a sixteen-year-old high school student to an eighty-four-year-old senior professor) that seek to offer insight toward answering one question: How are «just peacemaking,» faith formation, and discipleship connected within a twenty-first-century context?

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The integrative theme of this collection of essays is change and transformation explored in the context of diverse expressions within the context of Anglican Church history. It addresses some central themes–notably the sacraments, liturgy, biblical interpretation, theological education, the relationship of church and state, governance and authority, and Christian education.
The volume traces Anglican Church history chronologically. It includes a comparative study of penance in the thought of John Wyclif and Thomas Cranmer. The book also treats the dispersal of authority evident in the development of the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible, consensus in eucharistic theology in the seventeenth century, and developments in biblical interpretation in the early eighteenth century. This book also discusses a vision for the Christian education of children, change in theological education in the 1830s, the metanarrative of continuity developed by High Church historians in the late nineteenth century, increasing self-government in the Church at the outset of the twentieth century, and models of governance at the outset of the twenty-first.
While this collection highlights aspects of change and transformation as an integrative theme, it is not its premise that change was normative or pervasive, perpetual or constant, within Anglicanism. Nevertheless, these essays raise some new lines of inquiry, make some suggestive interpretations, or propose revision of accepted views.

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This volume of essays centers on the theme of doing Christian theology in the present postmodern context, a consistent theme of the teaching of John D. Castelein. The work will celebrate and honor John's years of service by representing reflections of his teaching in the thought of his students and colleagues. The essays range over such topics as theological reflections on the postmodern philosophical themes, the relations between Christian theology and culture, the contributions of philosophical hermeneutics for Christian theology, and the challenges of engaging in ministry in a postmodern context. The seventeen contributors to the volume are former students and both present and former colleagues involved in various ministries, be they in a college setting or in a local church.

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Recent scholarship in a number of disciplines has explored the relationship between ontology and ethics. The essays in this collection indicate what the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) has to contribute to this discussion. By engaging the breadth of his academic and pastoral writings, these essays retrieve Bonhoeffer's theology for a contemporary audience. They do so by critically clarifying and extending key concepts developed by Bonhoeffer across his corpus and in dialogue with Hegel, Heidegger, Dilthey, Barth, and others. They also create dialogues between Bonhoeffer and more recent figures like Levinas, Agamben, Foucault, and Lacoste. Finally, they take up pressing, contemporary ethical issues such as globalization, managerialism, and racism.

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Concerned to think intentionally about liturgy in Baptist life and thought, this book aims to address the practices of Christian worship in a theological light, examining how each brings individual Christian believers and communities of faith to a greater understanding and embodiment of the gospel. In this mode, worship becomes a seamless garment that forms disciples of Christ and opens out toward the world. In short, theology, worship, and mission all intersect in the liturgical life of the body of Christ. In addition to theological engagement with liturgical practices, Gathering Together links reflection to praxis by offering sample patterns as a guide for reenvisioning the shape of Baptist (and other free church) worship.

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Many Pentecostal groups have forgotten their legacy of war resistance and doctrinal history opposing killing. To rectify this loss, we have catalogued Holiness and Pentecostal denominational statements on war and peace. Numerous Holiness groups and virtually all early Pentecostal groups had some form of pacifist statement against war. This antiwar collection gives us an almost uniform picture of the early Pentecostal movement as largely pacifist in orientation. The commonality of these statements across both Holiness and Pentecostal movements is evidence they are a continuous group and not two separate movements. While their early doctrines opposed killing, many named in this book are now widely considered to be stalwarts of the Religious Right, or at least staunch supporters of Christian participation in war. Our hope is that this book will frame the official position of early Pentecostals on war and peace, and encourage Pentecostals today to reflect on their antiwar heritage.

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The scholarship on Martin Luther King Jr. has too often cast him in the image of the Southern black preacher and the American Gandhi, while ignoring or trivializing his global connections and significance. This groundbreaking work, written by scholars, religious leaders, and activists of different backgrounds, addresses this glaring pattern of neglect in King studies. King is treated here as both a global figure and a forerunner of much of what is currently associated with contemporary globalization theory and praxis. The contributors to this volume agree that King must be understood not only as a thinker, visionary, and social change agent in his own historical context, but also in terms of his meaning for the different generations who still appeal to him as an authority, inspiration, and model of exemplary service to humanity. The task of engaging King both in context and beyond context is fulfilled in remarkable ways in this volume, without doing essential violence to this phenomenal figure.

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Bury the Dead is a collection of personal encounters with death: stories of Alzheimer's, AIDS, cancer, hospice, suicide, murder, systemic violence, genocide, and war. In this book a teenager tenderly washes her mother's body, a community organizer cries outrage over his blood-soaked comrade, a father builds a coffin for his infant son, martyrs are honored by a former political prisoner, a young scholar's experiences in Palestine shape her reading of the Exodus narrative, and a community of gardeners plant trees at urban-core murder sites. Drawing from sources such as the peace movement, the Catholic Worker, and Occupy, these stories make connections between medicine delivery, labor picket lines, and PICC-lines; between jazz funeral secondlines and the front lines of countless struggles. Part pastoral theology, part movement history, this book powerfully demonstrates that resisting the power of death is at the heart of Christian discipleship, and that in a culture that fears death, we will only find resurrection in facing it.

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