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Over the last three decades a major cultural shift has taken place in the attitudes of Western societies toward the future. Modernity's eclipse by postmodernity is characterized in large part by the loss of hope for a future substantially better than the present. Old optimism about human progress has given way to uncertainty and fear. In this book scholars from various disciplines - theology, the social sciences, and the humanities - explore the move from a "culture of optimism" to a "culture of ambiguity," and they seek to infuse today's jaded language of hope with a new vitality.The Future of Hope offers a powerful critique of today's stifling cultural climate and shows why the vision of hope central to Christian faith must be a basic component of any flourishing society. The first section of the book sets the context with telling cultural criticism of modernity. The second section focuses on affinities between premodern Christian visions of hope and twentieth-century thought. The final section of the book examines the relationship between postmodern thought, Christian tradition, and biblical hope, addressing how Christians in a postmodern world can best articulate their faith.Written by truly profound thinkers, these chapters are diverse in their content, methodologies, and temperament, yet they are united by a deep engagement with both the Christian tradition and the larger cultural and intellectual climate in which we live and work. The Future of Hope can thus be read not just as an attempt at retrieval of hope for today but as itself one small act of hope in an age when people too seldom take time to think critically and hopefully.Contributors: David Billings Robert Paul Doede Kevin L. Hughes Paul Edward Hughes Daniel Johnson William Katerberg John Milbank Jürgen Moltmann James K. A. Smith Miroslav Volf Nicholas Wolterstorff

I Am the Lord Your God explores anew the place of the Ten Commandments in contemporary civil society, their relation to natural moral law, their relevance for Christian instruction, and their pertinence to ethical issues such as abortion, killing, homosexuality, lying, greed, and the like.Written by an outstanding group of ethicists, theologians, and Bible scholars from various church traditions - Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist - this timely work argues unequivocally for the divine authority and permanent validity of the Ten Commandments in both church and society. While including the Judge Roy Moore controversy in Alabama and other pertinent current issues in their discussion, the authors above all call the church to remain faithful to its heritage - ultimately to the Lord God - amid our postmodern culture at large.Contributors: Markus Bockmuehl Carl E. Braaten William T. Cavanaugh David Bentley Hart Reinhard Hütter Robert W. Jenson Gilbert Meilaender Thomas C. Oden Ephraim Radner R. R. Reno Christopher R. Seitz Philip Turner Bernd Wannenwetsch Robert Louis Wilken

Petition has always stood at the heart of the manner in which evangelicals pray. But why is petitionary prayer important? Grenz presents petitionary prayer as a crucial aspect of the coming of God's kingdom on Earth and challenges the contemporary church to recapture what it means to be a church that prays.

Black Church Beginnings provides an intimate look at the struggles of African Americans to establish spiritual communities in the harsh world of slavery in the American colonies. Written by one of today's foremost experts on African American religion, this book traces the growth of the black church from its start in the mid-1700s to the end of the nineteenth century.As Henry Mitchell shows, the first African American churches didn't just organize; they labored hard, long, and sacrificially to form a meaningful, independent faith. Mitchell insightfully takes readers inside this process of development. He candidly examines the challenge of finding adequately trained pastors for new local congregations, confrontations resulting from internal class structure in big city churches, and obstacles posed by emerging denominationalism.Original in its subject matter and singular in its analysis, Mitchell's Black Church Beginnings makes a major contribution to the study of American church history.

This noteworthy book develops a new theory of the natural law that takes its orientation from the account of the natural law developed by Thomas Aquinas, as interpreted and supplemented in the context of scholastic theology in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Though this history might seem irrelevant to twenty-first-century life, Jean Porter shows that the scholastic approach to the natural law still has much to contribute to the contemporary discussion of Christian ethics. Aquinas and his interlocutors provide a way of thinking about the natural law that is distinctively theological while at the same time remaining open to other intellectual perspectives, including those of science. In the course of her work, Porter examines the scholastics' assumptions and beliefs about nature, Aquinas's account of happiness, and the overarching claim that reason can generate moral norms. Ultimately, Porter argues that a Thomistic theory of the natural law is well suited to provide a starting point for developing a more nuanced account of the relationship between specific beliefs and practices. While Aquinas's approach to the natural law may not provide a system of ethical norms that is both universally compelling and detailed enough to be practical, it does offer something that is arguably more valuable - namely, a way of reflecting theologically on the phenomenon of human morality.

A much-needed addition to the emerging literature on the formative power of religious practices, Educating People of Faith creates a vivid portrait of the lived practices that shaped the faith of Jews and Christians in synagogues and churches from antiquity up to the seventeenth century.This significant book is the work of Jewish, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant scholars who wished to discover and describe how Jews and Christians through history have been formed in religious ways of thinking and acting. Rather than focusing solely on either intellectual or social life, the authors all use the concept of "practices" as they attend to the embodied, contextual character of religious formation. Their studies of religious figures, community life, and traditional practices such as preaching, sacraments, and catechesis are colorful, detailed, and revealing. The authors are also careful to cover the nature of religious education across all social levels, from the textual formation of highly literate rabbis and monks engaged in Scripture study to the local formation of illiterate medieval Christians for whom the veneration of saints' shrines, street performances of religious dramas, and public preaching by wandering preachers were profoundly formative.Educating People of Faith will benefit scholars and teachers desiring a fuller perspective on how lived practices have historically formed people in religious faith. It will also be useful to practical theologians and pastors who wish to make the resources of the past available to practitioners in the present.Contributors: John C. Cavadini Anne L. Clark Lawrence S. Cunningham Joseph Goering Robert Goldenberg Stanley Samuel Harakas Robert M. Kingdon Blake Leyerle Michael A. Signer Philip M. Soergel David C. Steinmetz John Van Engen Lee Palmer Wandel Robert Louis Wilken Elliot R. Wolfson

Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803-1876) was a philosopher, essayist, and minister whose broad-ranging ideas both reflected and influenced the social and religious mores of his day. This superb biography by Patrick Carey provides a thorough, incisive account of Brownson's shifting intellectual and religious life within the context of American cultural history.Based on a close reading of Brownson's diary notebooks, letters, essays, and books, this biography chronicles the course of Brownson's eventful life, particularly his restless search for a balance between freedom and communion in his relations with God, nature, and the human community. Yet Carey's work is more than an excellent account of one man's development; it also portrays the face of an important period in American religious history. What is more, 200 years after Brownson's birth, America is marked by the same pressing social and religious issues that he himself addressed: religious pluralism, changing religious identifications, culture wars, military conflicts, and challenges to national peace and security. Carey's book shows how Brownson's values and ideas transcend his own time period and resonate helpfully with our own.

Paul is traditionally seen as one of the founders of Christian sexual asceticism. As early as the second century C.E. church leaders looked to him as a model for their lives of abstinence. But is this a correct reading of Paul? What exactly did Paul teach on the subjects of marriage and celibacy? Will Deming here answers these questions - often in provocative new ways.By placing Paul's statements on marriage and celibacy against the backdrop of ancient Hellenistic society, Deming constructs a coherent picture of Paul's views. He shows that the conceptual world in which Paul lived and wrote had substantially vanished by 100 C.E., and terms like "sin," "body," "sex," and "holiness" began to acquire moral implications quite unlike those Paul knew. Paul conceived of marriage as a social obligation that had the potential of distracting Christians from Christ. For him, celibacy was the single life, free from such distraction, not a life of saintly denial. Sex, in turn, was not sinful but natural, and sex within marriage was both proper and necessary.

Foreword by Trevor CairneyMONEY - the world today revolves around it. Particularly in capitalist societies, money plays a central role. Given money's pride of place in modern life and given how often the Bible addresses money's use and abuse, the subject of money clearly deserves serious Christian reflection. Craig Gay offers just that in this short, incisive, balanced book.Considering the insights of several classical and contemporary social theorists, Gay shows the duplicity of a monetary ethos: capitalism is without question the most productive economic system ever devised, yet the market system also fosters a subtle nihilism that tends to empty the world of substance and meaning. Gay's study encourages readers to rediscover meanings and values that transcend "cash values" - higher values that can free us from the market economy's grip on our culture.