scholarly journals Public Theology in the Secular Age: Editor’s Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Milton, PhD
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Front Page ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
Subject Matter Experts ◽  
Business Law ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
Kennedy Institute ◽  
The Church

Discipleship and the Front Page: Public Theology in the Secular Age is an anthology of monographs offered to the general public as a contribution of distinctively Christian thinking about the personal and public implications for following Jesus Christ in “A Secular Age” (Charles Taylor, 2009). The monographs are written by subject matter experts—clergy, and laity; academics and practitioners; theologians representing a variety of traditions within the Church, as well as professionals from business, law, and medicine— with a common mission to leverage their expertise in the service of Christ and His Church. The work is a public theology initiative of the D. James Kennedy Institute of Reformed Leadership, a ministry and program of Faith for Living, Inc., a North Carolina nonprofit corporation. The collection address four areas of public life: Ideas, Daily Life, the Nation, and Triggers. Each area constitutes a division of the collection. Each of the four divisions contains three issues. The twelve issues represent the twelve chapter chapters in the book.

scholarly journals The church’s witness in a secular age: A Hauerwasian response to privatized and individualized religion

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Aaron Wessman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Stanley Hauerwas ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
The Church ◽  
Contemporary Western Society

Stanley Hauerwas has been noted for his theology of missionary “witness.” However, his theology is not uncontroversial. Of late, it is argued that his theology of witness does not often, or sufficiently, attend to the nature and complexity of belief for those people who live in contemporary, Western society. Part of this complexity, as highlighted by various sociologists and theologians, is that religion has become individualized and privatized. These are serious challenges to the church’s engagement with contemporary society, which Hauerwas does not always seem to adequately address. It will be the purpose of this article, however, to attempt to overcome this lacuna in Hauerwas’s theology, and explore if, and how, his theology might serve as a response to some of the specific challenges arising out of the growing trend towards “privatized religion” in the United States. This will be accomplished by bringing into dialogue Hauerwas’s later work on witness, with some of the sociological insights provided by Charles Taylor and Robert Wuthnow. It will be argued that Hauerwas’s theology of witness, though incomplete, does provide insights that might be helpful to the church in her missionary efforts in the United States.

scholarly journals Clarifying the Task of the Church in a Secular Age

Lumen et Vita ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-51
Author(s):  
Grace Mariette Agolia
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
The World ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
Critical Task ◽  
Theological Understanding ◽  
The Church

This paper argues that a proper theological understanding of the church-world relationship must avoid the tendency to dichotomize the two. Instead of regarding the world as a godless place, Christians must affirm in faith that the world is fundamentally graced, since it is the product of God’s desire to communicate Godself. First, this paper draws upon the work of philosopher Charles Taylor to elucidate the meaning of “secularity” in the Western context. Then, the paper appeals to Karl Rahner’s theology in exploring the prophetic and dialogical functions of the church with respect to society, which entails the church’s own self-critical task as a listening, discerning, and synodal church. Rather than privatizing faith, the minority status of the church in society allows it to fulfill its mission more authentically as servant and sacrament of God’s kingdom. Finally, this paper proposes that any impingement of the ostensible sacred-secular divide starts with the works of mercy because these directly confront the contingencies and vagaries of human life, touching upon our innate need for one another.

Going Dutch in the Modern Age: Abraham Kuyper's Struggle for a Free Church in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands

2013 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 513-532
Author(s):  
JOHN HALSEY WOOD
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
Free Church ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mass Participation ◽  
Cultural Shifts ◽  
The Church

The nineteenth century witnessed a transition from the ancien régime to the ‘age of mobilisation’, says Charles Taylor, from an organically and hierarchically connected society to a fragmented society based on mass participation, charismatic leaders and organisational tactics. Amid this upheaval the Netherlands Reformed Church faced an unprecedented crisis as it lost its taken-for-granted social status. This essay examines the new legitimation that Abraham Kuyper offered the Church through his Free Church theology, and how various other aspects of his theology, including his baptismal and public theology, developed in conjunction with his ecclesiology. Kuyper's ecclesiology thus offers a case study of problems that ecclesiology in general faced due to the social and cultural shifts of the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Christian Formation in Practical Public Theology

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 147
Author(s):  
JENNIFER PATTERSON
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
Christian Formation ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Multiple Factors ◽  
Cultural Mandate ◽  
The Church

Practical public theology engages questions concerning life together in a political community. Forming Christians in practical public theology draws on biblically informed principles and the experience of community in the church. It fosters a conception of public life that is wider than the strictly political, enabling responses with the resources and capacities of spheres beyond government alone. It cultivates a disposition to discern the multiple theological principles in many concerns of our common life and attention to multiple factors from the perspectives of practitioners in other spheres. Finally, practical public theology equips Christians to recognize more than material dimensions in challenges facing individuals and communities and to respond relationally, through loving service to all neighbors. KEYWORDS: Practical public theology, formation, creation, cultural mandate, common grace, image of God, stewardship, poverty, conscience, gender identity

Hospitality at community wells: The life-giving waters of John 4:7–15

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (4) ◽  
pp. 526-535
Author(s):  
Cindy Bolden
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
God's Love ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Church ◽  
Samaritan Woman

Jesus’s encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well is a paradigmatic text for the Church, showing new possibilities for how the Church can engage the world, specifically engagement through invitational conversation and acts of charity at modern-day community wells. A Place at the Table is a pay-what-you-can café in Raleigh, North Carolina. Patrons can pay the suggested price, less than the suggested price, redeem a token worth the cost of a meal, or pay by volunteering at the café. Patrons who are able to “pay it forward” can further support the mission by tipping or buying meal tokens for others. At this café, a space reminiscent of an ancient “community well,” thirsty travelers receive the life-giving waters of acceptance, connection, and sustenance. The custom of hospitality is a life-giving and transformational practice for the Church, a viable and tangible way to connect with its neighbor and draw all persons into the experience of God’s love.

scholarly journals Religion at Play

Pneuma ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Vondey
Keyword(s):  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Critical Dialogue ◽  
Secular World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Secular Age

Abstract Pentecostals do not fit the dominant narrative of a secular age constructed by Charles Taylor. Instead, Pentecostalism is a religion at play that engages with the secular without accepting its authority. A critical dialogue with Taylor’s foundational proposal of the central conditions of premodern life that have made room for our modern secular world demonstrates how and why these conditions are not met in Pentecostalism. The article then identifies the alternative mechanisms in place in Pentecostalism as a form of religion at play manifested in an enchanted worldview, sociospiritual attachment, the festival of Pentecost, the transformation of secular time, and a porous cosmos. A close examination of the notion of play in Taylor’s narrative illuminates in more detail the ill fit of Pentecostalism in the history of a secular age and reveals that Pentecostalism represents a condition of religion that resolves the tension between sacred and secular and that challenges the dominance of “secular” and “religious” as uncontested ideas of our modern world.

Public Theology: Its Pastoral, Apologetic, Scientific, Political, and Prophetic Tasks

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-177
Author(s):  
Ted Peters
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
Constructive Work ◽  
The Church

Abstract This blueprint for a constructive public theology assumes that Christian theology already includes public discourse. Following David Tracy’s delineation of three publics—church, academy, culture—further constructive work leads to a public theology conceived in the church, reflected on critically in the academy, and meshed with the wider culture. Public reflection on classic Christian doctrines in a post-secular pluralistic context takes the form of pastoral illumination, apologetic reason, a theology of nature, political theology, and prophetic critique.

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