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

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.

Reformation and Secularity

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21
Author(s):  
Jason Goroncy
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Brief Assessment ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
The Church

Abstract Among a growing body of recent scholarship that has shown interest in the geneses, definitions, and assessments of secularism is Brad Gregory’s book The Unintended Reformation. This essay begins with a brief assessment of Gregory’s thesis. By way of response, it then offers four reflections on what are live challenges for those Christian communities committed to a refusal to withdraw from sharing and creating common life with others, and for whom the various reformations of the sixteenth century remain critical for the formation of their identities. The reflections concern (1) the character and conditions of belief; (2) the existence of the church in late Christendom; (3) the church’s worldliness; and (4) the character of faithful public life. Each of these themes has pressing implications for the ongoing life of the reformed project.

Mission in Britain today: some modest reflections and proposals

Holiness ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-176
Author(s):  
Stephen Bevans
Keyword(s):  
Technical Change ◽  
Adaptive Change ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Images Of God ◽  
Positive Image ◽  
The Church

AbstractWhile ‘Mission in Britain today’ includes many aspects, this article focuses on the witness of the Church within Britain’s contemporary highly secularized culture. Rather than ‘technical change’, the Church is called to work at ‘adaptive change’, and so to concentrate less on strategies and more on internal renewal. Such adaptive change involves freeing people’s imagination from simplistic and abusive images of God, offering a positive image of God that is inspiring and truly challenging, recognizing the kenotic nature of the Church, and realizing that mission is carried out in a world of grace where God is already present and working

scholarly journals Anglican moral theology today

2021 ◽  
pp. 000332862110206
Author(s):  
Peter Sedgwick
Keyword(s):  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
Deep Appreciation ◽  
Moral Enquiry ◽  
The Church

Anglican moral theology is a genealogy, in MacIntyre’s use of this concept. It is a tradition that is handed on from one generation to another, practically and theoretically. Moral theology is part of the tradition of moral virtue, practiced by Christians, in local communities, families, and of course the church. What is distinctive in Anglicanism was that after 1580 there emerged an Anglican tradition of moral enquiry, which recognized the Protestant emphasis on scripture and a quite different role for the clergy, alongside a deep appreciation of the old, pre-Reformation tradition of moral theology. Today, the Anglican exemplary tradition also incorporates debates on sexuality, gender, and questions of identity. In social ethics, postcolonial voices show both the idolatry of political life and how our common life can be a locus of divine grace. Anglican moral theology is both very vibrant and deeply pluralist today.

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.

scholarly journals Time to Live: Christian Formation through the Christian Year

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-33
Author(s):  
Matthew Erickson
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Formation ◽  
Christian Formation ◽  
Liturgical Year ◽  
Average Work ◽  
Time Structures ◽  
Local Congregations ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Church

This article examines the role of the Christian, or liturgical, year as one of the simplest yet most powerful ways of spiritually forming people, both individually and corporately, to become more like Jesus. Many Christians and churches are subtly shaped more by the time structures of the average work week or cultural holidays than the life of Christ or the church. The tendency to address individual spiritual formation focuses largely on cognitivist approaches to change or individual formative practices. However, the author explores several ways in which the Christian year offers a wholistic approach to life formation through the steady, time-bound patterns of the Christian year. Engaging both the conscious and unconscious self in cognitive practices and steady habits, both the individual Christian and local congregations are trained toward Christlikeness.

scholarly journals The Making of a Canon: Impact of the Old Testament Scriptures in the Christian Canon Development

2018 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 7-21
Author(s):  
Kwaku Boamah
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Linear Process ◽  
Church Of Christ ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Christian Formation ◽  
The Third ◽  
Jewish Scriptures ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
The Church

The formation of the Christian canon was not a one day venture. Some scholars maintain it spanned from the first up to about the fourth centuries. This paper has three main parts: the first draws a linear process of canon generation, beginning from text to scripture and possibly becoming canonical. The second focuses on the creation of the Christian canon by exploring the stages and the implications of naming the canon as `Testaments`. At the heart of the study is a consideration of the use and inclusion or exclusion of the Jewish scripture by Christians as discussed by a heretic (Marcion) and three Anti-heretics (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian) in the 2nd and/or 3rd centuries of the Roman Empire. The third part takes an example of a modern church (Church of Christ) whose reception to the Old Testament is one of skepticism. Furthermore, the level of usage of the Old Testament by the Church of Christ is key for the thesis of this paper. It is, therefore, important to assess a possible relationship between Marcion and the Church of Christ. Historical, theological and an interview are employed to explore these developments. The paper concludes that by the naming of the Christian canon and inclusion of the Jewish scriptures, the Christian identity can be described as Judeo-Christian. This description has impacted Christian formation and development a great deal from antiquity to the modern era. Marcion and his followers did not take this lightly in the first four centuries of the Christian history. On the other hand, in the nineteenth century the Church of Christ seemingly follows this example in antiquity on including the Old Testament as part of the Christian canon.

scholarly journals God en armoede in die Karoo – ’n Besinning oor ’n teologie van transformasie

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 321
Author(s):  
PI Van Niekerk
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
Arid Area ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Social Involvement ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Church

<strong>God and poverty in the Karoo – A reflection on a theology of transformation</strong> <br /> The Karoo is an outstretched arid area characterised by poverty and underdevelopment. This article focuses on the poverty of the Karoo people and the effect of their faith in God on social development and transformation. The future of the Karoo is vested in its people and religious communities. Previous research indicated that believers’ image of God had an effect on their attitude towards social development and transformation. A small sample of women in a Karoo town experienced God as loving, but not as a God that inspired people towards transformation. The test for the church lies in her social involvement in the world as its salvation is God’s concern. In Christian humanism the integrity of creation in a world filled with injustice and poverty is emphasised. Churches in the Karoo are encouraged to utilise a theology of transformation that is developmentally driven and inspired by a transforming image of God.

The ‘Whole Humanity’: Gregory of Nyssa's Critique of Slavery in Light of His Eschatology

2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Bentley Hart
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Economy ◽  
Ancient Text ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Chattel Slavery ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
Female Slaves ◽  
The Church

Nowhere in the literary remains of antiquity is there another document quite comparable to Gregory of Nyssa's fourth homily on the book of Ecclesiastes: certainly no other ancient text still known to us—Christian, Jewish, or Pagan—contains so fierce, unequivocal, and indignant a condemnation of the institution of slavery. Not that it constitutes a particularly lengthy treatise: it is only a part of the sermon itself, a brief exegedeal excursus on Ecclesiastes 2:7 (‘I got me male and female slaves, and had my home-born slaves as well’), but it is a passage of remarkable rhetorical intensity. In it Gregory treats slavery not as a luxury that should be indulged in only temperately (as might an Epicurean), nor as a necessary domestic economy too often abused by arrogant or brutal slave-owners (as might a Stoic like Seneca or a Christian like John Chrysostom), but as intrinsically sinful, opposed to God's actions in creation, salvation, and the church, and essentially incompatible with the Gospel. Of course, in an age when an economy sustained otherwise than by chattel slavery was all but unimaginable, the question of abolition was simply never raised, and so the apparent uniqueness of Gregory's sermon is, in one sense, entirely unsurprising. Gregory lived at a time, after all, when the response of Christian theologians to slavery ranged from—at best—resigned acceptance to—at worst—vigorous advocacy. But, then, this makes all the more perplexing the question of how one is to account for Gregory's eccentricity. Various influences on his thinking could of course be cited— most notably, perhaps, that of his revered teacher and sister Macrina, who had prevailed upon Gregory's mother to live a common life with her servants—but this could at best help to explain only Gregory's general distaste for the institution; it would still not account for the sheer uncompromising vehemence of his denunciations.

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