Download or read book Bonhoeffer and the Racialized Church written by Adjunct Faculty Ross E Halbach and published by . This book was released on 2020-09 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we remain faithful to and work within a Christian church that has been historically complicit in racism and that still exhibits racist actions in its communal life? While there have been numerous recent accounts addressing why the Christian church of the West is marked by racism and whiteness, there has been less attention given to how we reconcile the church's racial inequities with the belief that God works through God's people. In Bonhoeffer and the Racialized Church, Ross Halbach seeks to reframe the question within Dietrich Bonhoeffer's conception of the ultimate and penultimate. Bonhoeffer's acute sense of God's continual speaking offers a prophetic challenge to the church: instead of masking the realities of racial sin or pursuing easy resolution, we must confront the full consequences of whiteness in repentant expectation of Christ's coming. Halbach places the writings of Bonhoeffer into dialogue with the contemporary writings of Willie Jennings, J. Kameron Carter, and Brian Bantum, allowing these various perspectives to augment one another. This approach gives new clarity to present theological discussions of race through a consideration of God's regenerative work. Discussions of race must move from seeking a diagnosis to exploring a dialogue that delves deeper into the issue. Racism is not a question to be answered but a resistance that hinders the church from hearing God's present call, which is given to the body of Christ through baptism and Eucharist. The church's response to God's call is found not in the assurance of a solution but in the obedient act of the church's participation with Christ in preparing the way for the church to hear how the triune God has already spoken and continues to speak today. --Brian Brock, Professor of Moral and Practical Theology, King's College, University of Aberdeen

Download or read book Dear White Christians written by Jennifer Harvey and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If reconciliation is the takeaway point for the civil rights story we usually tell, then the takeaway point for the more complex, more truthful civil rights story contained in Dear White Christians is reparations.” — from the preface to the second edition With the troubling and painful events of the last several years—from the killing of numerous unarmed Black men and women at the hands of police to the rallying of white supremacists in Charlottesville—it is clearer than ever that the reconciliation paradigm, long favored by white Christians, has failed to heal the deep racial wounds in the church and American society. In this provocative book, originally published in 2014, Jennifer Harvey argues for a radical shift away from the well-meaning but feeble longing for reconciliation toward a robustly biblical call for reparations. Now in its second edition—with a new preface addressing the explosive changes in American culture and politics since 2014, as well as an appendix that explores what a reparations paradigm can actually look like—Dear White Christians calls justice-committed Christians to do the gospel-inspired work of opposing racist social structures around them. Harvey’s message is historically and scripturally rooted, making it ideal for facilitating the difficult but important discussions about race that are so desperately needed in churches and faith-centered classrooms across the country.

Download or read book Bonhoeffer s Black Jesus written by REGGIE L. WILLIAMS and published by . This book was released on 2021-09 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dietrich Bonhoeffer publicly confronted Nazism and anti-Semitic racism in Hitler's Germany. The Reich's political ideology, when mixed with theology of the German Christian movement, turned Jesus into a divine representation of the ideal, racially pure Aryan and allowed race-hate to become part of Germany's religious life. Bonhoeffer provided a Christian response to Nazi atrocities. In this book author Reggie L. Williams follows Dietrich Bonhoeffer as he encounters Harlem's black Jesus. The Christology Bonhoeffer learned in Harlem's churches featured a black Christ who suffered with African Americans in their struggle against systemic injustice and racial violence--and then resisted. In the pews of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, under the leadership of Adam Clayton Powell Sr., Bonhoeffer was captivated by Christianity in the Harlem Renaissance. This Christianity included a Jesus who stands with the oppressed, against oppressors, and a theology that challenges the way God is often used to underwrite harmful unions of race and religion. Now featuring a foreword from world-renowned Bonhoeffer scholar Ferdinand Schlingensiepen as well as multiple updates and additions, Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus argues that Dietrich Bonhoeffer's immersion within the black American narrative was a turning point for him, causing him to see anew the meaning of his claim that obedience to Jesus requires concrete historical action. This ethic of resistance not only indicted the church of the German Volk, but also continues to shape the nature of Christian discipleship today.

Download or read book A Theology of Race and Place written by Andrew Thomas Draper and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-08-26 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world marked by the effects of colonial displacements, slavery's auction block, and the modern observatory stance, can Christian theology adequately imagine racial reconciliation? What factors have created our society's racialized optic--a view by which nonwhite bodies are objectified, marginalized, and destroyed--and how might such a gaze be resisted? Is there hope for a church and academy marked by difference rather than assimilation? This book pursues these questions by surveying the works of Willie James Jennings and J. Kameron Carter, who investigate the genesis of the racial imagination to suggest a new path forward for Christian theology. Jennings and Carter both mount critiques of popular contemporary ways of theologically imagining Christian identity as a return to an ethic of virtue. Through fresh reads of both the "tradition" and liberation theology, these scholars point to the particular Jewish flesh of Jesus Christ as the ground for a new body politic. By drawing on a vast array of biblical, theological, historical, and sociological resources, including communal experiments in radical joining, A Theology of Race and Place builds upon their theological race theory by offering an ecclesiology of joining that resists the aesthetic hegemony of whiteness.

Download or read book The Death of Race written by Brian Bantum and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brian Bantum says that race is not merely an intellectual category or a biological fact. Much like the incarnation, it is a Òword made flesh,Ó the confluence of various powers that allow some to organize and dominate the lives of others. In this way racism is a deeply theological problem, one that is central to the Christian story and one that plays out daily in the United States and throughout the world. In The Death of Race, Bantum argues that our attempts to heal racism will not succeed until we address what gives rise to racism in the first place: a fallen understanding of our bodies that sees difference as something to resist, defeat, or subdue. Therefore, he examines the question of race, but through the lens of our bodies and what our bodies mean in the midst of a complicated, racialized world, one that perpetually dehumanizes dark bodies, thereby rendering all of us less than God's intention.

Download or read book Asian American Christian Ethics written by Grace Y. Kao and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking volume presents the collective work of twelve Christian ethicists of Asian descent in the U.S. who map the new and burgeoning field of study located at the juncture of Christian ethics and Asian American studies. Led by Grace Kao and Ilsup Ahn, these scholars identify the purposes and chart the contours of what constitutes a distinctly Asian American Christian ethical approach to moral concerns. Asian American Christian Ethics rethinks perennial issues in Christian ethics (war and peace, family/marriage/parenting, gender and sexuality, economics and wealth, virtue ethics), pressing social matters (race relations, immigration, healthcare, the environment), and issues of special interest to Asian Americans (education, labor, plastic surgery). Each chapter utilizes classical Christian sources read from the particular vantage point of Asian American Christian theology, ethics, and culture. Beginning with a description of the range of Christian responses to the issue, each author describes and enacts a constructive proposal for an Asian American Christian ethical response. An ideal volume for researchers, teachers, and students alike, Asian American Christian Ethics articulates the foundations, questions, and goals of this vibrant and flourishing field of study.

Download or read book T T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and Climate Change written by Hilda P. Koster and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-12-12 with total page 729 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and Climate Change entails a wide-ranging conversation between Christian theology and various other discourses on climate change. Given the far-reaching complicity of "North Atlantic Christianity" in anthropogenic climate change, the question is whether it can still collaborate with and contribute to ongoing mitigation and adaptation efforts. The main essays in this volume are written by leading scholars from within North Atlantic Christianity and addressed primarily to readers in the same context; these essays are critically engaged by respondents situated in other geographic regions, minority communities, non-Christian traditions, or non-theological disciplines. Structured in seven main parts, the handbook explores: 1) the need for collaboration with disciplines outside of Christian theology to address climate change; 2) the need to find common moral ground for such collaboration; 3) the difficulties posed by collaborating with other Christian traditions from within; 4) the questions that emerge from such collaboration for understanding the story of God's work; and 5) God's identity and character; 6) the implications of such collaboration for ecclesial praxis; and 7) concluding reflections examining whether this volume does justice to issues of race, gender, class, other animals, religious diversity, geographical divides and carbon mitigation. This rich ecumenical, cross-cultural conversation provides a comprehensive and in-depth engagement with the theological and moral challenges raised by anthropogenic climate change.

Download or read book Brown Church written by Robert Chao Romero and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Latina/o culture and identity have long been shaped by their challenges to the religious, socio-economic, and political status quo. Robert Chao Romero explores the "Brown Church" and how this movement appeals to the vision for redemption that includes not only heavenly promises but also the transformation of our lives and the world.

Download or read book Trouble I ve Seen written by Drew G.I. Hart and published by MennoMedia, Inc.. This book was released on 2016-01-19 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if racial reconciliation doesn’t look like what you expected? The high-profile killings of young black men and women by white police officers, and the protests and violence that ensued, have convinced many white Christians to reexamine their intuitions when it comes to race and justice. In this provocative book, theologian and blogger Drew G. I. Hart places police brutality, mass incarceration, anti-black stereotypes, poverty, and everyday acts of racism within the larger framework of white supremacy. He argues that white Christians have repeatedly gotten it wrong about race because dominant culture and white privilege have so thoroughly shaped their assumptions. He also challenges black Christians about neglecting the most vulnerable in their own communities. Leading readers toward Jesus, Hart offers concrete practices for churches that seek solidarity with the oppressed and are committed to racial justice. What if all Christians listened to the stories of those on the racialized margins? How might the church be changed by the trouble they’ve seen? “This book is a gift from the heart of one of the sharpest young theologians in the United States. Hold it carefully, and allow it to transform you—and our blood-stained streets.”—Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution Free downloadable study guide available here.

Download or read book The Aryan Jesus written by Susannah Heschel and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-03 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Jesus a Nazi? During the Third Reich, German Protestant theologians, motivated by racism and tapping into traditional Christian anti-Semitism, redefined Jesus as an Aryan and Christianity as a religion at war with Judaism. In 1939, these theologians established the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life. In The Aryan Jesus, Susannah Heschel shows that during the Third Reich, the Institute became the most important propaganda organ of German Protestantism, exerting a widespread influence and producing a nazified Christianity that placed anti-Semitism at its theological center. Based on years of archival research, The Aryan Jesus examines the membership and activities of this controversial theological organization. With headquarters in Eisenach, the Institute sponsored propaganda conferences throughout the Nazi Reich and published books defaming Judaism, including a dejudaized version of the New Testament and a catechism proclaiming Jesus as the savior of the Aryans. Institute members--professors of theology, bishops, and pastors--viewed their efforts as a vital support for Hitler's war against the Jews. Heschel looks in particular at Walter Grundmann, the Institute's director and a professor of the New Testament at the University of Jena. Grundmann and his colleagues formed a community of like-minded Nazi Christians who remained active and continued to support each other in Germany's postwar years. The Aryan Jesus raises vital questions about Christianity's recent past and the ambivalent place of Judaism in Christian thought.

Download or read book Redeeming Mulatto written by Brian Bantum and published by . This book was released on 2016-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theological attempts to understand Christ's body have either focused on "philosophical" claims about Jesus' identity or on "contextual" rebuttals--on a culturally transcendent, disembodied Jesus of the creeds or on a Jesus of color who rescues and saves a particular people because of embodied particularity. But neither of these two attempts has accounted for the world as it is, a world of mixed race, of hybridity, of cultural and racial intermixing. By not understanding the true theological problem, that we live in a mulatto world, the right question has not been posed: How can Christ save this mixed world? The answer, Brian Bantum shows, is in the mulattoness of Jesus' own body, which is simultaneously fully God and fully human. In Redeeming Mulatto, Bantum reconciles the particular with the transcendent to account for the world as it is: mixed. He constructs a remarkable new Christological vision of Christ as tragic mulatto--one who confronts the contrived delusions of racial purity and the violence of self-assertion and emerges from a "hybridity" of flesh and spirit, human and divine, calling humanity to a mulattic rebirth. Bantum offers a theology that challenges people to imagine themselves inside their bodies, changed and something new, but also not without remnants of the old. His theology is one for all people, offered through the lens of a particular people, not for individual possession but for redemption and transformation into something new.

Download or read book The Life of Christian Doctrine written by Mike Higton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lives of Christian churches are shaped by doctrinal theology. That is, they are shaped by practices in which ideas about God and God's ways with the world are developed, discussed and deployed. This book explores those practices, and asks why they matter for communities seeking to follow Jesus. Taking the example of the Church of England, this book highlights the embodied, affective and located reality of all doctrinal practices – and the biases and exclusions that mar them. It argues that doctrinal theology can in principle help the church know God better, even though doctrinal theologians do not know God better than their fellow believers. It claims that it can help the church to hear in Scripture challenges to its life, including to its doctrinal theology. It suggests that doctrinal disagreement is inevitable, but that a better quality of doctrinal disagreement is possible. And, finally, it argues that, by encouraging attention to voices that have previously been ignored, doctrinal theology can foster the ongoing discovery of God's surprising work.

Download or read book Inhabitance written by Jennifer R. Ayres and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Brings environmental education literature into conversation with religious conversation and practical theology to foster spiritual, moral, and ecological formation"--

Download or read book Bonhoeffer s Questions written by John W. de Gruchy and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2019-11-08 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While in prison during the Third Reich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer raised several “core questions” in his correspondence with his close friend Eberhard Bethge: How shall future generations live? Who is Jesus Christ actually, for us, today? What does it mean to be truly human? And who am I? In Bonhoeffer’s Questions, John W. de Gruchy explores the development of each question in the course of Bonhoeffer’s life, how he attempted to answer them, and how each prompted further questions in an ongoing conversation with himself, with others, and now with us today. De Gruchy does this within the framework of his own life-long and life-changing conversation with Bonhoeffer in the context of South Africa from the beginning of the apartheid era to the present day. He also describes how he has come to know Bonhoeffer as a theological witness to Christ, a prophet of God’s justice, and a Christian humanist before proceeding with a series of questions addressed to Bonhoeffer with the reader in mind. These range from the debate about God and the future of Christianity to the involvement of Christians and the church in political struggles today.

Download or read book I Can Do No Other written by Anna M. Madsen and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2019-10 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author Anna M. Madsen's book is a fresh and challenging look at the legacy of Martin Luther and the new reformation that is calling people of faith to action today.This book is born out of the conviction that at least two gods are currently competing for our collective trust: nationalism (and its many sub-manifestations) and quietism. Both make a case for and a claim on our allegiance, each by way of different motivations of self and institutional protection. Madsen looks at today's modern context and asks: Where will the church stand in a day that is marked by globalization, polarization, racism, bigotry, and debates about justice for humanity and for the earth itself. While the Reformation church was built on the foundation of justification by grace, Madsen calls people of faith to a new reformation that will focus on standing for justice in the world. Madsen delves into who Jesus was, and how our claim that he died and was raised establishes our faith and impacts the way we live it out. She pays attention to Luther's theology and juxtaposes it with our present context. She explores recent examples of Nazi resistance, liberation theology, black and womanist theology, and feminist theology, each of which come at social justice in their unique ways, with a common conviction that justice work is central to the Christian life. She speaks of how our faith grounding and our faith history weave together and entwine themselves into our present moment, offering both warnings and encouragement. And last, a case is made that justice, anchored in justification, is our new Reformation moment, one not inconsistent with Luther's theology, but weighted differently to address the different weighty concerns of our day. A study guide is included to encourage group conversation and action.

Download or read book The Color of Compromise written by Jemar Tisby and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Color of Compromise, Jemar Tisby takes readers back to the roots of sustained racism and injustice in the American church. Filled with powerful stories and examples of American Christianity's racial past, Tisby's historical narrative highlights the obvious ways people of faith have actively worked against racial justice, as well as the complicit silence of racial moderates. Identifying the cultural and institutional tables that must be flipped to bring about progress, Tisby provides an in-depth diagnosis for a racially divided American church and suggests ways to foster a more equitable and inclusive environment among God's people. Book jacket.

Download or read book The Death of Adam written by Marilynne Robinson and published by Picador. This book was released on 2014-03-18 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this award-winning collection, the bestselling author of Gilead offers us other ways of thinking about history, religion, and society. Whether rescuing "Calvinism" and its creator Jean Cauvin from the repressive "puritan" stereotype, or considering how the McGuffey readers were inspired by Midwestern abolitionists, or the divide between the Bible and Darwinism, Marilynne Robinson repeatedly sends her reader back to the primary texts that are central to the development of American culture but little read or acknowledged today. A passionate and provocative celebration of ideas, the old arts of civilization, and life's mystery, The Death of Adam is, in the words of Robert D. Richardson, Jr., "a grand, sweeping, blazing, brilliant, life-changing book."