Download or read book Politics after Christendom written by David VanDrunen and published by Zondervan Academic. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than a millennium, beginning in the early Middle Ages, most Western Christians lived in societies that sought to be comprehensively Christian--ecclesiastically, economically, legally, and politically. That is to say, most Western Christians lived in Christendom. But in a gradual process beginning a few hundred years ago, Christendom weakened and finally crumbled. Today, most Christians in the world live in pluralistic political communities. And Christians themselves have very different opinions about what to make of the demise of Christendom and how to understand their status and responsibilities in a post-Christendom world. Politics After Christendom argues that Scripture leaves Christians well-equipped for living in a world such as this. Scripture gives no indication that Christians should strive to establish some version of Christendom. Instead, it prepares them to live in societies that are indifferent or hostile to Christianity, societies in which believers must live faithful lives as sojourners and exiles. Politics After Christendom explains what Scripture teaches about political community and about Christians' responsibilities within their own communities. As it pursues this task, Politics After Christendom makes use of several important theological ideas that Christian thinkers have developed over the centuries. These ideas include Augustine's Two-Cities concept, the Reformation Two-Kingdoms category, natural law, and a theology of the biblical covenants. Politics After Christendom brings these ideas together in a distinctive way to present a model for Christian political engagement. In doing so, it interacts with many important thinkers, including older theologians (e.g., Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin), recent secular political theorists (e.g., Rawls, Hayek, and Dworkin), contemporary political-theologians (e.g., Hauerwas, O'Donovan, and Wolterstorff), and contemporary Christian cultural commentators (e.g., MacIntyre, Hunter, and Dreher). Part 1 presents a political theology through a careful study of the biblical story, giving special attention to the covenants God has established with his creation and how these covenants inform a proper view of political community. Part 1 argues that civil governments are legitimate but penultimate, and common but not neutral. It concludes that Christians should understand themselves as sojourners and exiles in their political communities. They ought to pursue justice, peace, and excellence in these communities, but remember that these communities are temporary and thus not confuse them with the everlasting kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christians' ultimate citizenship is in this new-creation kingdom. Part 2 reflects on how the political theology developed in Part 1 provides Christians with a framework for thinking about perennial issues of political and legal theory. Part 2 does not set out a detailed public policy or promote a particular political ideology. Rather, it suggests how Christians might think about important social issues in a wise and theologically sound way, so that they might be better equipped to respond well to the specific controversies they face today. These issues include race, religious liberty, family, economics, justice, rights, authority, and civil resistance. After considering these matters, Part 2 concludes by reflecting on the classical liberal and conservative traditions, as well as recent challenges to them by nationalist and progressivist movements.

Download or read book After Christendom written by Stanley Hauerwas and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberal/conservative and modern/postmodern concepts define contemporary theological debate. Yet what if these categories are grounded in a set of assumptions about what it means to be the church in the world, presuming we must live as though God's existence does not matter? What if our theological discussion distracts us from the fact that the church is no longer able to shape the desires and habits of Christians? Hauerwas wrestles with these and similar questions constructing a theological politics necessary for the church to be the church in the world. In so doing, he challenges liberal notions of justice and freedom.

Download or read book The Two Cities A History of Christian Politics written by Andrew Willard Jones and published by Emmaus Road Publishing. This book was released on 2021-06-24 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prevailing narrative of human history, given to us as children and reinforced constantly through our culture, is the plot of progress. As the narrative goes, we progressed from tyranny to freedom, from superstition to science, from poverty to wealth, from darkness to enlightenment. This is modernity’s origin myth. Out of it, a consensus has emerged: part of human progress is the overcoming of religion, in particular Christianity, and that the world itself is fundamentally secular. In The Two Cities: A History of Christian Politics, Andrew Willard Jones rewrites the political history of the West with a new plot, a plot in which Christianity is true, in which human history is Church history. The Two Cities moves through the rise and fall of empires; cycles of corruption and reform; the rise and fall of Christendom; the emergence of new political forms, such as the modern state, and new political ideologies, such as liberalism and socialism; through the horrible destruction of modern warfare; and on to the plight of contemporary Christians. These movements of history are all considered in light of their orientation toward or away from God. The Two Cities advances a theory of Christian politics that is both an explanation of secular politics and a proposal for Christians seeking to navigate today’s most urgent political questions.

Download or read book Faith in Democracy written by Jonathan Chaplin and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the place of faith in public life in the UK? Beyond ‘secularism’ that seeks to relegate faith to the margins of public life, and a ‘Christian nation’ position that seeks to retain, or even regain, Christian public privilege, there is a third way. Faith in Democracy: Framing a Politics of Deep Diversity calls for an approach that maximises public space for the expression of faith-based visions within democratic fora while repudiating all traces of religious privilege. It argues for a truly conversational space, reflecting theologically on the contested concepts at the heart of the current debate about the place of faith in British public life: democracy, secularism, pluralism and public faith.

Download or read book Living in God s Two Kingdoms written by David VanDrunen and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2010-10-06 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern movements such as neo-Calvinism, the New Perspective on Paul, and the emerging church have popularized a view of Christianity and culture that calls for the redemption of earthly society and institutions. Many Christians have reflexively embraced this view, enticed by the socially active and engaged faith it produces. Living in God's Two Kingdoms illustrates how a two-kingdoms model of Christianity and culture affirms much of what is compelling in these transformationist movements while remaining faithful to the whole counsel of Scripture. By focusing on God's response to each kingdom—his preservation of the civil society and his redemption of the spiritual kingdom—VanDrunen teaches readers how to live faithfully in each sphere. Highlighting vital biblical distinctions between honorable and holy tasks, VanDrunen's analysis will challenge Christians to be actively and critically engaged in the culture around them while retaining their identities as sojourners and exiles in this world.

Download or read book Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms written by David VanDrunen and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional scholarship holds that the theology and social ethics of the Reformed tradition stand at odds with concepts of natural law and the two kingdoms. But David VanDrunen here challenges that status quo through his careful, thoroughgoing exploration of the development of Reformed social thought from the Reformation to the present. - from publisher description.

Download or read book The Christian Structure of Politics written by William McCormick and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2020-12-17 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Christian Structure of Politics, the first full-length monograph on Thomas Aquinas's De Regno in decades, offers an authoritative interpretation of De Regno as a contribution to our understanding of Aquinas's politics, particularly on the relationship between Church and State. William McCormick argues that Aquinas takes up a via media between Augustine and Aristotle in De Regno, invoking human nature to ground politics as rational, but also Christian principles to limit politics because of both sin and the supernatural end of man beyond politics. Where others have seen disjoined sections on the best regime, tyranny, and the reward of the king, McCormick identifies a dialogical structure to the text - one not unlike the disputed question format - whereby Aquinas both tempers expectations for the best government and offers a spiritual diagnosis of tyranny, culminating in a sharp critique of civil religion and political theology. McCormick draws upon historical research on Aquinas' context, especially that of Anthony Black, Cary Nederman and Francis Oakley, from which he develops three themes: the medieval preponderance of kingship and royal ideology; the relationship between Church and State; and the intersection of Latin Christianity and Greco-Roman antiquity. While age-old concerns, recent research in these areas has allowed us to move beyond simplistic platitudes. For scholars of political theory and the history of political thought, De Regno will prove fascinating for the interplay of Aristotelian and Augustinian elements, undercutting the conventional wisdom that Aquinas was simply an Aristotelian. De Regno also includes an extended treatment of civil religion, one of Aquinas’ most historically-oriented discussions of politics.

Download or read book Evangelism after Christendom written by Bryan Stone and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2007-03-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people think of evangelism as something an individual does--one person talking to one or more other people about the gospel. Bryan Stone, however, argues that evangelism is the duty and call of the entire church as a body of witness. Evangelism after Christendom explores what it means to understand and put to work evangelism as a rich practice of the church, grounding evangelism in the stories of Israel, Jesus, and the Apostles. This thorough treatment is marked by an astute sensitivity to the ways in which Christian evangelism has in the past been practiced violently, intentionally or unintentionally. Pointing to exemplars both Protestant and Catholic, Stone shows pastors, professors, and students how evangelism can work nonviolently.

Download or read book The Myth of a Christian Nation written by Gregory A. Boyd and published by HarperChristian + ORM. This book was released on 2009-05-18 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The church was established to serve the world with Christ-like love, not to rule the world. It is called to look like a corporate Jesus, dying on the cross for those who crucified him, not a religious version of Caesar. It is called to manifest the kingdom of the cross in contrast to the kingdom of the sword. Whenever the church has succeeded in gaining what most American evangelicals are now trying to get – political power – it has been disastrous both for the church and the culture. Whenever the church picks up the sword, it lays down the cross. The present activity of the religious right is destroying the heart and soul of the evangelical church and destroying its unique witness to the world. The church is to have a political voice, but we are to have it the way Jesus had it: by manifesting an alternative to the political, “power over,” way of doing life. We are to transform the world by being willing to suffer for others – exercising “power under,” not by getting our way in society – exercising “power over.”

Download or read book Church And Israel After Christendom written by Scott Bader-Saye and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-08 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents two seismic events. The first is the demise of the Christendom paradigm, in which the church was positioned as the spiritual sponsor of Western civilization. The second event is the Holocaust, the Shoah, the systematic attempt by a "Christian nation" to eradicate the Jews.

Download or read book Postsecular History written by Maxwell Kennel and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-13 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how contemporary approaches to the meaning of time and history follow patterns that are simultaneously political and theological. Even after postsecular critiques of Christianity, religion, and secularity, many influential ways of dividing time and history continue to be formed by providential narratives that mediate between experience and expectation in movements from promise to fulfilment. In response to persistent theological influences within ostensibly secular ways of understanding time and history, Postsecular History revisits and revises the concept of periodization by tracing powerful efforts to divide time into past, present, and future, and by critiquing historical partitions between the Reformation and Enlightenment. Developing a postsecular critique of theopolitical periodization in six chapters, Postsecular History questions how relations of possession, novelty, freedom, and instrumentality implied in the prefix ‘post’ are reproduced in postsecular discourses and the field of political theology.

Download or read book Post Christendom written by Stuart Murray and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-01-10 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Western societies are experiencing a series of disorientating culture shifts. Uncertain where we are heading, observers use "post" words to signal that familiar landmarks are disappearing, but we cannot yet discern the shape of what is emerging. One of the most significant shifts, "post-Christendom," raises many questions about the mission and role of the church in this strange new world. What does it mean to be one of many minorities in a culture that the church no longer dominates? How do followers of Jesus engage in mission from the margins? What do we bring with us as precious resources from the fading Christendom era, and what do we lay down as baggage that will weigh us down on our journey into post-Christendom? Post-Christendom identifies the challenges and opportunities of this unsettling but exciting time. Stuart Murray presents an overview of the formation and development of the Christendom system, examines the legacies this has left, and highlights the questions that the Christian community needs to consider in this period of cultural transition.

Download or read book Political Church written by Jonathan Leeman and published by SPCK. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The church is political. Theologians have been debating this claim for years. Liberationists, Anabaptists, Augustinians, neo-Calvinists, Radical Orthodox and others continue to discuss the matter. What do we mean by politics and the political? What are the limits of the church’s political reach? What is the nature of the church as an institution? How do we establish these claims theologically? Jonathan Leeman sets out to address these questions in this significant work. Drawing on covenantal theology and the ‘new institutionalism’ in political science, Leeman critiques political liberalism and explores how the biblical canon informs an account of the local church as an embassy of Christ’s kingdom. Political Church heralds a new era in political theology.

Download or read book Party Discipline and Parliamentary Politics written by Christopher J. Kam and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text examines the interaction and contention between party leaders and MPs to study the underlying structure of party unity.

Download or read book The Stillborn God written by Mark Lilla and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-09-23 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant account of religion's role in the political thinking of the West, from the Enlightenment to the close of World War II.The wish to bring political life under God's authority is nothing new, and it's clear that today religious passions are again driving world politics, confounding expectations of a secular future. In this major book, Mark Lilla reveals the sources of this age-old quest-and its surprising role in shaping Western thought. Making us look deeper into our beliefs about religion, politics, and the fate of civilizations, Lilla reminds us of the modern West's unique trajectory and how to remain on it. Illuminating and challenging, The Stillborn God is a watershed in the history of ideas.

Download or read book Rethinking Christ and Culture written by Craig A. Carter and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1951, theologian H. Richard Niebuhr published Christ and Culture, a hugely influential book that set the agenda for the church and cultural engagement for the next several decades. But Niebuhr's model was devised in and for a predominantly Christian cultural setting. How do we best understand the church and its writers in a world that is less and less Christian? Craig Carter critiques Niebuhr's still pervasive models and proposes a typology better suited to mission after Christendom.

Download or read book An Eerdmans Reader in Contemporary Political Theolog written by William T. Cavanaugh and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2011-11-18 with total page 837 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Eerdmans Reader in Contemporary Political Theology gathers some of the most significant and influential writings in political theology from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Given that the locus of Christianity is undeniably shifting to the global South, this volume uniquely integrates key voices from Africa, Asia, and Latin America with central texts from Europe and North America on such major subjects as church and state, gender and race, and Christendom and postcolonialism. Carefully selected, thematically arranged, and expertly introduced, these forty-nine essential readings constitute an ideal primary-source introduction to contemporary political theology a profoundly relevant resource for globally engaged citizens, students, and scholars. CONTRIBUTORS: Nicholas Adams Rafael Avila Karl Barth Richard Bauckham Dietrich Bonhoeffer Walter Brueggemann Ernesto Cardenal J. Kameron Carter James H. Cone Dorothy Day Musa W. Dube Jean Bethke Elshtain Eric Gregory Gustavo Gutirrez Stanley Hauerwas George Hunsinger Ada Mara Isasi-Diaz Emmanuel M. Katongole Rafiq Khoury Kosuke Koyama Brian McDonald Johann Baptist Metzv Virgil Michel Nstor O. Miguez John Milbank John Courtney Murray Ched Myers H. Richard Niebuhr Reinhold Niebuhr Arvind P. Nirmal Oliver O Donovan Catherine Pickstock Kwok Pui-lan A. Maria Arul Raja Walter Rauschenbusch Joerg Rieger Christopher Rowland Rosemary Radford Ruether Alexander Schmemann Carl Schmitt Peter Manley Scott Jon Sobrino Dorothee Solle R. S. Sugirtharajah Elsa Tamez Mark Lewis Taylor Emilie M. Townes Desmond Tutu Bernd Wannenwetsch Graham Ward George Weigel Delores S. Williams Rowan Williams Walter Wink John Howard Yoder Kim Yong-Bock