Finding God in the Basement reimagines the Christian theology of sin and salvation through the lens of addiction, offering a liberative vision of human dignity, hope for recovery, and communal transformation.In Finding God in the Basement, Jennifer Carlier offers a theologically incisive critique of how Christian doctrines of sin and salvation fail to engage the lived realities of addiction and recovery. Drawing from her own experiences and from memoirs that recount others’ journeys through addi...
Too often, all oppressed people in America are lumped together under the moniker “people of color,” as if each group’s experience under the yoke of systemic racism has the same economic and social repercussions. But the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) hold a unique claim to economic and reparative justice: for ADOS, after all, is the only group whose ancestors were forcibly brought to America, enslaved, built much of the wealth of the country, yet continue to be specifically excluded from...
Rubén Rosario Rodríguez addresses the long-standing division between Christian theologies that take revelation as their starting point and focus and those that take human culture as theirs. After introducing these two theological streams that originate with Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, respectively, Rosario asserts that they both seek to respond to the Enlightenment's critique and rejection of Christianity. In so doing, they have bought into Enlightenment understandings of human reality and the ...
Originally published in 1963, Honest to God ignited passionate debate about the nature of Christian belief and doctrine in the white heat of a secular revolution. In addition, it articulated the anxieties of a generation who saw these traditional fundamentals as no longer acceptable or necessarily credible. Reissued on the 55th anniversary of the original publication, Honest to God remains a work of honest theology that continues to inspire many in their search for credible Christianity in today...
In this collection, six leading theologians on political theology explore the contemporary states and potential future of the discipline. Offering a highly nuanced and complex picture of "older" and "newer" Political Theology, these scholars examine the multifaceted interconnections and tensions between political theologies, liberation theologies, feminist theologies, and theologies that see themselves as "postcolonial" or "decolonizing." Among other topics, the authors address the...
In this collection, six leading theologians on political theology explore the contemporary states and potential future of the discipline. Offering a highly nuanced and complex picture of "older" and "newer" Political Theology, these scholars examine the multifaceted interconnections and tensions between political theologies, liberation theologies, feminist theologies, and theologies that see themselves as "postcolonial" or "decolonizing." Among other topics, the authors address the...
In this helpful addition to the Armchair Theologians series, Miguel A. De La Torre provides a concise overview of the global religious movement known as liberation theology that focuses on defining the major themes of this movement, as well as dispelling some common misconceptions. Liberation theology attempts to reflect upon the divine as understood from the poor, the marginalized, and the disenfranchised. The key figures, historical developments, and interfaith manifestations...
How should Origen, Anselm, Luther, Wesley, Kierkegaard, Barth, and Whitehead be read today, in light of postcolonial theory and twenty-first-century understandings? This book offers a reader-friendly introduction to liberation theology by having scholars "from the margins" explore how questions of race and gender should be brought to bear on thirty classic theologians. Each short chapter gives historical background for the thinker, describes that thinker's most important contributio...
Queer theology is a significant new development and central to much current teaching and thinking about gender, sexuality and the body. Controversies in Queer Theology provides an overview of the main areas of difference and debate in queer theologies, engaging with and critiquing all the major writers working in this area. Susannah Cornwall shows how this field is still in flux and the highlights implications for employing queer methodologies across theological work.
Enrique Dussel is one of the worldÆs foremost Marxist philosophers whose work continues to have a profound impact on liberation theology. Here, the author presents an alternative reading of the history of the political world and the ideas that have inspired their political philosophy. He argues that our current view of the world needs to break free from being too focused on the thought world of Ancient Greece and on Europe. In this work he offers a reading of the political histor...
This first-of-its-kind collection reveals U.S. Latino/a theological scholarship as a vital terrain of study in the search for better understanding of the varieties of religious experience in the United States. While the insights of Latino/a theologians from Central and South America have gained attention among professional theologians, until now the role of U.S. Latino/a theology in the formation of North American theological identity has been largely unacknowledged. Nonetheless, th...
"Everyone who acts responsibly becomes guilty" was a basic premise that Dietrich Bonhoeffer expressed in various ways in his theology and ethics. Even Bonhoeffer's own actions--in praying for the defeat of his country in World War II and in participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler--demonstrate the tension between the reality of guilt and Bonhoeffer's ethical decisions. In this study, Christine Schliesser examines the problem of guilt in Bonhoeffer's writings, arguing that the c...
In this exploration of John Calvin's political thought, Roland Boer treats Calvin as a biblical scholar and political philosopher, showing us elusive aspects of Calvin's Institutes. Boer investigates Calvin's careful thinking in the Institutes as well as in his biblical commentaries, pursuing Calvin's understanding of political freedom.Boer also explores Calvin's views on grace with the eye of a careful interpreter, and suggests what we might find in Calvin's political thought if w...
In this interesting and important introduction to the life and thought of Martin Luther King Jr., theologian Rufus Burrow explores King's life as well as his thinking and activism. Burrow addresses those who see King as only a social activist by showing how his studies, particularly his theological studies, influenced, shaped, and transformed the activist path he pursued during his public life. This book, with dozens of illustrations by artist Ron Hill, is written for a broad audi...
In this book, theologian Letty Russell redefines the commonly held notion of hospitality as she challenges her readers to consider what it means to welcome the stranger. In doing so, she implores persons of faith to join the struggles for justice.Rather than an act of limited, charitable welcome, Russell maintains that true hospitality is a process that requires partnership with the "other" in our divided world. The goal is "just hospitality," that is, hospitality with justice.Russe...
This is a study of the atonement, the meaning of the death of Jesus Christ. The book surveys historical views but also proposes that the atonement be seen as the death of Christ for both victims and the oppressed, for sinners and oppressors, for the whole creation--including animals and nature. This "triune atonement" refers to the involvement of the Trinity in the atonement, here presented from an Asian American perspective.
How far away is God? How different is God from human beings? This is the theological question of transcendence, and theology has long struggled to find answers that affirm a human relationship with God. In this provocative new work, Mayra Rivera's answer is that God is not within human grasp but is always within human touch. With a strikingly relevant concept of God as transcendent within--transcendence different from the ideas of God as far away, as outside human life and experience...
Asian American Christianity is one of the fastest-growing forms of American Christianity, and it has already proven to be one of the richest and most innovative movements in North American religion. With a deep understanding of their roots in classic Christianity as well as the diversity of Asian culture, these theological voices have contributed some of the freshest and most provocative work of recent decades. This volume brings together women who are searching for authentic Chr...
Unique for its breadth in studying theologians not only from Europe and North America but also from Latin America, Asia, and Africa, this landmark volume introduces the doctrine of the Trinity, examining the work and thought of contemporary theologians throughout the world. Veli-Matti Karkkainen provides an overview of the biblical roots of the doctrine, discussing both the idea of plurality in God in the Old Testament and the rise of Trinitarian understandings in the New Testament. ...
Written by almost sixty Latino scholars and edited by the renowned historian of doctrine Justo Gonzalez, The Westminster Dictionary of Theologians is global in scope, including theologians from around the world spanning the period from the early church to today. This monumental dictionary features entries on nearly thirteen hundred theologians, organized alphabetically, ranging in length from a paragraph to a full page, and including a list of each theologian's major works.
Theologies have often pointed to the cross as a place of suffering and sacrifice, while feminist critiques have frequently argued against interpretations of the cross as patriarchal valorizing of suffering. Wonhee Anne Joh points toward a new interpretation of the cross as a place of love, where God and humanity come together in a surprising way. Interpreting the cross as performing a double gesture that has a subversive effect, Joh argues that the cross works simultaneously to pay ...
This book brings to the fore the difficult realities of racism and the sexual violation of women. Traci West argues for a liberative method of Christian social ethics in which the discussion begins not with generic philosophical concepts but in the concrete realities of the lives of the socially and economically marginalized.
In Essential Theological Terms, renowned church historian Justo Gonzalez provides students with accessible discussions of over three hundred theological terms. Each entry in this two-column work gives more detail than those typical of a dictionary, introducing the meaning of the term, its importance, and ways it has been understood in both historical and contemporary theology. These reliable discussions of the most common ideas and concepts encountered in theological studies will ma...
An expansion of the 1971 classic text, this second edition of Liberation and Reconciliation argues for a balance between the quest for liberation and the need for reconciliation in black-white relations. Written by one of the pioneers of Black Theology, it examines biblical and theological themes from the perspective of Black experience and concludes that nonviolent reconciliation is the best response to racial oppression.
How do black political needs and goals relate to black religious experience? What is the meaning of religion--and of Christ--in a racist society? In this classic early articulation of black theology, first published in 1974, J. Deotis Roberts argues that reconciliation is the essence of the good news, but it must be in conjunction with liberation. Ethnicity and theology, he contends, must meet in the specific black religious experience by recognizing the liberal, activist, and ev...
