Description: In The End of Evangelicalism? David Fitch examines the political presence of evangelicalism as a church in North America. Amidst the negative image of evangelicalism in the national media and its purported decline as a church, Fitch asks how evangelicalism's belief and practice has formed it as a political presence in North America. Why are evangelicals perceived as arrogant, exclusivist, duplicitous, and dispassionate by the wider culture? Diagnosing its political cultural presence via the ideological theory of Slavoj Zizek, Fitch argues that evangelicalism appears to have lost...

A. James Reimer's (1942-2010) theopolitical project, intended to be a fully theologically conceptualized political theology, offers a constructive and creative contribution to this burgeoning field of theological inquiry. Reimer's thesis for this theologically derived politics focuses on the necessity to take seriously the biblical-Trinitarian foundations for all Christian social ethics, but also on the importance of astute and faithful engagement by Christians in public institutional life, including the political realm. While Reimer understood himself to be working as an Anabaptist, and...

Every tradition has its surprising voices, its thinkers who look at things slightly differently than most. Evangelicalism is no exception. Many surprising evangelical voices end up being embarrassments of one sort or another: everyone can choose their favorite example of this phenomenon Rather than seeking to expose these sorts of negative surprises, this book explores the surprising voice of the late evangelical theologian A. J. Conyers. Conyers's political theology is a resource for a robust evangelical theopolitical imagination. By learning from Conyers, evangelicals can overcome common...

About the Contributor(s): Artur Mrowczy ski-Van Allen is director of the Slavic Department at the International Center for the Study of the Christian Orient in Granada, Spain. He is Currently Professor at the Instituto de Filosofia ""Edith Stein"" and the Instituto de Teologia ""Lumen Gentium"" (Granada), where he teaches Philosophy of History and Political Philosophy. He is also member of the Scientific Council of the Centro Studi ""Vita e Destino, Vasily Grossman"" (Turin), and Consultant of Episcopal Commission for Interconfessional Relations of the Episcopal Conference of Spain (Madrid)....

There are three main positions that people adopt within the abortion debate: pro-life, muddled middle, and pro-choice. Jesus v. Abortion critiques the pro-choice and muddled middle positions, employing several unusual angles: (1) The question ""What would Jesus say about abortion if he were here today?"" is given very substantial treatment. (2) The abortion debate is usually conducted using moral and metaphysical arguments; this book adds in anthropological insights regarding the function of violence in human culture. (3) Rights language is employed by both sides of the debate, to opposite...

Is Christian mission even possible today? In --a secular age, -- is it possible to talk about the goodness of God in a compelling way? How should the church proceed? Carolyn Chau explores the question of Catholic mission in a secular age through a constructive interpretation of the work of two celebrated Catholic thinkers, philosopher Charles Taylor and theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, arguing that Taylor and Balthasar together offer a promising path for mission today. Chau attends to Taylor's account of the conditions of belief today, and the genesis of the sociohistorical limits on...

This book examines how repertoires of speech and action that are often considered to be mutually exclusive--those of church and state--clash or unite during the postdisaster period as local communities and cities struggle to establish a stable collective identity. Based on an analysis of forty in-depth interviews with disaster-response participants and over 325 print-media sources, this study explores, first, the extent to which ministers and citizens challenge statist narratives in order to publicly relay theological views; second, the cultural processes by which local places are...

Best-selling author Thomas Friedman says that globalization has made the world flat and that we cannot stop the process. But while it is right to say that globalization tends to flatten our world, it is wrong to say that there are no alternatives to current patterns of economic, ecological, political, and cultural integration. This book argues that the Christian liturgical calendar provides a constructive alternative to the globalization of economics, ecologies, politics, and cultures. It does so by incorporating the church into the fullness of time in the gospel narrative, thereby helping us...