Everywhere in the western world the process of secularization leads to the decline of faith in God. The concept of secularization itself, however, has come under attack by critics who believe that it does not adequately account for processes which may be part of a certain renascence, as marginal and unrecognized as it may be, of belief in God. Whether these processes are actually taking place, and whether this renascence, if such it is, will bring about a transformation of that belief are questions still waiting to be answered. Are we witnessing the (re)creation of God images, or the...

The idea for this volume originates from the first meeting of the International Society of Empirical Research in Theology (ISERT) in 2002 at the Radboud University Nijmegen. In this volume, researchers and academics from South Africa, Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands debate about the fundamental question of the role of theological normativity in empirical research in theological fields. In fourteen contributions this book would like to illuminate the significance of this central topic for the discipline of practical theology.
The first part of the book provides a...

Since the 1970s, liberal American Catholics have sustained a Reform Movement to counteract the conservative drift of the Vatican and to preserve and expand on the reforms of Vatican II. This book draws on a range of theory to analyze and interpret this movement, which is intent on creating a model of church, that examples Vatican II's open, receptive attitude toward the modern world. In response to backlash from church officials, the movement has increasingly abandoned effort to reform Roman Catholicism from within, and has moved in a sectarian direction by creating independent worship...