It is easy to conclude that the Occupy movement was a flash in the pan, enacted by disgruntled people without a plan or staying power, a passing whim to be forgotten. This book insists otherwise.
Books
Waiting for Gospel
An Appeal to the Dispirited Remnants of Protestant “Establishment,”
Douglas Hall is likely the most influential North American theological interpreter from a Reformation perspective, especially with reference to Luther. He continues to filter his thought through his teachers Tillich and Niebuhr—but he is his own man and carries his inquiry toward the demise of Christendom.
Books
Inheriting Abraham
The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity and Islam
As long ago as 1996, Jon Levenson wrote an important article, “The Universal Horizon of Biblical Particularism.” In that piece he reflected on the way in which the Hebrew Bible adjudicated the particularity of Israel and a reach beyond Israel to the nations.
In The Clash Within, Martha Nussbaum explored the capacity to entertain the other as key to a democratic society. Now she considers angry resistance to the other, bringing her usual erudite analysis and intense moral passion.
They Cried to the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer, by Patrick D. Miller (Fortress). Though billed as a study of biblical prayer, this is the most helpful and comprehensive study of the Psalms we have that moves from critical data to acute theological sensibility.
Lately there has been a surge of studies variously construed as focused on "religion and violence," "the Bible and violence" or "God and violence." Most of these studies are not very helpful, for they dismiss the shrill reality of violence in facile ways.
In the long struggle for freedom in South Africa, parts of the church played a major role, even as other parts colluded with the apartheid regime. Few actions in that struggle were more important than the Belhar Confession.
The interface of Jewish and Christian theology has always been vexing. Partly this is because of the intrinsically incommensurate realities of the two faiths. And partly it has been because of Christian interpreters' uncritical practice of supersessionism, which has been combined with political power that is used in controlling and abusive ways.
Books
The Myth of Religious Violence
Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict
By William T. Cavanaugh
Migrations of the Holy
God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church
William Cavanaugh has written a pair of stunningly important books, in which he makes a clear and persuasive argument for overturning a founding myth of the modern Western state.
Books
The Chosen Peoples
America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election
Todd Gitlin and Liel Leibovitz have written a thoughtful critical volume on the roots and
costs of chosenness as it pertains to historical and contemporary Israel
and the United States.
The mantra of the real estate business is "location, location, location." In this attention-meriting book, the mantra is "local, local, local." John McKnight (professor emeritus at Northwestern University) and Peter Block (partner at Designed Learning in Cincinnati) have both written previously about the nurture of local community.
