Sue came into the church office in order to help with some paperwork and plans for Sunday morning worship. “What are we doing for Mother’s Day?” she asked.
I paused. I had always benignly neglected Mother’s Day at our church. I thought of it as a Hallmark holiday, and not something that should fit on a liturgical calendar. I was taught in seminary that we should never mention it. Plus, there were personal reasons as well.
In the first issue of the magazine named the Christian Century, in January 1900, the editors said that their special interest was in “the application of Christian principles to character and social problems.” They also spoke of their hope to make the kingdom of God “a divine reality in human society.” This, of course, was what we know today as the “social gospel”—the attempt to move beyond individual piety to address broad social problems. What relevance does that social gospel vision have today?
Why would anyone want to read a theologian's memoir? The answer is not immediately self-evident. One can admire a thinker or an artist and still not be drawn to the person's life story.
I started to write when I was teaching at Augustana College, but after moving to the University of Notre Dame in 1970 I really began to put words on paper. I did not write because I thought you needed to publish to get tenure. I was not that savvy about how these things worked. I probably did need to write to get tenure, but I wrote because I thought I had something to say.
Books
Trails of Hope and Terror: Testimonies on Immigration
Miguel A. De La Torre
Introducing Christian Ethics
Samuel Wells and Ben Quash
Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, a Memoir
Cornel West with David Ritz
Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir
Stanley Hauerwas
Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church Rather Than the State
Daniel M. Bell Jr.
The Ten Commandments (Interpretation series)
Patrick D. Miller
Family Ethics: Practices for Christians
Julie Hanlon Rubio
Touched by a Vampire: Discovering the Hidden Messages in the Twilight Saga
Beth Felker Jones
Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals
Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw
Hunger and Happiness: Feeding the Hungry, Nourishing Our Souls
De La Torre writes “to assist the churchgoing layperson in understanding the complexity of the current immigration debate.” His book does far more than exhibit many of the complexities and calumnies of the politicized debate about immigration in the U.S.
Books
Living Gently in a Violent World
Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier
Leavings: Poems
Wendell Berry
Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity
Richard Bauckham
Christology and Science
F. LeRon Shults
This Mortal Flesh: Incarnation and Bioethics
Brent Waters
Against the Tide: Love in a Time of Petty Dreams and Persisting Enmities
Miroslav Volf
Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World
Serene Jones
Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life
Margaret Kim Peterson
Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation
De Waal has written frequently on Bene dictine spirituality (Seeking God, Living with Contradiction) as well as Celtic spirituality (The Celtic Way of Prayer). This time she focuses on the prologue to the Rule of St.
Books
God, Truth, and Witness: Engaging Stanley Hauerwas
L. Gregory Jones, Reinhard Hütter and C. Rosalee Velloso Ewell, eds.
In June 1933, less than six months after Hitler assumed power in Germany, Karl Barth argued that it was important to do “theology and only theology—as though nothing had happened” (Theological Existence Today).
Postliberal theology has affirmed the decisive significance and the integrity of the biblical narrative. But in what way do postliberals affirm the truth of Christianity? Are they merely saying that the Bible is true in the way that a work of fiction is true?
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