Social Theology

In Holy Disunity: How What Separates Us Can Save Us, Layton E. Williams proposes that our primary calling as humans is not to create unity but rather to seek authentic relationship with God, ourselves, one another, and the world around us. And that means actively engaging those with whom we disagree. Our religious, political, social, and cultural differences can create doubt and tension, but disunity also provides surprising gifts of perspective and grace.

What are the origins of the idea of human rights and universal human dignity? How can we most fully understand and realize these rights going into the future? Internationally renowned sociologist and social theorist Hans Joas tells a story that differs from conventional narratives by tracing the concept of human rights back to the Judeo-Christian tradition or, alternately, to the secular French Enlightenment. Joas sets out a new path, proposing an affirmative genealogy in which human rights are the result of a process of "sacralization" of every human being.

Restored to Earth provides the first comprehensive examination of the religious and ethical dimensions and significance of contemporary restoration practice, an ethical framework that advances the field of environmental ethics in a more positive, action-oriented, experience-based direction. Van Wieren brings together insights and examples from restoration ecology, environmental ethics, religious studies, and conservation and Christian thought....

Augustine and the Cure of Souls situates Augustine within the ancient philosophical tradition of using words to order emotions. Paul Kolbet uncovers a profound continuity in Augustine's thought, from his earliest prebaptismal writings to his final acts as bishop, revealing a man deeply indebted to the Roman past and yet distinctly Christian. Rather than supplanting his classical learning, Augustine's Christianity reinvigorated precisely those elements of Roman wisdom that he believed were slipping into decadence.

In this graphic, thought-provoking book, Ed Griffin-Nolan depicts the experiences of Witness for Peace (WFP), a group of Americans who bore witness to the war in Nicaragua - an event that resulted in the killing and wounding of many innocent Central American civilians. Griffin-Nolan explains how WFP participants spent weeks in the war zones in order to understand the impact of U.S. policy on simple people living, as one member of the group phrased it, "at the end of a gun barrel."

This book offers a close reading of Romans that treats Paul as a radical political thinker by showing the relationship between Paul's perspective and that of secular political theorists. Turning to both ancient political philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero) and contemporary post-Marxists (Agamben, Badiou, Derrida, and Žižek),

The United States stands as the wealthiest, most powerful nation on the face of the earth. But now, in the midst of skyrocketing federal debt, severe economic troubles, political uncertainty, declining morality, a weak church, growing spiritual apathy and apostasy, historic natural disasters, and a myriad of other daunting challenges, many wonder if America’s best days are behind her. Will history’s greatest democracy stage a miraculous comeback, returning to the forefront of the world’s economic and spiritual stage?

John Locke's theory of toleration is generally seen as advocating the privatization of religion. This interpretation has become conventional wisdom: secularization is widely understood as entailing the privatization of religion, and the separation of religion from power. This audiobook turns that conventional wisdom on its head and argues that Locke secularizes religion, that is, makes it worldly, public, and political. In the name of diverse citizenship, Locke reconstructs religion as persuasion, speech, and fashion.

While millions of believers around the world are finding their understanding of Christianity to be outdated and untenable, Matthew Distefano has managed to paint the gospel in such a way that even an atheist could appreciate its beauty. Rather than a message of rapture, or rewards and reprisals, Distefano presents the good news of what God has done in history to stem the tide of our own violence and evil - inviting us into a whole new way of living and being in this world.

History tells us that all civilizations progress through a sequence of nine distinct phases that begin and end with bondage. America is hardly immune to this progression. Michael Abbott, Jr. explores the collapsing cultural institutions that have ushered America within one short step of this final, tragic phase. History and human nature suggest that our fate has already been sealed, but Abbott charts a clear path to breaking free.

Can scientific explanation ever make reference to God or the supernatural? The present consensus is no; indeed, a naturalistic stance is usually taken to be a distinguishing feature of modern science. Science Without God?: Rethinking the History of Scientific Naturalism shows that the history of Western science presents us with a more nuanced picture.

Outreach to those who struggle with same-sex attraction is severely lacking in most churches. As a result, most Christians learn more about homosexuality from movies, the internet, television, and so-called diversity training than they learn in their own congregations. Many people who struggle with same-sex attraction are torn by the debate while yearning to hear the redemptive truth of the Bible and be touched by the unyielding love of Christ. Author Bill Campbell believes that Christians can have a significant positive influence on how the larger culture frames the issue of same-sex attraction. He combines twenty years of study with current surveys and research by national leaders of ministries to homosexuals.

A compilation of narratives and histories based on the largely unheard or ignored perspectives of Scientologists themselves, Among the Scientologists draws on six years of interviews, fieldwork, and research conducted among members of the Church of Scientology. This groundbreaking work examines features of the new religion's history, theology, and praxis in ways that move discussion beyond apostate-driven and expose accounts.

Aimee Byrd explores the theological meaning behind our sexes, helping Christians to understand our sexuality as gift and to grasp the story our bodies tell of Christ’s love for his church. She calls the church to the recovery of God’s true design of man and woman that unfolds through Scripture—indeed to a sexual reformation.

Liberating God: What the Church Doesn't Teach About the Bible is a no-apologies proclamation of the gospel found throughout all of scripture. The message of the Bible is not two separate messages, one old and one new. The Bible preaches one coherent, unbroken gospel throughout its pages. From the story of Moses and the Exodus; from prophets like Jeremiah to kings like David; from tales like Jonah and the Whale to parables told by Jesus; even letters from Apostle Paul, all share the same good news of a liberating God.

Not long ago, most White American Christians believed that Jesus blessed slavery. God wasn't bothered by Jim Crow. Baby Jesus had white skin. Meet Plantation Jesus: a god who is comfortable with bigotry and an idol that distorts the message of the real Savior. That false image of God is dead, right? Wrong, argue the authors of Plantation Jesus, an authoritative new book on one of the most urgent issues of our day.

The Hiddenness of God addresses the problem of divine hiddenness which concerns the ambiguity of evidence for God's existence, the elusiveness of God's comforting presence, the palpable and devastating experience of divine absence and abandonment, and more; phenomena which are hard to reconcile with the idea, central to the Jewish and Christian scriptures, that there exists a God who is deeply and lovingly concerned with the lives of humans. Michael C. Rea argues that divine hiddenness is not a problem to be explained away but rather a consequence of the nature of God himself.

So Help Me God relates the compelling story of Chief Justice Roy Moore, including his controversial Ten Commandments displays, his refusal to obey an unlawful order of a federal court, and why the critical legal and political question of our time is, 'Can the state acknowledge God?'

In 2005 a Chinook helicopter carrying 16 Special Ops soldiers crashed during a rescue mission in a remote part of Afghanistan, killing everyone on board. In that instant, machine gunner Caleb Daniels lost his best friend, Kip Jacoby, and seven members of his unit. Back in the U.S., Caleb begins to see them everywhere - dead Kip, with his Alice in Wonderland tattoos, and the rest of them, their burned bodies watching him. But there is something else haunting Caleb, too - a presence he calls the Black Thing, or the Destroyer.

A cross-section of five frontline leaders in the controversial emerging church movement shed informative light on their beliefs and basic message to help us understand whether it’s all about new methods or a new message or both.