By considering transformative ideas and experiences which are explicitly articulated or implicitly structured in languages of religion and spirituality, Alternative Salvations probes concepts including 'religious', 'secular', 'spiritual', 'post-Christian', and 'post-secular', providing a series of studies which question the functionality of these broad categories. Part one draws on contemporary salvation narratives showing how current cultural forms, social practices and secular discourses are influenced by, or are interpreted through, the lens of religious and theological accounts of salvation. Examples include twelve step recovery programs, drug culture, and public policy surrounding HIV-AIDs in Kenya. Although outside traditional religious contexts, the contributors show ways in which they are not free from religious symbolism. Part two explores alternative accounts of salvation rooted in religious traditions. Established orthodoxies are confronted by contemporary critical questions, for example about gender, the status of animals, and the political dimensions of salvation. By contributing new perspectives and unique case studies, Alternative Salvations provides a deliberate challenge to easy binaries which often underpin contemporary and traditional discourses of salvation.

By considering transformative ideas and experiences which are explicitly articulated or implicitly structured in languages of religion and spirituality, Alternative Salvations probes concepts including 'religious', 'secular', 'spiritual', 'post-Christian', and 'post-secular', providing a series of studies which question the functionality of these broad categories. Part one draws on contemporary salvation narratives showing how current cultural forms, social practices and secular discourses are influenced by, or are interpreted through, the lens of religious and theological accounts of salvation. Examples include twelve step recovery programs, drug culture, and public policy surrounding HIV-AIDs in Kenya. Although outside traditional religious contexts, the contributors show ways in which they are not free from religious symbolism. Part two explores alternative accounts of salvation rooted in religious traditions. Established orthodoxies are confronted by contemporary critical questions, for example about gender, the status of animals, and the political dimensions of salvation. By contributing new perspectives and unique case studies, Alternative Salvations provides a deliberate challenge to easy binaries which often underpin contemporary and traditional discourses of salvation.

Will people of other faiths be 'saved' and to what extent should the response to this question shape Christian engagements with people of other faiths? Historically, the predominant answer to these questions has been that the person of another faith will not be saved and is therefore in need of conversion to Christianity for their salvation to be possible. Consequently, it has been understood to be the obligation of Christian persons to convert people of other faiths. More recent theologies of religions for the past half century and more have sought to reconsider these approaches to soteriology. This has sometimes led to a reaffirmation of the status quo and at other times to an alternative soteriological understanding. In seeking to articulate soteriologies that make logical and doctrinal sense, too often these new approaches to salvation and people of other faiths have paid little attention to questions of practice. Drawing on alternative understandings of soteriology as deification, healing, and liberation, each perspective having ancient roots in the Christian tradition, it is argued that salvation can be understood as form of concrete earthly practice. Understood in this way, this book considers how these alternative theologies of salvation might shape Christian practices in a way that departs from a history in which the person of another faith has been perceived as a threat to Christianity and therefore in need of conversion. Further it asks how the complex multi-faith world of the twenty-first century might better inform and shape the way in which Christian theologies frame soteriological understandings.

In Salvation and Sovereignty, Kenneth Keathley asks, “What shall a Christian do who is convinced of certain central tenets of Calvinism but not its corollaries?” He then writes, “I see salvation as a sovereign work of grace but suspect that the usual Calvinist understanding of sovereignty (that God is the cause of all things) is not sustained by the biblical witness as a whole.” Aiming to resolve this matter, the author argues that just three of Calvinism’s five TULIP points can be defended scripturally and instead builds on the ROSES acronym first presented by Timothy George (Radical depravity, Overcoming grace, Sovereign election, Eternal life, Singular redemption). In relation, Keathley looks at salvation and sovereignty through the lens of Molinism, a doctrine named after Luis Molina (1535-1600) that is based on a strong notion of God’s control and an equally firm affirmation of human freedom.