In this first of three volumes, Dorrien identifies the indigenous roots of American liberal theology and demonstrates a wider, longer-running tradition than has been thought. The tradition took shape in the nineteenth century, motivated by a desire to map a modernist "third way" between orthodoxy and rationalistic deism/atheism. It is defined by its openness to modern intellectual inquiry; its commitment to the authority of individual reason and experience; its conception of Christianity as an ethical way of life; and its commitment to make Christianity credible and socially relevant to modern people. Dorrien takes a narrative approach and provides a biographical reading of important religious thinkers of the time, including William E. Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Charles Briggs. Dorrien notes that, although liberal theology moved into elite academic institutions, its conceptual foundations were laid in the pulpit rather than the classroom.

What is Christian Doctrine? This Companion guides students and scholars through the key issues in the contemporary practice of Christian theology. Including twenty-one essays, specially commissioned from an international team of leading theologians, the volume outlines the central features of Christian doctrinal claims and examines leading methods and theological movements. The first part of the book explores the ten most important topics in Christian doctrine, offering a nuanced historical analysis, as well as charting pathways for further development. In the second part, essays address the most significant movements that are reshaping approaches to multiple topics across disciplinary, as well as denominational and ecclesiastical, borders. Incorporating cutting-edge biblical and historical scholarship in theological argument, this Companion serves as an accessible and engaging introduction to the main themes of Christian doctrine. It will also guide theologians through a growing literature that is increasingly diverse and pluriform.

An illustrated A to Z reference containing over 600 entries providing information on the theology, people, historical events, institutions and movements related to Protestantism.

Written by prominent scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this diverse collection of essays discusses the contemporary relevance of the prophetic mode and challenges in the areas of religion, politics, and society. The contributors critically investigate the creative interaction between the religious and secular domains and explain how the prophetic mode can provide solutions to pressing problems such as war, oppression, poverty, hunger, and discrimination. The essays explore possibilities of achieving an integration of prophetic ethics, social scientific understanding, and democratic and constitutional statecraft and they describe how the prophetic mode currently manifests itself in political philosophy, history, religion, and literature.

Salvation Story responds to Douglas John Hall's claim that the world is "waiting for gospel." Humanity needs a clearer understanding that the gospel has come to redeem. The work of Rene Girard, an anthropologist, demonstrates that our human culture is founded on the concealing of its own violence in religious myths and symbols. Girard had hoped to enter into dialogue with Richard Dawkins, whose expertise is evolution, but this encounter never happened. Dawkins observed how evolution is blind, not unlike the blindness created by human myth and religion. Bringing together the work of Girard and Dawkins provides a lens for reading scripture. Salvation Story is written to challenge religious fundamentalists and atheists alike, as well as the rest of us--all those who realize that our current approaches to the Bible are woefully inadequate. This book digs into these ancient texts to discover what we have been hiding from regarding our own evolutionary inheritance, in order to discover the God who comes to save us from our own self-destruction.

The British Christian Women’s Movement charts the British Christian women’s movement and its inception in the post-sixties decades, amid new currents generated in the British denominational churches, and the wider current of Women’s Liberation. Focusing on Christian women’s concern with the position of women in the church, this book identifies core Christian women’s theology which affirms a (rehabilitated) ‘new Eve in Christ’, and contrasts with a paradigm shift taking shape in North American feminist theology. It argues that this divergence is primarily because of the effect of prolonged Church of England women’s ordination debates upon the ethos of the British Christian women’s movement.