Proceedings of a conference held in July 2007 at Oberlin College.

Since its founding in 1957, the National Council of Churches Commission on Faith and Order has worked to draw churches out of isolation into discussion on points of agreement and disagreement in faith, order, and worship. In Faith and Order in the USA, William Norgren, a long-time executive director of the Faith and Order Commission, takes a look at its background, history, and major initiatives. He shows how the Commission originally limited in its scope to mainline Protestant, Episcopal, and Orthodox church bodies fostered fruitful dialogue not only between its founding churches but also, over time, with Roman Catholic, Southern Baptist, Evangelical, Pentecostal, Adventist, holiness, and peace churches, contributing to greater friendship, harmony, and partnership among many Christian churches in America.

The work of uniting churches is slow, challenging, and multifaceted; and it changes in each generation and location. In this book, Josiah Baker studies the efforts of believers towards reconciliation as something significant for how we understand the church. He offers a theology for laborers, people for whom unity is not only an idea but a calling and sure hope. A Visible Unity is a study in systematic theology on the relation of ecumenical methodology to ecclesiological convergence, how acting together results in the churches being together. Ecumenical work informs ecclesiology because it involves the actions of Christians together in accordance with their shared views of the church. Whenever this work changes, the partnering churches change their relations and further resolve their divisions. Baker studies ecclesiology by telling stories about a person—the Pentecostal ecumenist Cecil Robeck—for Robeck’s decades of leadership in American and global ecumenical settings. By narrating his activities and analyzing his thought, the book offers a window into the interrelation of different portions of the ecumenical movement and how the movement has changed over the years. Baker compiles archival materials and personal interviews to tell stories about ecumenism never before published.

This volume proposes a fresh strategy for ecumenical engagement - 'Receptive Ecumenism' - that is fitted to the challenges of the contemporary context and has already been internationally recognised as making a distinctive and important new contribution to ecumenical thought and practice. Beyond this, the volume tests and illustrates this proposal by examining what Roman Catholicism in particular might fruitfully learn from its ecumenical others. Challenging the tendency for ecumenical studies to ask, whether explicitly or implicitly, 'What do our others need to learn from us?', this volume presents a radical challenge to see ecumenism move forward into action by highlighting the opposite question 'What can we learn with integrity from our others?' This approach is not simply ecumenism as shared mission, or ecumenism as problem-solving and incremental agreement but ecumenism as a vital long-term programme of individual, communal and structural conversion driven, like the Gospel that inspires it, by the promise of conversion into greater life and flourishing. The aim is for the Christian traditions to become more, not less, than they currently are by learning from, or receiving of, each other's gifts. The 32 original essays that have been written for this unique volume explore these issues from a wide variety of denominational and disciplinary perspectives, drawing together ecclesiologists, professional ecumenists, sociologists, psychologists, and organizational experts.

In this timely study Gavin D'Costa explores Roman Catholic doctrines after the Second Vatican Council regarding the Jewish people (1965 - 2015). It establishes the emergence of the teaching that God's covenant with the Jewish people is irrevocable. What does this mean for Catholics regarding Jewish religious rituals, the land, and mission? Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II establishes that the Catholic Church has a new teaching about the Jewish people: the covenant made with God is irrevocable. D'Costa faces head-on three important issues arising from the new teaching. First, previous Catholic teachings seem to claim Jewish rituals are invalid. He argues this is not the case. Earlier teachings allow us positive insights into the modern question. Second, a nuanced case for Catholic minimalist Zionism is advanced, without detriment to the Palestinian cause. This is in keeping with Catholic readings of scripture and the development of the Holy See's attitude to the State of Israel. Third, the painful question of mission is explored. D'Costa shows the new approach safeguards Jewish identity and allows for the possibility of successful witness by Hebrew Catholics who retain their Jewish identity and religious life.

Public theology is a developing field of discourse concerned to address matters of pressing public concern in theological perspective for the common good. Themes of ecology, poverty, human rights, and especially justice feature prominently in its discourse. Although justice is also a prominent theme in the Bible, there is no single perspective on what constitutes justice in the Bible and no single view on how biblical perspectives on justice should contribute to contemporary discussion regarding the meaning and implementation of justice. Informed and inspired by Christopher Marshall's landmark work on Compassionate Justice (Cascade Books, 2012) in dialogue with Jesus' parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, this collection of studies addresses various interrelations between the Bible, justice, and public theology. Marshall himself proposes that certain parables of Jesus are paradigmatic for public theology, and some contributors respond to different dimensions of his treatment of the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son in terms of restorative justice. Other contributors, by contrast, examine broader related concerns such as justice in biblical, theological, and philosophical perspective, the hermeneutics of engagement for justice, the relation between feminist theology and restorative justice, biblical resources for public theology, and popular culture as both a conversation partner with and a medium for public theology.