Nationhood, Providence, and Witness

Nationhood, Providence, and Witness
Author: Carys Moseley
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2013-05-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1610979427

This book argues that problems with recognizing the State of Israel lie at the heart of approaches to nationhood and unease over nationalism in modern Protestant theology, as well as modern social theory. Three interrelated themes are explored. The first is the connection between a theologian's attitude to recognizing Israel and their approach to the providential place of nations in the divine economy. Following from this, the argument is made that theologians' handling of both modern and ancient Israel is mirrored profoundly in the question of recognition and ethical treatment of the nations to which they belong, along with neighboring nations. The third theme is how social theory, represented by certain key figures, has handled the same issues. Four major theologians are discussed: Reinhold Niebuhr, Rowan Williams, John Milbank, and Karl Barth. Alongside them are placed social theorists and scholars of religion and nationalism, including Mark Juergensmeyer, Philip Jenkins, Anthony Smith, and Adrian Hastings. In the process, debates over the relationship between theology and social theory are reconfigured in concrete terms around the challenge of recognition of the State of Israel as well as stateless nations.

Nations and Nationalism in the Theology of Karl Barth

Nations and Nationalism in the Theology of Karl Barth
Author: Carys Moseley
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2013-01-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191646261

Karl Barth was well-known for his criticism of German nationalism as a corrupting influence on the German protestant churches in the Nazi era. Defining and recognising nationhood as distinct from the state is an important though underappreciated task in Barth's theology. It flows out of his deep concern for the capacity for nationalist dogma - that every nation must have its own state - to promote warfare. The problem motivated him to make his famous break with German liberal protestant theology. In this book, Carys Moseley traces how Barth reconceived nationhood in the light of a lifelong interest in the exegesis and preaching of the Pentecost narrative in Acts 2. She shows how his responsibilities as a pastor of the Swiss Reformed Church required preaching on this text as part of the church calendar, and thus how his defence of the inclusion of the filioque clause in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed stemmed from his ministry, homiletics and implicit missiology. The concern to deny that nations exist primordially in creation was a crucial reason for Barth's dissent from his contemporaries over the orders of creation, and that his polemic against 'natural theology' was largely driven by rejection of the German liberal idea that the rise and fall of nations is part of a cycle of nature which simply reflect divine action. Against this conceit, Barth advanced his famous doctrine of the election of Israel as part of the election of the community of the people of God. This is the way into understanding the division of the world into nations, and the divine recognition of all nations as communities wherein people are meant to seek God.

America's Road to Jerusalem

America's Road to Jerusalem
Author: Jason M. Olson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2018-11-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1498581390

This study examines the role of the Six-Day War in American Protestant politics and culture. The author argues that American foreign policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict, culminating in the Trump Administration’s 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and the domestic Evangelical communities who supported it, has a direct correlation with the long-term consequences of the 1967 Six-Day War. For most of America’s history, biblical literalists, or Evangelicals, dominated the religious culture of the country. But, in 1925, the Scopes trial on science, evolution, and religion embarrassed Evangelicals and caused them to retreat from American culture and politics. Modern and liberal Protestants won dominance and established control in nearly all of the Mainline seminaries, publishing houses, and denominations, leading to the creation of the National Council of Churches by 1950. This book argues that the Six-Day War reversed that power structure in American religion, with Evangelicals returning to a place of prominence in American culture and politics. Whereas the Scopes trial showed much of American Protestantism that the Modernists had the right understanding of the Bible; the Six-Day War demonstrated that, ironically, Evangelicals may have had it right all along. They used this historic leverage to vaunt themselves into the highest planes of American life, with Billy Graham becoming “America’s Pastor.” In this historic process, the 1967 war between Israel and the surrounding Arab states clarified the way those different branches of American Protestantism thought about the Arab-Israeli conflict, particularly the issue of Jerusalem. Indeed, the nature of the Six-Day War was deep and appeared to be of Biblical proportions. Because Israel gained territories in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the ancient Biblical heartlands formerly held by Jordan; historical, messianic, and even apocalyptic intrusions entered the various branches of American Protestantism. In some branches, supersessionism, a belief that the Church had replaced the Jewish people as God’s chosen, was stoked. In other branches, supersessionism was rejected and the nature of Judaism and its connection to the Holy Land was re-evaluated. The important point is that the territories that Israel captured had thick theological meaning, and this would force all branches of American Protestantism to reconsider their assumptions about Judaism and Zionism, as well as Islam and Palestinian nationalism. Evangelicalism.

The New Christian Zionism

The New Christian Zionism
Author: Gerald R. McDermott
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2016-09-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830894381

Christian Zionism is often seen as the offspring of premillennial dispensationalism. But the authors of this work contend that the biblical and theological connections between covenant and land are nearly as close in the New Testament as in Old. Written with academic rigor, this provocative volume proposes a place for Christian Zionism in an integrated biblical vision today.

Pro Ecclesia Vol 27-N4

Pro Ecclesia Vol 27-N4
Author: Pro Ecclesia
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2018-11-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 153811402X

Pro Ecclesia is a quarterly journal of theology published by the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology.

The Global Edwards

The Global Edwards
Author: Rhys S. Bezzant
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2017-10-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532635966

In a globalized world, networks are key, whether they are networks of people, ideas, or interests. In this volume of essays on the texts and teachings of Jonathan Edwards, contributors from each continent ask questions about how the world of Edwards explains or illuminates the world of today, whether in the area of systematics, missions, historiography, politics, church-planting, or biblical studies. Such diverse discourses enrich the networks of scholarship that the contributors represent, and provide a global snapshot of contemporary research in Edwards studies. These papers were presented in August 2015 at the Jonathan Edwards Congress held at Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, where personal engagement with the topics at hand made the worldwide network of Edwards aficionados and scholars not merely a virtual aspiration but an experience in time and space. This book will not only inform its readers but surprise them as well, as they track the power of eighteenth century theological ideas in the late modern world.

The Bible in American Law and Politics

The Bible in American Law and Politics
Author: John R. Vile
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 679
Release: 2020-09-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1538141671

While scholars increasingly recognize the importance of religion throughout American history, The Bible in American Law and Politics is the first reference book to focus on the key role that the Bible has played in American public life. In considering revolting from Great Britain, Americans contemplated whether this was consistent with scripture. Americans subsequently sought to apply Biblical passages to such issues as slavery, women’s rights, national alcoholic prohibition, issues of war and peace, and the like. American presidents continue to take their oath on the Bible. Some of America’s greatest speeches, for example, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural and William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech, have been grounded on Biblical texts or analogies. Today, Americans continue to cite the Bible for positions as diverse as LGBTQ rights, abortion, immigration, welfare, health care, and other contemporary issues. By providing essays on key speeches, books, documents, legal decisions, and other writings throughout American history that have sought to buttress arguments through citations to Scriptures or to Biblical figures, John Vile provides an indispensable guide for scholars and students in religion, American history, law, and political science to understand how Americans throughout its history have interpreted and applied the Bible to legal and political issues.

Theo-Politics?

Theo-Politics?
Author: Markus Höfner
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2021-10-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1978710062

Using the theological work of Karl Barth as a resource for present-day inquiry, the contributors in this volume discuss the complex interconnections between the religious and the political designated by the term theo-politics. Speaking from various political and cultural contexts (Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China) and different disciplinary perspectives (Protestant Theology, Political Sciences, and Sociology), the contributors address contemporary challenges in relating the religious and the political in Western and Asian societies. Topics analyzed include the impact of diverse cultural backgrounds on given theo-political arrangements, theological assessments of political power, the political significance of individual and communal Christian existence and the place of Christian communities in civil societies. In their nuanced discussions of these topics, the contributors neither advocate for a privatized, apolitical understanding of the Christian faith nor for a religious politics seeking to overcome modern processes of differentiation and secularization. Critically engaging Barth’s theology, they examine the Christian responsibility in and for the political sphere and reflect on the practice of such responsibility in Western and Asian contexts.

CHRISTIAN ZIONISM. THEOPOLITICS AND BIBLICAL MYTH-MAKING

CHRISTIAN ZIONISM. THEOPOLITICS AND BIBLICAL MYTH-MAKING
Author: BÜLENT ȘENAY
Publisher: Editura Universității din București - Bucharest University Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2021-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 6061612591

This book is meant to serve as a reader material, an instrument designed to help students of Christian Zionism, regardless of their background, age and ultimate interest, find their way in existing literature.

The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr

The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr
Author: Robin Lovin
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 666
Release: 2021-03-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0198813562

This authoritative Handbook features 38 chapters placing Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) in his historical context to offer readers an appreciation of his insights and how he was received by his contemporaries.