Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

Review Of: Andrew R. Murphy (Ed.), The Blackwell Companion To Religion And Violence, Brian Stiltner

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Blackwell Companions, and instalments from similar series, should be initially sized up according to their purpose and audience. Such hefty tomes present themselves first as reference books—as collections of articles by scholarly experts that treat the key methods, topics, historical developments, etc., in the field. Second, each Companion is addressed to students and teachers as a state-of-the-field resource that provides several benefits: a sound picture of the field, assessment of various theories and methods used in the field, a sense of the innovative developments and open questions, and plenty of information to follow up on. Finally, some Companions give primacy …

Review Of: T. J. Gorringe. The Common Good And The Global Emergency: God And The Built Environment, Brian Stiltner

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Tim Gorringe follows up his positively reviewed 2002 book A Theology of the Built Environment with this offering from the same publisher. The former book was notable as a sustained attempt to think theologically about the ‘built environment’. The built environment is the context that humans construct for themselves through their industry and technology; it comprises all types of physical settlements (cities, suburbs, towns, and villages), roads and transportation systems, parks and outdoor spaces, and buildings of every sort. It matters to humans how we build social spaces, for this influences our individual flourishing and the common good. While any …

An Embarrassment Of Riches: American Religious Pluralism As A Threat, Richard Grigg

Sacred Heart University Press Books

Religious diversity is a sign of the vitality of American spirituality, but it presents a challenge: a thoughtful believer will most likely recognize that religious Others hold beliefs that contradict his or her own and will confront the fact that there is apparently no better evidence for his or her own beliefs than for those held by the religious Other. Thus the religious Other can easily become the disconfirming Other. An Embarrassment of Riches examines the various responses open to the believer challenged by the disconfirming Other, from self-deception of New Age spirituality to rigid fundamentalist opposition.

Book Review: Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Just War As Christian Discipleship: Recentering The Tradition In The Church Rather Than The State, Brian Stiltner

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

From his conversations in church settings and classrooms, Daniel M. Bell, Jr. has observed that Christians by and large do not know the church’s just war tradition very well, but that they are receptive to learning about it. Most theologians would likely agree that they know a number of Christians who are hungry to see better thinking and more effective action in response to war in our time. Bell, a Lutheran seminary professor and ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, wrote this book to interpret ‘the just war tradition in terms of concrete practices that might contribute to the …

Engaging The Catholic Intellectual Tradition - Sacred Heart University's Common Core: The Human Journey, Michelle Loris

Mission Integration & Ministry Publications

At Catholic universities we have lofty and ambitious learning outcomes for our graduates. We want to provide our students with the knowledge, ideas, skills, and critical abilities needed to understand} reflect upon, and act with purpose and effect in our increasingly complex, ever-changing, global-world. We want to equip our students with the intellectual abilities, spiritual discernment, and moral and ethical principles that will enable them to distinguish between those things which inspire the mind, satisfy the soul, and advance the human good - and those things which do not. We want to develop in them the intelligence and compassion needed …

Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, And Donald Nicholl: Pilgrims Of Wisdom And Peace, Michael W. Higgins

Mission Integration & Ministry Publications

Thomas Merton, Donald Nicholl, and Henri Nouwen, twentieth-century spiritual writers and thinkers, were, for significant chunks of time, contemporaries. To some degree they spoke out of similar contexts. To some degree they addressed similar crises.

Review Of: The Politics Of Human Frailty: A Theological Defence Of Political Liberalism, By Christopher J. Insole, Brian Stiltner

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Against the grain of much contemporary Christian theology, Christopher Insole’s The Politics of Human Frailty takes on the challenge of theologically defending political liberalism. Specifically, he defends a strand of political liberalism ‘informed by the theological conviction that the human person is a creature incapable of its own perfection, although nonetheless called to and made for this perfection’ (p. vii). Insole, University Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge, attends to philosophers and theologians primarily in the British tradition, but also on the American side. Insole advances his argument mostly through readings of other authors. Positively, Insole …

Enacting The Divine: Feminist Theology And The Being Of God, Richard Grigg Ph.D.

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This essay's central claim is that there is an implicit motif in much of current feminist theology according to which God is a relation that human beings choose to enact.

Discusses the concepts of feminist theology. God as a relation that human beings choose to enact; Feminist commitment to divine immanence; Centrality of relationship in human existence; Feminist enactment model of deity.