Bøger udgivet af SCM Press

Building on an understanding of the local congregation as the primary location of mission, 'As a fire by burning ...' seeks to explore the relationship between the day-to-day life of local churches and contemporary thinking about mission. Drawing on the first-hand experience of those engaged in mission in a wide variety of different contexts in contemporary Britain, the component parts of church life are explored. What is the relationship between worship and mission? If mission is more than just evangelism, and disciple making is a life-long task, how can this be sustained over the long term? Much has been made of collaborative partnerships in delivering mission objectives, but what are their theological and practical implications for non-Christian civic and voluntary bodies? A number of these rarely addressed themes are explored, revealing critical issues that are rarely addressed, but that can have significant implications if neglected or misunderstood. Rather than relying on a 'one size fits all', off-the-shelf approach to mission, 'As a fire by burning ...' encourages a level of engagement with context, Scripture, prayer and theology that will help to empower a local congregation to discern and shape its own missional life.

Queer theology is a significant new development and central to much current teaching and thinking about gender, sexuality and the body. Controversies in Queer Theology provides an overview of the main areas of difference and debate in queer theologies, engaging with and critiquing all the major writers working in this area. Susannah Cornwall shows how this field is still in flux and the highlights implications for employing queer methodologies across theological work.

Honest to God, originally published in 1963, has been described as the most talked-about theological work of the twentieth century. Its publication work instigated a passionate debate about the nature of Christian belief and doctrine in the white heat of a secular revolution. It also epitomized the revolutionary spirit of a fresh and challenging way of looking at the world, which, throughout the 1960s, was to bring about the disintegration of established orthodoxies and social, political and theological norms. It articulated the anxieties of a generation who saw these traditional givens as no longer acceptable or necessarily credible. Reissued on the 50th anniversary of the original publication, Honest to God is not only a book that generated controversy and debate in its own time, but a piece of honest theology which continues to inspire many in teir search for credible Christianity in today's world.

A Faithful Presence shows how churches work together and of the range of social action undertaken by churches locally and nationally - pastoral, advocacy, campaigning. It is designed to be of interest to clerical and lay audiences across denominations, including those who create, manage and implement social justice initiatives.

Relational theologies turn our traditional starting point for theology on its head.They ask what it is we experience and where it is we intuit God in and through our relation and lack of relation with ourselves, others and the cosmos. It is a form of theological thinking that gives divine agency to all living things. Already existing models of theology and the divine itself may be the starting point for this form of theological reflection, but they are not assumed to be the end point.It is the relationship and the relationality enables knowledge of the divine to emerge. The contributors to this book explore the concept of the emerging divine within human and non-human relationality. They asks questions about the divine dance within, between and around us, and offer space for reflection on the ethical and theological implications of this dance. The book aims to push the boundaries of theology and at the same time to challenge many of its foundations.Contributors:Carter Heyward, Susannah Cornwall, Ursula King, Beverley Clack, Mary Grey,Catherine Keller, Lisa Isherwood, Diarmuid O'Murchu, June Boyce-Tillman,Maaike de Haardt, Jenny Daggers, Natalie K. Watson and Mary Condren. Lisa Isherwood is Director of the Institute for Theological Partnerships at theUniversity of Winchester.Elaine Bellchambers is Senior Lecturer in Religious Education andProfessional Studies at the University of Winchester.

Transsexual, transgendered and intersex people have become increasingly morevisible since the 1990s, but the churches have been slow to recognize theirlives and their contribution to theology and the churches. As theologians we aremystified by this, since a redemptive history based on the multiple possibilities of incarnational theology is best read as lived in trans/luminal spaces. Trans/formations is a passionate book borne out of the outrage felt at the ever narrowing boundaries of theology. It is passionate too because it comesfrom a deeply held incarnational belief that dares to take the lived experience of people seriously as part of the redemptive ground we share. It is a book thatwishes to shake not shock, it seeks to shake us out of the contented narrowness of a cosy Christianity and into one that seeks always to expand the incarnational tent that is our home. The contributors ask questions not only of the churches and theology but at times also of gender and sexuality theorists. It is time we all thought anew, and this book hopes to aid that debate.Lisa Isherwood is Professor of Feminist Liberation Theologies at the University of Winchester. Marcella Althaus-Reid was Professor of Contextual Theology at NewCollege, Edinburgh. She died in February 2009.Contributors: Marcella Althaus-Reid, Hannah Buchanan, Krys Bujnowski, Marie Cartier, John Clifford, Susannah Cornwall, Malcolm Himschoot, BK Hipsher, Lisa Isherwood, Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Lewis Reay, Elizabeth Stuart and Sian Taylder.

Does theology liberate only bodies with official desires, well-scrubbed skin, and sober clothing? Might it bring good news to the rest to madwomen of all sexes, dancers in smoky bars, devotees of disreputable saints? Marcella Altahus-Reid insisted on asking such questions sharply, unflinchingly, but with unfeigned joy. She shows us still how to answer them. --Mark D. Jordan, Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School. Marcella Althaus-Reid has drawn together a number of the most exciting Liberation Theologians currently working in Latin America and beyond, whose work offers a wider and more complex critique of reality which is prepared to engage with issues of sexuality, race, gender, culture, globalization and new forms of popular piety. The contributors show that Christianity in Latin America cannot avoid taking into account and engaging with issues concerning sexuality and poverty when reflecting on the construction of Christian faith and identity. They represent Liberation Theology in motion: dynamic, unsettling, still struggling with orthodoxy while engaging in the broad struggle for justice that includes sexual justice.

In Creaturely Theology a wide range of first-rate contributors show that theological reflection on non-human animals and related issues are an important though hitherto neglected part of the agenda of Christian theology and related disciplines. The book offers a genuine interdisciplinary conversation between theologians, philosophers and scientists and will be a standard text on the theology of non-human animals for years to come. It is wide-ranging in terms of coverage and accessibly written. It is ideal as a key text in any postgraduate course engaging with the ethics, theology and philosophy of the non-human and the post-human. AbProfessor Celia Deane-Drummond is Professor of Theology and the Biological Sciences and Director of the Centre for Religion and Bioscience at the University of Chester.Dr David Clough is Senior Lecturer in Theology at the University of Chester.

The Hybrid Church in the City focuses on the importance of urban space as a way of reinterpreting the mission and identity of the church for the twenty-first century. Christopher Baker uses the idea of the Third Space (a concept widely used in post-colonial and cultural studies) to offer a way of understanding the new form of the city - namely the diversity of the hybrid, post-colonial and postmodern urban space.In The Hybrid Church in the City, Christopher Baker deploys thinkers like Homi Bhabha and Leonie Sandercock to argue that the church should closely follow the grain of hybrid cities, including new forms of civil society and systems of governance, in order to occupy the fluid spaces created by the interaction of both networks and institutions, of the local and the global, and religion and secularity. He offers several case studies to back up his case for the development of what he calls local practical theologies which focus on developing partnerships with both faith and non-faith-based partners. Underpinning this practical theology is a radical Christian Realism tradition in the tradition of such thinkers as Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr, Temple, Preston and Atherton. In other words, the author believes, Third Space ecclesiology and theology are already at work. What is needed now is a new spatial language of the Third Space in order to help public theology engage with the complexity of rapidly-changing cities and societies.Christopher Baker writes and researches extensively on faith-based engagement in civil society and social policy. He also teaches and facilitates training events on these topics.'Christopher Baker offers a refreshing and authoritative look at the opportunities and challenges facing the urban church. This book is a great blend of cultural analysis, local voices and theological reflection. It marks a new wave of thinking about what it means to live as people of faith amidst the complexities of the contemporary city'. Elaine Graham, University of Manchester In this fascinating and prescient study, Christopher Baker argues for a new kind of engagement and connectedness for theology and the churches. By focussing attention on space, urbanisation and marginalisation, new possibilities for practical theology are opened up that invite a fundamental reconsideration of the churches and their location within post-modern society. This book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the Christianity and culture debate in more depth, and tackle it with imagination, flair and thought'. --Martyn Percy, Ripon College Cuddesdon Product DescriptionThere has been a growing interest in the rapidly evolving nature of cities in the past 10-15 years, but especially in the last 5 years, and the profound impact this is having upon our understanding of community, belonging and church. This book shows that theology in an urban context has developed way beyond the inner-city nostaligia. It is a challenging, critical and constructive study of the role of the church in cities.