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14 - Public Theology

from Part II - Movements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2022

By
Kristen Deede Johnson
Edited by
Michael Allen
Michael Allen
Affiliation:
Reformed Theological Seminary, Florida
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Summary

In an essay exploring how Christian ethics became distinct from Christian doctrine, Stanley Hauerwas writes: “Once there was no Christian ethics simply because Christians could not distinguish between their beliefs and their behaviour. They assumed that their lives exemplified (or at least should exemplify) their doctrines in a manner that made a division between life and doctrine impossible.”1 We could write similarly of public theology: “Once there was no public theology simply because Christians could not distinguish between their beliefs and the public implications of those beliefs. It took particular social, historical, and intellectual circumstances for a division between ‘theology’ and ‘public theology’ to seem possible.” In other words, historically contingent reasons led to the emergence of “public theology” as a theological discourse beginning in the 1970s.

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Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine , pp. 231 - 248
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

Cady, Linell E. (1993), Religion, Theology, and American Public Life (Albany: State University of New York Press).Google Scholar
Kim, Sebastian (2011), Theology in the Public Sphere (London: SCM Press).Google Scholar
Kim, Sebastian, and Day, Katie, eds. (2017), A Companion to Public Theology (Leiden: Brill).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marty, Martin E. (1981), Public Church: Mainline-Evangelical-Catholic (New York: Crossroad).Google Scholar
Tracy, David (1981), The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad).Google Scholar
Valentin, Benjamin (2002), Mapping Public Theology: Beyond Culture, Identity, and Difference (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International).Google Scholar

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