This article is an effort toward practical, pastoral, theological correlation, an effort to bring together the American cultural tradition and the Christian theological tradition. Its argument develops in four cumulative theses to be explicated: (1) there is a crisis of family in the United States today; (2) what is said of family in both First and Second biblical Testaments is of no direct help in that crisis; (3) what makes a family Christian is not the slavish following of some biblical saying about family but the following of Jesus confessed as the Christ; (4) the Christian family has an important contribution to make in the contemporary crisis of family in the United States. Each thesis is developed in turn.

The experience of the many poor and of the many religions in today's world are two issues which this study addresses, from the perspective of human rights. Its thesis is that concern for the poor is not unique to Judaism and Christianity, but that all religions examined here contain an affirmation of the value of the individual person, as well as a compassion for the poor, which can lead to a universal concern for the rights of the poor and marginalized. Viewing human rights as a concept which expresses the aspirations of many religions, it examines their perceptions of human rights language and their concerns for the poor. In doing so, it rejects the postmodernist claim that all religions are incommensurable and cannot be compared on issues such as justice, human rights and concern for the poor, and argues for continuing efforts toward a global ethic.

Theologies dedicated to radical social change require an understanding of how social change is possible. Gregory Baum has developed such a theory based on Max Weber's notion of charismatic leadership. This article analyzes Baum's understanding of the nature and dynamics of social change, the role of symbols therein, and shows how Baum corrects certain weaknesses in Weber's thought. Baum's theory could be strengthened by drawing upon Christian symbols of eschatological hope and the doctrine of the Trinity. This would help the church relate its faith to social movements and countervailing trends in terms of its own symbol system.

Johann Baptist Metz has exhorted Christian theologians to discard “system concepts” in favor of “subject concepts” in their theologizing. This revisioning of Christian theology recovers the primacy of the uniqueness and irreplaceability of the individual from totalizing doctrinal formulations and systems that function, for Metz, without reference to the subject. In short, a revisionist Christian theology in light of the Holocaust recovers the preeminence of the inviolability of individual human life.

How can such a revisioning be accomplished in the realm of Christian spirituality? This article will utilize the thought of Emmanuel Levinas to assert the primacy of ethics as “first philosophy” replacing ontology, and by implication the ontological foundations undergirding Christian spirituality, with the ethical relation. Such a relation is the basis for a new Christian spirituality that posits the primacy of merciful and compasionate action in the face of conditions of life in extremity.

The essay argues that resources in Scripture, tradition, and social theory are important but insufficient to the task of teaching social ethics. Liberation ethics promotes not only diverse epistemologies to evaluate the structures that mediate social relations, but also moral courage to execute social responsibility. Given this agenda, teaching social ethics also requires community-based learning experiences, democratic classrooms, and the social commitment of the academy. Drawing on student writing and the example of the author's own academic institution, the essay argues that multiple resources and sites are needed to educate students in ethical theory and moral courage.

An important but little-noticed debate is quietly going on between some theologians of the religions and some comparative theologians. The former, without negating the need for comparative theology, insist on the need for a theology of the religions; the latter call for a moratorium on construction of theologies of religion and a focus instead on comparative work. This essay sides with the theologians of religion and argues that contrary to the one-sided position of the comparativists and the premature judgments of some theologians of the religions, there is a need for both a theology of the religions and comparative analysis and synthesis because the two are the distinct but inseparable and integral a priori and a posteriori moments of a single theological project which aims at bringing Christianity into fruitful engagement with the non-Christian traditions. Because this engagement is essential to Christianity, the present debate is an important one even though it goes on in a field little tended, unfortunately, but many theologians.