Book Reviews

[1] Robert Benne’s The Paradoxical Vision: A Public Theology for the Twenty-first Century first appeared five years in advance of that century. A decade later there is plenty of the century left and the need for religious traditions to be constructively engaged with their “public environment-the economic, political, and cultural spheres of our common life” […]

[1] “When [the American Churches] are less able and willing to form their members spiritually or morally, [they] put heavier emphasis on their role as public actors.” (p.189) Anyone who has come to think that his\her denomination is just publishing too many “social statements” and is doing a bit too much lobbying, might jump for […]

[1] There is no more timely book than The Paradoxical Vision. Given issues like war, peace, sexuality, and how the “public” voice of the Christian community ought to be expressed, this book provides a theological and ethical framework that is vital. Its vitality lies in a clear articulation of Lutheran “public theology” or “social ethics.” […]

[1] I am delighted and honored to respond to these four reviews of my Paradoxical Vision. Beyond that I am grateful to the four authors-Perry, Kruse, Kennedy, and Lagerquist-for their willingness to write reviews of a book that is ten years old. I am particularly grateful to Michael Shahan, the book review editor of the […]

[1] Today in powerful places in the U.S.A., compromise is slurred as truth’s enemy, and only the single-minded know justice. Peace will arrive when the other, the different, is eliminated or turned into an impotent minority. Thus, on Comedy Central, “The Daily Show” never runs out of material. [2] In the long run, however, how […]

[1] If judged on the basis of its ambition, In Justice is a commendable book. In it, Ann-Cathrin Jarl purports to investigate “feminist critiques of neoclassical economics and what feminist liberation ethics might contribute to strengthening the assumptions of justice in feminist economics.”1 Note that such an effort would require (1) a review of neoclassical […]

[1] “[T]he ethical cannot be detached from reality…,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics. [2] It is questionable whether Stanley Huaerwas’s book, Performing The Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence, a collection of essays, is primarily concerned with Bonhoeffer. Also, the link between Bonhoeffer and the practice on nonviolence is never made clear. There are two chapters […]

[1] A Word about the Book’s Author Dr. Hauerwas is a widely respected theologian-ethicist in ecumenical circles today. He occupies the chair of Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University, and is well known as a most influential teacher, with “disciples” (if that is not an overly dramatic term) in nearly all […]

[1] “Christians are called to nonviolence not because we think nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war; but rather in a world of war, as faithful followers of Christ, we cannot imagine being anything other than nonviolent” (236). [2] From the outset, Hauerwas makes it clear in Performing the Faith that he […]

[1] Jean Bethke Elshtain’s Just War against Terror is her response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The original publication date was 2003, and the most recent edition also contains analysis of the initial prosecution of the Iraq war. Elshtain’s analysis is pursued from the perspective of “just war theory,” a theory that finds […]