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Graham Ward argues that the study of theology and religion, as a single academic discipline, plays a vital role in helping us to understand politics, world affairs, and the nature of humanity itself. Religion can be used to justify inhumane actions, but it also feeds dreams, inspires hopes, and shapes aspirations. By invoking a sense of wonder about the natural world, religion can promote scientific discoveries, and by focusing on shared experiences, religion helps to bind societies together. Some scientists now believe that religious feeling might be hard-wired into our DNA, a fundamental aspect of what makes us human. Because religion is rooted in the imagination itself, its study involves staring into the profundities of who we are. Religion will not go away, so it needs to be understood.
Graham Ward argues that the study of theology and religion, as a single academic discipline, plays a vital role in helping us to understand politics, world affairs, and the nature of humanity itself. Religion can be used to justify inhumane actions, but it also feeds dreams, inspires hopes, and shapes aspirations. By invoking a sense of wonder about the natural world, religion can promote scientific discoveries, and by focusing on shared experiences, religion helps to bind societies together. Some scientists now believe that religious feeling might be hard-wired into our DNA, a fundamental aspect of what makes us human. Because religion is rooted in the imagination itself, its study involves staring into the profundities of who we are. Religion will not go away, so it needs to be understood.
How the Light Gets In: Ethical Life I presents a systematic account of the teachings of the Christian faith to offer a vision, from a human, created, and limited perspective, of the ways all things might be understood from the divine perspective. It explores how Christian doctrine is lived, and the way in which beliefs are not simply cognitive sets of ideas but embodied cultural practices. Christians learn how to understand the contents of their faith, learn the language of the faith, through engagements that are simultaneously somatic, affective, imaginative, and intellectual. In the first of four volumes, Graham Ward examines the complex levels of these engagements through three historical developments in the systematic organization of doctrine: the Creeds, the Summa, and Protestant dogmatics. He outlines a methodology for exploring and practicing systematic theology that captures how the faith is lived in cultural, social, and embodied engagements. Ward then unpicks several fundamental theological concepts and how they are to be understood from the point of view of an engaged systematics: truth, revelation, judgement, discernment, proclamation, faith seeking understanding, and believing as it relates to and grounds the possibilities for faith. This groundbreaking work offers an interdisciplinary investigation through poetry, art, film, the Bible and theological discourse, analysing the human condition and theology as the deep dream for salvation. The final part relates theology as a lived and ongoing pedagogy concerned with individual and corporate formation to biological life, social life, and life in Christ. Here an approach to living theologically is sketched that is the primary focus for all four volumes: ethical life.
It has roots beneath consciousness and is expressed in moods, rhythms, tones and textures of experience that are as much mental as physiological. In his new book, a sequel to the earlier Unbelievable, one of Britain's most exciting writers on religion here presents a nuanced and many-dimensional portrait of the mystery and creativity of the human imagination. Discussing the likes of William Wordsworth, William Turner, Samuel Palmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams, so as to assess the true meanings of originality and memory, and drawing on his own rich encounters with belief, Graham Ward asks why it is that the imagination is so fundamental to who and what we are. Using metaphor and story to unpeel the hidden motivations and architecture of the mind, the author grapples with profound questions of ultimacy and transcendence. He reveals that, in understanding what it really means to be human, what cannot be imagined invariably means as much as what can.
How the Light Gets In: Ethical Life I presents a systematic account of the teachings of the Christian faith to offer a vision, from a human, created, and limited perspective, of the ways all things might be understood from the divine perspective. It explores how Christian doctrine is lived, and the way in which beliefs are not simply cognitive sets of ideas but embodied cultural practices. Christians learn how to understand the contents of their faith, learn the language of the faith, through engagements that are simultaneously somatic, affective, imaginative, and intellectual. In the first of four volumes, Graham Ward examines the complex levels of these engagements through three historical developments in the systematic organization of doctrine: the Creeds, the Summa, and Protestant dogmatics. He outlines a methodology for exploring and practicing systematic theology that captures how the faith is lived in cultural, social, and embodied engagements. Ward then unpicks several fundamental theological concepts and how they are to be understood from the point of view of an engaged systematics: truth, revelation, judgement, discernment, proclamation, faith seeking understanding, and believing as it relates to and grounds the possibilities for faith. This groundbreaking work offers an interdisciplinary investigation through poetry, art, film, the Bible and theological discourse, analysing the human condition and theology as the deep dream for salvation. The final part relates theology as a lived and ongoing pedagogy concerned with individual and corporate formation to biological life, social life, and life in Christ. Here an approach to living theologically is sketched that is the primary focus for all four volumes: ethical life.
Why believe? What kinds of things do people believe in? How have they come to believe them? And how does what they believe - or disbelieve - shape their lives and the meaning the world has for them? For Graham Ward, who is one of the mostinnovative writers on contemporary religion, these questions are more than just academic. They go to the heart not only of who but of what we are as human beings. Over the last thirty years, our understandings of mind and consciousness have changed in important ways through exciting new developments in neuroscience. The author addresses this quantum shift by exploring the biology of believing. He offers sustained reflection on perception, cognition, time, emotional intelligence, knowledge and sensation. Though the 'truth' of belief remains under increasing attack, in a thoroughly secularised context, Ward boldly argues that secularity is itself a form of believing. Pointing to the places where prayer and dreams intersect, this book offers a remarkable journey through philosophy, theology and culture, thereby revealing the true nature of the human condition.
As stories of borders, territorial disputes, and migration have escalated in recent years, so too space has emerged as a critical concept in theoretical literature. This book explores the imagination of space at the dawn of modern, liberal theology in the writings of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher wrote against the backdrop of expanding European colonialism and nationalism, providing a powerful ethics of space for a rapidly shrinking planet. Selectively appropriated, Schleiermacher's spaces of modern theology can be a valuable contribution to contemporary attempts to theorize the importance of space and place in human geographies.
As stories of borders, territorial disputes, and migration have escalated in recent years, so too space has emerged as a critical concept in theoretical literature. This book explores the imagination of space at the dawn of modern, liberal theology in the writings of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher wrote against the backdrop of expanding European colonialism and nationalism, providing a powerful ethics of space for a rapidly shrinking planet. Selectively appropriated, Schleiermacher's spaces of modern theology can be a valuable contribution to contemporary attempts to theorize the importance of space and place in human geographies.
Leading theologian Graham Ward presents a stimulating series of reflections on Christ and contemporary culture. This title takes as its starting point Niebuhr's famous volume on Christ and Culture published in the 1970s. It explores representations of Christ from sources as diverse as the New Testament and twentieth-century continental philosophy. It considers Christ and culture in the light of contemporary categories such as the body, gender, desire, politics and the sublime. It develops an original and imaginative Christology rooted in Scriptural exegesis and concerned with today's cultural issues. The author has been described as 'the most visionary theologian of his generation'.
Leading theologian Graham Ward presents a stimulating series of reflections on Christ and contemporary culture. This title takes as its starting point Niebuhr's famous volume on Christ and Culture published in the 1970s. It explores representations of Christ from sources as diverse as the New Testament and twentieth-century continental philosophy. It considers Christ and culture in the light of contemporary categories such as the body, gender, desire, politics and the sublime. It develops an original and imaginative Christology rooted in Scriptural exegesis and concerned with today's cultural issues. The author has been described as 'the most visionary theologian of his generation'.
This Companion provides a definitive collection of essays on postmodern theology, drawing on the work of those individuals who have made a distinctive contribution to the field, and whose work will be significant for the theologies written in the new millennium. Each essay is introduced with a short account of the writer's previous work, enabling the reader to view it in context. This title discusses the following desciplines: Aesthetics, Ethics, Gender, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, Heideggerians, and Derrideans. It is edited by Graham Ward, one of the most outstanding and original theologians working in the field today.
The book sets out to address and answer three questions from the point of view of Christian theology. The first is, from where does theology speak? The second is, what are the mechanisms whereby cultures change? The third is, how might we conceive the relationship between the contemporary production of theological discourse and the transformation of cultures more generally? Drawing upon the work of standpoint epistemologists, cultural anthropologists and social scientists, the book argues that public acts of interpretation are involvements in renegotiating the future direction of cultural change. Though the enquiry is conducted from one particular standpoint - Christian theology - the observations and suggestions it makes regarding cultural transformation and the defense it makes of syncretism have more general application.
The book sets out to address and answer three questions from the point of view of Christian theology. The first is, from where does theology speak? The second is, what are the mechanisms whereby cultures change? The third is, how might we conceive the relationship between the contemporary production of theological discourse and the transformation of cultures more generally? Drawing upon the work of standpoint epistemologists, cultural anthropologists and social scientists, the book argues that public acts of interpretation are involvements in renegotiating the future direction of cultural change. Though the enquiry is conducted from one particular standpoint - Christian theology - the observations and suggestions it makes regarding cultural transformation and the defense it makes of syncretism have more general application.
From 'The Holy Land Experience' theme park to the aggressive convictions of the fundamentalist, religion is once more haunting the imagination of the West. But how does what we think of as religion today compare with the 'true religion' of days gone by? Through reference to plays, poetry, painting, novels and films, this manifesto traces the genealogy of 'true religion' in the Western world, charting changes in our understanding of the term from Shakespeare to Salman Rushdie, pointing out how closely linked those changes are to secularism, liberalism and the development of capitalism. On the basis of his cultural analysis, the author makes several paradoxical observations: While the idea of true religion has fashioned our understanding of democracy and liberal humanism, it is also closely bound to imperialism. What we are currently witnessing in Western culture is the disintegration of the concept of 'religion' and yet the reintroduction of religion into the market is a defining characteristic of postmodernity. With the commodification of religion the only viable future for faith traditions is to turn to theology, but that will generate more culture wars. To resolve culture wars each tradition must both strongly define itself and resist the pressure to turn their own faith into a fetish. The book is guaranteed to excite students and scholars of literature, theology and religion, as well as the general reader.
From 'The Holy Land Experience' theme park to the aggressive convictions of the fundamentalist, religion is once more haunting the imagination of the West. But how does what we think of as religion today compare with the 'true religion' of days gone by? Through reference to plays, poetry, painting, novels and films, this manifesto traces the genealogy of 'true religion' in the Western world, charting changes in our understanding of the term from Shakespeare to Salman Rushdie, pointing out how closely linked those changes are to secularism, liberalism and the development of capitalism. On the basis of his cultural analysis, the author makes several paradoxical observations: While the idea of true religion has fashioned our understanding of democracy and liberal humanism, it is also closely bound to imperialism. What we are currently witnessing in Western culture is the disintegration of the concept of 'religion' and yet the reintroduction of religion into the market is a defining characteristic of postmodernity. With the commodification of religion the only viable future for faith traditions is to turn to theology, but that will generate more culture wars. To resolve culture wars each tradition must both strongly define itself and resist the pressure to turn their own faith into a fetish. The book is guaranteed to excite students and scholars of literature, theology and religion, as well as the general reader.
This companion provides a definitive collection of essays on postmodern theology, drawing on the work of those individuals who have made a distinctive contribution to the field, and whose work will be significant for the theologies written in the new millennium. Each essay is introduced with a short account of the writer's previous work, enabling the reader to view it in context. The collection is prefaced with an introduction that situates postmodern theology with respect to other forms of contemporary theology, such as liberalism and conservatism, and evaluates the cultural context in which postmodern theology can be viewed. The companion is divided into seven parts: aesthetics, ethics, gender, hermeneutics, phenomenology, heideggerians, and derrideans. Graham Wade is one of the most outstanding and original theologians working in the field today. This lively collection will have an international appeal, providing readers with the definitive guide to theology and postmodernism.
