Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times
Justification and the Pursuit of Justice
- 296 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Finalist in the Theology/Religious Studies category for the 2024 PROSE Awards
Christians in the United States and around the world are politically polarized today, unable to speak to one another across deep divisions regarding urgent social issues. Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times: Justification and the Pursuit of Justice addresses this dire reality by offering a theological framework for Christian justice-seeking. Amy Carr and Christine Helmer draw on Paul's theology to center the idea of justification by faith in Christ as the primary ground of Christian belonging and community.
This approach yields a theology of ordinary faith that resists the temptation to equate Christian identity with the performance of a heroic "here I stand" posture against moral and political positions felt to be inimical to a properly Christian life. An ordinary faith situates Christian identity on a baptismal belonging to Christ. Baptism draws Christians into the messy process of discerning together the shape of justice in and through the Beloved Community. With justification by faith as the touchstone of Christian unity, Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times reveals how Christians who inhabit different ethical and political positions can navigate the disorientations and reorientations that arise when they debate what justice-seeking looks like from within the body of Christ.
Carr and Helmer articulate ways that justification by faith grounds Christian practices of affective listening and storytelling, even on the most contentious ethical questions today, with the hope that mutual conversation in and through the Beloved Community can get Christians who disagree oriented towards each other again for the good of the world.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Endorsements, Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1. Ordinary Faith in Times of Conflict
- 2. Justification by Faith: What It Is and Why It Matters Today
- 3. Justification by Faith and Justifications amid Justice-Seeking
- 4. Abortion: Is This the Issue on which the Church Stands or Falls?
- 5. Ordinary Faith in Political Justice-Seeking: A Practice of Christian Freedom
- 6. The Spiritual Discipline of Ordinary Faith and a Life of Decentering and Recentering
- Bibliography and Suggested Readings
- Index of Biblical Passages
- Index of Names and Subjects