Why the Church?
eBook - ePub

Why the Church?

Self-Optimization or Community of Faith

  1. 200 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Why the Church?

Self-Optimization or Community of Faith

About this book

Why did Christianity produce the special organizational form "church" in the first place? Is it possible to be a Christian without the church? To what extent is Christian faith in community with other believers an alternative to the mere self-optimization of individuals?

In this accessible and questioning new work, Hans Joas traverses theological, church-historical, sociological, and ethical territory in search of a viable conception of the church adequate to contemporary globalized societies. Across eleven essays that draw on work by Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, H. Richard Niebuhr, Leszek Kolakowski and others, Joas reflects on key debates—from the failure of so-called secularization theory to explain religiosity in modern society, to the role of Christianity and the church in relation to rampant nationalism and refugee crises, and to the question of whether or not human dignity ever was, or still is, the highest value in the West. Addressing the sociology of the church as the distinctive communal formation of Christianity for the last two millennia, Joas underscores the need for Christian conceptions of church to balance theological sensibility with concrete sociological grounding. In the process, he considers the relation of a community of faith to contemporary ideas about the optimization of life.

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Yes, you can access Why the Church? by Hans Joas in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Theology & Religion & Religion. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Series Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Contents
  7. Preface to the English-Language Edition of Why the Church?
  8. 1. Introduction
  9. 2. Why the Church?: Can Transcendence Be Organized?
  10. 3. Problematic Predictions: Religion in a Secular Age
  11. 4. Do We Need Religion?: On Experiences of Self-Transcendence
  12. 5. Faith or Self-Optimization?: On the Cultural Role of the Church
  13. 6. A Christian through War and Revolution: Alfred Döblin’s Narrative Work November 1918
  14. 7. Christianity without the Church?: The Intellectual Trajectory of Leszek KoƂakowski
  15. 8. Human Dignity: The Religion of Modernity?
  16. 9. Is Human Dignity Still Our Supreme Value?
  17. 10. The Church as Moral Agency?
  18. 11. The Church’s Global Responsibility and Particular Obligations
  19. Notes
  20. Bibliography
  21. Name Index
  22. Subject Index
  23. Series List