Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus

Reviewed Book: Spong, John Shelby, Bp. Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus. [S.l.]: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992

Will the real Jesus please stand up?: bridging the divide between the Jesus Seminar and its opponents through a Burkeian approach

This study employs a Burkeian cluster-agon analysis approach to analyze the rhetoric of four members of the Jesus Seminar; namely, Robert Funk, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and John Shelby Spong as well as that of two of the Jesus Seminar’s critics; Luke Timothy Johnson and N. Thomas Wright. Specifically, this study sought to discern the orientations or perspectives held by each of the examined rhetors in an effort to locate common ground or similar foundations within two seemingly disparate points of view. In doing so, this study creates a third perspective, or corrective, based on the orthopraxis approach of liberation theology that may be appropriated to dissolve other seemingly intractable rhetorical conflicts that threaten to shut down dialogue in conflicts

Israel and the politics of land: a theological case study

Reviewed Book: March, W Eugene. Israel and the politics of land: a theological case study. Louisville, Ky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994

Who was Jesus?

Reviewed Book: Wright, November T. (Nicholas Thomas), Bp. Who was Jesus?. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; London: SPCK, 1992

Faithful Hermeneutics

This article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools on January 9, 2009 as part of a panel on Scriptural and Constitutional Hermeneutics. The panel was co-sponsored by the Law and Religion Section, Section on Jewish Law, and Section on Islamic Law, and the papers will be published by the Michigan State Law Review. My article compares legal and religious hermeneutics by exploring the dual nature of what I term faithful hermeneutics. The ambiguity evoked by this phrase is intentional. On one hand, it suggests an investigation of the relationship between legal and religious interpretation by comparing hermeneutical activities undertaken by faithful adherents to these two different textual traditions. In this first sense, it is to compare how these practices are the hermeneutics of the faithful. On the other hand, the phrase suggests an analysis of how interpreters in these two traditions remain faithful to the nature of their practice. In this second sense, it is to compare how hermeneutics can be faithfully accomplished. My thesis is that these two senses of faithful hermeneutics are connected. The fact that it is faithful adherents who engage in the interpretive practice in large part defines how they can, and should, remain faithful to the interpretive enterprise. I anchor my argument in Hans-Georg Gadamer\u27s critique of historicism, in which he references the practices of legal and religious hermeneutics. Gadamer\u27s philosophical hermeneutics explains how faith is a prerequisite of understanding, even as understanding revitalizes and reshapes the faith one brings to a textual tradition. I then unfold the critical dimensions of faithful hermeneutics by comparing the work of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) and Gianni Vattimo on the Catholic tradition. I argue that these two thinkers display both the broad range and the non-methodological character of the critical insights of faithful hermeneutics. I conclude by suggesting that the parallels between religious and legal hermeneutics are instructive, but that we remember that it would be a mistake to conflate these two instances of faithful hermeneutics in our secular age

Law, Religion, and Racial Justice: A Comment on Derrick Bell\u27s Last Article

This essay examines Derrick Bells reflections on religion and law and his exploration of how blind faith in either can incorporate racism I offer two examples from Alabamas legal history to show how this can happen I then posit that his rejection of a fundamentalist approach to both religion and law led to his adoption of racial realism as a way to live a life of meaning and wort

Reclaiming the Bible for the church

Braaten, Carl E. Reclaiming the Bible for the church. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995

Atheist Controversy in the United Church of Canada: A Review of Gretta Vosper

Rev. Gretta Vosper (1958–), currently a serving United Church of Canada Minister in Scarborough, Ontario, has sparked debate in Canadian religious circles as a self-proclaimed atheist. In 2015, her unorthodox approach to public worship and her media statements about the high concentration of atheism among Ministers in the United Church brought matters to a head, and Vosper came under formal review by the Church’s Toronto Conference Ministry Personnel Committee. Meantime, the surrounding controversy left many people asking questions about what the United Church of Canada really believes. This thesis will examine the origins, progress and implications of the Vosper case, partly for its own sake, and partly as a lens through which to explore the history and possible future of the United Church. The argument will affirm a key Vosper contention, which is that her atheism can coherently be regarded as a product of her denominational background and of her theological education. Major theological movements that came to fruition during Vosper’s childhood years in the 1960s, and that appeared in the United Church theological mainstream in subsequent decades, can legitimately be said to make Vosper’s progressive, but atheistic version of Christianity possible. Though the atheistic implication is possible, however, it is not necessary. The thesis will, therefore, address the future of the United Church of Canada, maintaining that while Vosper’s progressivism chimes in well with current sensibilities, her atheism appears increasingly to be culturally outdated. Given the religious disposition of Millennials in particular, a more overt commitment to theism is needed in the United Church of Canada