Truth-Telling and Other Ecclesial Practices of Resistance

In this book leading American Lutheran theologians address the ways in which Christian communities might be mobilized for embodied works of resistance against systemic injustices in our times, and examine how the call to resistance reframes classic Lutheran doctrinal commitments to truth and sacramental theology, and in some cases, redefines them.

In this book, leading American Lutheran theologians, inspired by the Scandinavian emphasis on theology as embodied practice, ask how Christian communities might be mobilized for resistance against systemic injustices. They argue that the challenges we confront today as citizens of the United States, as a species in relation to all the other species on the planet, and as members of the body of Christ require an imaginative reconceptualization of the inherited tradition. The driving force of each chapter is the commitment to truth-telling in naming the church’s complicity with social and political evils, and to reorienting the church to the truth of grace that Christianity was created to communicate. Contributors ask how ecclesial resources may be generatively repurposed for the church in the world today, for church-building grounded in Christ and for empowering the church’s witness for justice. The authors take up the theme of resistance in both theoretical and pragmatic terms, on the one hand, rethinking doctrine, on the other, reconceiving lived religion and pastoral care, in light of the necessary urgencies of the time, and bearing witness to the God whose truth includes both justice and hope.

Chapter 1. Ecclesial Practices of Resistance

Christine Helmer

Chapter 2. Taking Responsibility for Truth: Ecclesial Practices in an Age of Hypocrisy

Jan-Olav Henriksen

Chapter 3. Embodying Truth in Ecclesial Practices

Allen G. Jorgenson

Chapter 4. Telling the Truth about Doctrine: Justification and Justice

Christine Helmer

Chapter 5. Complicity and the Christological Path of Ecclesial Resistance: Summons to a New Catechesis for a Time of Despair

Paul R. Hinlicky

Chapter 6. Lutheran Ecclesiologies of Resistance: Starting with the Spirit

Cheryl M. Peterson

Chapter 7. Resisting Tyranny and Polarization: An Ecclesiology of Word and Sacrament from the Midwestern Heartland

Amy Carr

Chapter 8.Creation Piety and Spiritual Formation

Gordon J. Straw

Chapter 9. Remembering the Immigrant Experience: The Body of Christ as a Borderless Space to Embrace Our Shared Humanity in the Face of Rising Xenophobia

Man Hei Yip

Chapter 10. Practicing Jesus Christ in Public, Embodying Resistance

Craig L. Nessan

Chapter 11. Seelsorge for Those Who Resist

Timothy L. Seals