T&T Clark Handbook of Public Theology

572 Pages·2022·2.026 MB·English

by  Christoph Hübenthal, Christiane Alpers (eds)

Introduction
CHRISTOPH HÜBENTHAL AND CHRISTIANE ALPERS
Usually, the appearance of survey works on a particular academic discipline
as handbooks, manuals or companions indicates that the field in question
has reached a certain level of repletion. The involved experts know what the
discipline is about, the topics, research methods and standards for the production
of novel insights have been established and a common body of knowledge has
been developed. The essential content of the discipline can be communicated
to a wider public through the aforementioned media. The publication of a
handbook normally witnesses to a high level of disciplinary consolidation.
Cynics, however, hold that such consolidation often goes along with an
unhealthy saturation. As soon as a common body of knowledge can be seized
in a handbook, they assert, a discipline has already lost its inner momentum
and vitality. The exiting years of discovering unknown challenges, generating
fresh vocabularies, inventing new research perspectives or sampling competing
approaches are over, and the professionals have moved on to business as usual.
A handbook, so the malicious commentary goes, serves more as a mausoleum
than as a stimulus to initiate further developments.
Now, such observations may be true for other academic fields, but not for
public theology. Since the coining of the term by Martin Marty in 1974, the
discipline has experienced a tremendous proliferation, and it seems very unlikely
that this will end in the near future. If there is a centre of public theology,
its evolution over the past five decades exhibits rather a centrifugal than a
centripetal direction. The discipline expands, reaches out into undiscovered
territories and explores new nomenclatures, methods and forms of thought.
Sure, with the foundation of the Global Network for Public Theology and the
launching of the International Journal of Public Theology in 2007, the discipline
has gained a firm institutional platform and a highly esteemed medium of
publication. Fortunately, these devices were never meant to pretend unity,
2 T&T CLARK HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC THEOLOGY
let alone to confine the discourse. On the contrary, already a quick survey of
the journal’s articles, as well as of the network’s three annual meetings, shows
how diverse and varied the debates are. The countless books, anthologies,
papers and conference proceedings that engage with public theology, too, give
evidence to this variety. Moreover, ‘public theology’ denotes a wide range of
activities, initiatives and enterprises that not only reflect upon public issues
but seek to put the theory into practice. Current public theology, therefore,
is concerned with an expanding variety of issues, methodologies, approaches,
contexts, key figures, projects, ventures and activities. This accelerating
dynamic is anything but surprising because the main reference point of public
theology is, after all, the public. Not only since David Tracy do we know that
the public cannot be spoken of in the singular. There are many publics, all of
them in a permanent process of self-preservation, renovation, contextualization
and re-contextualization. Almost necessary, the shape of public theology
reflects such dynamic because the discipline does not stand over against the
multiple expressions of public life, but rather – according to its explicit self-
understanding – constitutes an integral part of them. The vitality of the publics
explains the vitality of public theology itself. Accordingly, the discipline has not
yet reached a state of consolidation or even saturation and will probably – or
hopefully – never do.
But why then a handbook? At first glance, the topical, discursive, contextual
or practical diversity of public theology seems not to allow for an adequate
inventory summary of the field. Merely viewed in this light, a handbook of
public theology would indeed, if at all, hardly be more than an insufficient
snapshot of the status quo. But in spite of the centrifugal tendencies which result
from the internal dynamics of public life, public theology still has a centre from
which it never departed. In effect, public theology is not only a theoretical and
practical preoccupation with public matters but first and foremost it is theology.
This means that it speaks about God, however diverse the modes and contexts
of this talk may be. If we, moreover, qualify the term ‘theology’ by the predicate
‘Christian’, it turns out that the centre of public theology is none other than
Jesus of Nazareth, who was soon confessed as the ‘Christ’. In light of this, the
centrifugal evolution of public theology must not be taken as a removal from the
centre but rather as an attempt to understand the relations of this centre to the
‘margins’, to the multiple challenges all possible publics are confronted with,
and to communicate this relation to these publics in their respective languages.
Public theology bespeaks Christ’s relevance to all conceivable publics. Precisely
this conviction forms the unifying core of the present handbook. Of course,
other public theologies are possible and do actually exist. Jews, Muslims,
Hindus, Buddhists and many others are also concerned with public issues and
have engendered a great deal of theoretical and practical insights that are more
than worth to be heard. Accordingly, it would be a terrible misconception if
INTRODUCTION 3
a public theology of the Christian provenance were to ignore these voices or
refused to enter into a constructive dialogue with them. But since this handbook
wishes to provide a deliberately Christian view on public theology, its centre is
Christ. The volume can thus be read as an attempt – albeit limited and selective
– to make Christ’s relevance to all possible publics visible.
That there is a unifying core which justifies the venture of a handbook,
however, is not to say that this core exists in a pure form. Just as there are
multiple publics, so there are many interpretations of Christ and his relevance
to public life. Of course, the doctrinal developments within, say, the first five
centuries of Christianity have generated a widely shared consensus in terms
of creedal or dogmatic language so that most public theologians would agree,
for example, that it was in Jesus Christ that the triune God revealed Godself
in human shape. But what that means for life in general and for public life in
particular remains fairly contested. It makes a huge difference, after all, whether
you see Christ primarily as the educator of the human race, as an exemplar of
what it means to be truly human, as the redeemer from our sinful condition,
as the head of a communal body or as the liberator from oppressive structures.
Such and countless other images have been cultivated throughout the history of
Christianity; and though they are not necessarily compatible with each other,
one cannot say from the outset that any of them is completely mistaken. The
centre itself, therefore, appears in various facets. Relating a multifaceted centre
to the margins of different publics, narratives and discursive formations, then,
creates an almost unmanageable multiplicity of mediations which, once more,
explains the prolific character and diversity of current public theology. Yet, the
flip side of this dynamic seems to be that the centre tends to become invisible
and public theology gets more and more – to borrow a film title from Sofia
Coppola – ‘lost in translation’.
Perhaps it is this tendency that gave rise to a growing suspicion about the
current shape of the discipline. Indeed, there are more than a few critics who
doubt that public theology does justice at all to its Christian centre. First of all,
they bemoan that public theologians have adopted an accommodationist stance
towards the surrounding culture. In their view, it is the wider society which sets
the discursive agenda, while public theologians only react. In trying to counter the
privatization of religion, so the argument goes, public theologians unqualifiedly
commit themselves to public opinions and their appraisement of significance
and importance. They participate in debates on diverse issues and occasionally
decorate their contributions with theological ornaments, but, in fact, they do
not conduct theology. Even worse, by employing a generally accessible language
and by trusting in the persuasive power of universal reason, they voluntarily
subject to a logic which is neither neutral nor compatible with Christianity.
Public discourses, despite their alleged neutrality and reasonableness, are in fact
expressions of an ideology that tries to domesticate religion and to stabilize the
4 T&T CLARK HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC THEOLOGY
power of states, markets, sciences or the secular culture. Such forces create a
narrative which is decidedly hostile to Christianity. When public theologians thus
willingly comply with the rules of the game of these discourses, they effectively
serve idolatrous purposes and eventually give up their Christian identity. On
this account, the critics prefer an alternative model of public theology, that is,
a model which regards the Christian church as a body politic on its own, as a
counter-public that is able to accomplish true community over against the false
and power-dominated sects of the secular society. The church’s policy, then,
consists in the effectuation of a liturgical, virtuous and aesthetic practice that
does not as much convince by good reasons as by its performative beauty.
No doubt, this alternative model has its merits. It can legitimately claim to have
Christ as its centre. Likewise, it points to a problem that not all public theologians
sufficiently are aware of, for it is true that an all too uncritical engagement with
other – particularly secular – publics bears the danger of being absorbed by false
gods. And finally, this model rightly emphasizes that public theology not only has
to care for the common good of the wider society but must primarily be concerned
with the Christian community and its credible self-expression. However, the
question is whether the Christian/non-Christian dichotomy on which this model
rests is tenable. In the footmark of Augustine’s distinction between the civitas
Dei and the civitas terrena and supported by an arguable genealogy of modernity,
this model tends to draw a sharp distinction between the Christian narrative and
its secular counterparts. It does so by building on the metaphysical assumption
that the entirety of created reality participates in God’s being. At the same time,
however, it claims that at a certain point in history people began to see themselves
as autonomous and thus construed the world etsi Deus non daretur, as if God
did not exist. Though the paradox of how such a mental exodus from divine
being was even possible remains unresolved in this model, its representatives
are nonetheless convinced that the (post)modern mindset and its corresponding
publics, discourses and narratives cannot provide any access to the divine. In this
way, an unbridgeable chasm is set between the ecclesial public, on the one hand,
which accomplishes true peace and community and secular publics, on the other,
which pretend to do the same, but in fact promote nihilism, war and hostility.
Though the present handbook will, due to their valuable critical
observations and their undeniable merits, give sufficient room to these
alternative voices, it likewise fosters the view that the relevance of Christ is
indeed translatable into whatever public setting. If Christ proves to be ‘the way,
and the truth, and the life’ (Jn 14.6 ESV), then this is not only communicable
to everyone; it also must be communicated to everyone since no one may be
deprived of the true way of living. Moreover, it becomes evident that such
communication cannot suffice with merely performing the Christian practice
in a liturgically authentic or aesthetically appealing manner. Admittedly, in
the wake of a derailed postmodernism, intellectuals have come to believe
INTRODUCTION 5
that truth is always depending on narrative presuppositions, which is why
it cannot be expressed in universal terms. But – apart from the question
of whether this statement itself claims to be universally true (which would
amount to a self-contradiction) or whether it claims to have an only limited
validity (which would entail to saying nothing) – Christian theology can
simply not accept that the truth of Christ should not be communicable by
a generally intelligible language. If this were the case, the notion of truth
would have completely lost its meaning. No doubt, the truth of the Logos is
not reducible to reason alone, but neither can it be conceived without it. So
if Christ’s truth is relevant to all, then it must be reasonably communicable in
all possible publics, discourses and narratives. Public theology is convinced
that mutual understanding is possible. This conviction is far from supporting
some sort of ecclesial or theological triumphalism. Any articulation of
truth is fallible and must expose itself to the critical investigation of others.
Precisely this is one of the reasons why public theology seeks to enter into
every possible public, not only in a proclaiming but also in learning mode.
By dialogically mediating the Christian truth with other forms of thought
– be they political or economic, ecological or scientific, cultural or social,
contextual or global, religious or secular – public theology helps others to
better understand what Christians believe in. At the same time, though, it
helps Christians to better understand themselves.
Public theology makes an indispensable contribution to the self-elucidation
of Christian faith. But it is more than that. As the present handbook will show,
theological engagement with other publics and discursive formations also
seeks to foster the improvement of individual and social life. This was already
the intention of great public theologians avant la lettre as Abraham Kuyper,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, H. Richard Niebuhr, John Courtney Murray or Martin
Luther King Jr., and it still holds true for all strands of current public theology.
Starting from the observation that there are damaged, deprived, oppressed
and distorted forms of human life, public theology raises questions about the
personal, structural or cultural conditions that make such deformations possible
and real. It tries to uncover why so many people – individually, collectively
and globally – are prevented from living a good and fulfilled life. In recent
years, public theologians have indeed identified and analysed countless forms of
poverty, deprivation and social injustices, they have addressed the outgrowths
of an uncontrolled capitalism, they have dealt with postcolonial challenges and
the traumatizing effects of sexism and racism, they have pointed to the dangers
of populism or consumerism, they have examined the ecological crisis and the
climate change and many other issues. But, of course, public theology is not
only concerned with analysing such challenges, it also works out local, national
or global solutions to the violations of human dignity and the destruction of
the environment. By so employing a social ethics that offers innovative answers
6 T&T CLARK HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC THEOLOGY
to urgent problems, public theology makes important contributions to the
achievement of justice, human flourishing and the common good.
Yet, others do this as well. Political philosophers, social ethicists, NGOs, trade
unions, political parties, social movements, intellectual circles, critical journalists
and even alert artists provide similar analyses or pursue the same solutions. And
oftentimes, to be honest, they do this much better than public theologians. So
it goes without saying that public theology is in need of an interdisciplinary
collaboration with competent allies. Only in cooperation with others it is
capable of appropriately addressing the ethical challenges of our time. And still,
there is one thing that none of the partners can offer. Public theology’s centre is
Christ, and Christ is the centre of and hope for all creation. Accordingly, public
theology not only strives for the betterment of specific situations or the solution
of concrete problems but virtually aspires to the salvation of creation as a whole.
Each particular effort to uncover, to understand or to alleviate human and non-
human suffering must thus be taken as an attempt to place the unredeemed
within the all-encompassing context of eschatological redemption. This does
not mean that public theology itself can promote the salvation of the world,
let alone accomplish it. Redeeming the world is exclusively the work of God.
But by fulfilling its ethical tasks and pursuing justice, human flourishing and the
common good public theology foreshadows and depicts the universal salvation
as it was already accomplished in Jesus Christ and is yet to come in its fullness.
Placing the unredeemed within the context of eschatological redemption thus
means expressing the hope that the moral striving of humans – Christians
and non-Christians alike – is not in vain. It points at an ultimate telos whose
realization has been promised in Christ and will definitely be consummated by
the triune God. In many respects public theology, therefore, is engaged in the
same social-ethical projects as other agents, but this engagement witnesses to
the hope for something which humankind can ever make real.
Now to the structure of the present handbook: in the opening section, the
‘Conditions and Self-Positioning’ of public theology will be dealt with. Here,
first of all, notions like the public sphere and liberal democracy have to be
clarified. It goes without saying, however, that public theology cannot contend
itself with merely descriptive accounts of such concepts, since only an evaluative
approach proves capable of revealing their theological relevance. Accordingly,
next to the discussion of sociological, political or juridical issues, a decidedly
normative stance will be employed to elucidate these notions. In a similar vein,
it needs no mentioning that the contemporary situation within which public
theology finds itself is the outcome of countless historical processes. Hence,
positioning oneself on the basis of a sheer inventory of the present does not
suffice. For this reason, most of the chapters will provide a historical account
of how the current state of affairs has come about. Only on that condition it is
INTRODUCTION 7
possible to recognize, for instance, that there is no contradiction in portraying
the present age as secular and post-secular at the same time. Whereas the secular
signifies a particular historical project that resulted in our contemporary self-
understanding, post-secularity can be seen as the pluralizing effects of this
project. Moreover, the self-positioning of public theology requires some
reflections on what it is and what it is not. For that purpose, the similarities and
dissimilarities with political and liberation theologies have to be investigated.
Here, it will turn out that all those theologies deal with public issues but
relate to different contexts, address specific problems and build on distinct
theological approaches. Last but not least, the first part introduces a strong
plea for an apologetic mode of doing public theology. For bringing the centre
to the margins requires, as we have already seen, some sort of communication
that is basically accessible to all. It includes all sorts of expressive means, from
liturgy to reason. Such communication, so it will be argued, can best be called
apologetics.
Christ is the centre of Christian public theology, but the centre proves to be
multifaceted. Particularly, the existence and the shape of the major confessional
traditions give witness to the many facets of Christ. While some, for instance,
emphasize Christ’s sacramental presence in the church, others see Christ primarily
as God becoming human so that humans might become God. Still others focus
on Christ’s redemptive work through which the justification of the sinner was
made possible. Today, as a result of an intensified ecumenical dialogue, we can
also observe lots of hybrid forms and crosslinks between confessional theologies.
This proves to be a positive development – not at least because it helps to come to
a more comprehensive picture of Christ. Against this backdrop, it is clear that the
handbook has to contain a section on ‘The Ecumenical Scope of Public Theology’.
The discipline, as is well known, first emerged from liberal Protestantism in North
America and Germany. This came as no surprise since liberal Protestantism was
built not only on a long history of societal engagement but was also one of
the driving forces of the cultural development in these countries. The Roman
Catholic tradition, being very influential in other parts of the world, could easily
join in those debates because it had already developed a social doctrine which
addressed similar issues as early public theology. To a greater or lesser extent, this
applies also to Orthodox traditions. In former communist societies, however,
their cultural influence blossomed only after the breakdown of the Eastern Bloc
when civil societies began to emerge and a social doctrine was developed. Post-
liberal theologies, on their part, can be seen as an ecumenical reaction to the
multiple distortions of a liberal modernity. While liberal Protestantism and also
some strands of post-Vatican II Catholicism seem to exhibit a great affinity with
modern culture, post-liberals with diverse denominational backgrounds seek
to promote an alternative, more ecclesiocentric model of public theology. Yet,
8 T&T CLARK HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC THEOLOGY
ecumenism is by no means confined to post-liberal positions. In a sense, public
theology can virtually be seen as an epitome of ecumenism. Perhaps, it is also
this ecumenical spirit which recently enabled public theologians to advance their
relations to other religions. In a time of global challenges, after all, no religious
tradition alone can claim to have the right solutions.
As mentioned earlier, public theology is not primarily a theoretical or practical
preoccupation with public matters, but first of all it is theology. So there are
reasons enough to include a section on ‘Theological Tenets in Public Theology’
in this handbook. To zoom in on the field, first the similarities and the differences
between social ethics and public theology have to be clarified. The universal scope
of public theology is not so much related to the concrete issues both disciplines
are dealing with, but rather to the doctrinal beliefs on which public theology relies
and which, therefore, locate these issues in an eschatological context. After having
touched upon the dogmatic core of public theology, it can be investigated in which
way some of the central Christian doctrines impact the shape of the discipline.
Particularly, the doctrine of God is of importance here. Depending on how one
conceives of God’s engagement with the world, for instance, the role of human
activities will significantly differ. If one – to point out one side of the spectrum –
completely reduces every creaturely potency, including human agency, to divine
causation, then the human concurrence in God’s salvific work will tend to zero.
If one, by contrast, takes God’s presence in the world as an invitation to respond
to God’s grace, then this leaves much more room for the theological significance
of human engagement, in the public sphere and elsewhere. More or less the same
applies to soteriology. Here, too, Christ’s redemptive activity can either be seen as
a totally new creation of the fallen nature or as a release of the human faculty to
resonate with God’s call. Apparently, understanding salvation in one or the other
way makes an enormous difference for the conceptualization of public theology.
When it comes to ecclesiology, the spectrum of possibilities stretches from a self-
assured church which forms the one and only true body politic to a humble
church which enters into the various publics in order to determine dialogically
the best way to justice, human flourishing or the common good. At first sight, the
church’s liturgy seems to have little impact on public life since it is performed
solely by the assembly of believers. Yet, if one recognizes the community-building
effect of the liturgical practice and, moreover, expects this community to operate
within the public realm in affectionate, peaceful and charitable ways, then liturgy
turns out to be an extraordinarily significant political and cultural factor. This
becomes all the more true as soon as one realizes that particularly the liturgical
practice designates and anticipates ultimate redemption given by God. Therefore,
as has already been indicated, it is primarily the eschatological frame that
distinguishes public theology from other social-ethical enterprises. Eschatology,
INTRODUCTION 9
as it were, articulates and reflects upon just that hope that public theology seeks
to communicate by means of its social-ethical engagement.
All too often, public theology has been charged with not being theologically
enough. For this reason the handbook puts so much emphasis on the theological
tenets and hopefully shows that there can be no question of a theological lacuna
at all. But, of course, the discipline is primarily known for its commitment to
public issues. Accordingly, attention must be paid to the major ‘Challenges for
Public Theology’. The first topic to be treated here is politics. Some post-liberal
theologians construe a sharp divide between the church and the political sphere
which then compels them to present ecclesial performances as an alternative
policy. The challenge for public theology is to develop a more comprehensive
conception which conceives of politics not so much in terms of competition and
conflict but rather as a common endeavour to create a world liveable for all. Race
and gender, too, are artificial distinctions meant to justify existing power relations
and to maintain oppressive structures. Public theology faces the challenge of
dismantling the underlying logics of such ideological constructs. At the same time,
though, it has to be considered how due attention can be paid to a legitimate
interest in the recognition of diversity. Another challenge arises out of a particular
conception of culture. For as long as one underestimates the reflective potential of
cultural life, one has to treat culture and theology as two distinct discourses: one
as the performance and the other as a critical contemplation of cultural practices.
A more sophisticated understanding of culture, by contrast, would show in which
way public theology itself partakes in a culture’s search for self-understanding.
When it comes to economics, economic issues cannot be neglected by theologians
who attempt to take normative stances towards public life. A similar pattern
seems to apply to ecology, for at first glance public theology cannot be equated
with whatever environmental policy. Yet, as soon as one takes on a theological
point of view and realizes the interconnectedness of all created beings, it becomes
clear that ecology is more an ontological than a political concept. Hence,
the challenge for public theology is to make this perspective plausible. Quite
another topic is sports. Admittedly, until now, sports has scarcely been viewed
as a challenge that public theology should address. However, particularly this
realm of public life combines political, cultural, gender, economic and ecological
aspects as probably no other field of common interest. Furthermore, the staging
of great sports events exhibits all too often religious traits so that public theology
cannot but be concerned with this prominent cultural phenomenon.
As has been indicated, there are multiple publics with specific languages,
intellectual presumptions, topical emphases and discursive dynamics. The
notion of the public thus only makes sense if used in the plural. Since public
theology seeks to be part of all those debates, it also presents itself in a pluralist
shape. At the same time, the discipline is driven by an overall concern, namely
10 T&T CLARK HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC THEOLOGY
to communicate Christ to the margins of all publics. This has geographical
implications so that one can rightly speak of the ‘International Scope of Public
Theology’. Outlining this scope properly would, strictly speaking, entail to depict
public discourses in all regions and on all levels, from the global to the local,
which is impossible. The handbook, therefore, restricts itself to an overview
of how the discipline’s situatedness in different continents, and, accordingly,
contains chapters on the public theologies of Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe,
North America and Latin America. Evidentially, such a coarse grid cannot fully
do justice to the internal diversity of the respective discourses. Nonetheless, it
will become conspicuous in what way and to which extent public theology, due
to the multiformity of local and national challenges, exhibits a very peculiar
shape within each of the continental settings.
Portraying public theology by presenting its self-positioning, its ecumenical
character, its theological tenets, its challenges and its international scope is surely
not the only way to make interested readers – students, scholars, church activists
and others – acquainted with the peculiarities of the discipline. That it still is
a way – and perhaps not the worst – is not at least indicated by the confidence
that the contributors, all renowned experts in their fields, have put into this
project. We would like to express our deepest gratitude for their willingness
to write and sometimes rewrite the chapters, for their stimulating discussions
and for their patience. Also many thanks to Marieke Meijer-Bernard, who so
devotedly took care of the editing of the texts. Last but not least we would like
to thank Anna Turton and Sinead O’Connor for the excellent support without
which this handbook would have never seen the light of day.