In this paper, we explore the philosophical and theological issues that arise when a ‘religious’ process of decision-making, which is normally taken to require specific theological commitments both for its successful use and for its coherent explanation, is transferred into ‘secular’ contexts in which such theological commitments are not shared. Using the example of Quaker Business Method, we show how such a move provokes new theological questions, as well as questions for management studies.

Food - what we eat, how much we eat, how it is produced and prepared, and its cultural and ecological significance- is an increasingly significant topic not only for scholars but for all of us. Theology on the Menu is the first systematic and historical assessment of Christian attitudes to food and its role in shaping Christian identity. David Grumett and Rachel Muers unfold a fascinating history of feasting and fasting, food regulations and resistance to regulation, the symbolism attached to (...) particular foods, the relationship between diet and doctrine, and how food has shaped inter-religious encounters. Everyone interested in Christian approaches to food and diet or seeking to understand how theology can engage fruitfully with everyday life will find this book a stimulus and an inspiration. (shrink)

Does feminist theology have a future? This article explores the practices and methods of feminist theology as inherently future-oriented, attentive to the other and hence destabilizing of fixed identities-including fixed feminist or theological identities. I propose that the concern of third-wave feminism with the ways in which images of women and femininity are produced, reproduced and distributed can be taken up in feminist theology through sustained attention to how theology is done. This can help to overcome the tension between the (...) perceived need for feminist theology to move on and the continued widespread resistance to, or ignorance of, its basic ideas. I describe this as an examination of the spiritualities of feminist theology-and hence as a contribution to theologies of the Holy Spirit. (shrink)

This essay uses the motif of ‘the woman as answer’ in Barth and von Balthasar to explore aspects of their accounts of sexual difference in relation to ontological and trinitarian difference. In both cases the motif is shown to be problematic for reasons which become apparent in christology. Barth's characterisation of woman as the ‘sufficient answer’ to the prior ‘question’ posed by man indicates a tendency towards the elision of difference in his anthropology, which is reflected in the nonsexuality of (...) Christ ‐ the ‘true Man’ Ð and in aspects of his trinitarian theology. Von Balthasar's ‘double answer’ of woman to man moves beyond viewing sexual difference as the locus of man's self‐completion, but the overdetermination of ‘woman’ in his mariology undermines this. The pneumatology of von Balthasar's ‘Spiritus Creator’ suggests possibilities for the development of a christologically‐focused anthropology which maintains difference. (shrink)

The connections Stanley Hauerwas draws between his theological work and the craft of bricklaying, which he learned from his father, invites comparison with Seamus Heaney's depiction of poetry as digging. Both men understand their task of writing as hard and precise labour that pays close attention to given materials and that honours the complexities of the past. I consider how the characterisation of theology as bricklaying‐like work, integral to Hauerwas’ professional and personal self‐understanding, may shape his theological approaches and priorities, (...) and ask how this might contrast with other possible approaches formed from other historical contexts. (shrink)

Journal of Religious Ethics, Volume 49, Issue 4, Page 657-680, December 2021.

This essay argues for the importance and interest, within and beyond theological ethics, of the ethical questions faced by professionals who are called on to be producers of statistics (herein “stats”) for management purposes. Truth-telling, in the context of demands for stats, cannot be evaluated at the level of the individual statement or utterance, nor through an ethical framework primarily focused on the correspondence between thought and speech. Reflection on stats production forces us to treat truth-telling as contextual and political, (...) and to engage with the idea that the capacity to tell the truth is learned or acquired in communities, societies and institutions. I develop this engagement through a rereading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer on “telling the truth” and Michel Foucault on parrhēsia, identifying and exploring the relationship between the responsible use of stats and the “cynical” protest against them. (shrink)

We present readings, by Jewish, Christian and Muslim women scholars, of `difficult' texts from three scriptural traditions, viz. Ephesians 5.21-33, Sura' 4.32-35 and Genesis 30.1-26. All three texts concern marriage and point in different ways to the erasure of women's significance or agency, and we ask what happens when women read such texts as scripture. Our readings were developed in conversation with one another, following the developing practice of `Scriptural Reasoning', and they suggest ways in which the texts and their (...) feminist readers can `correct' and challenge each other. We propose that feminist biblical hermeneutics and inter-traditional scriptural reasoning can be mutually informative, with both practices seeking to take embodied difference seriously and to allow unresolved critical questions to arise in reading. (shrink)

The question of responsibility to future generations is a distinctively modern ethical problem, which exposes the limits of many modern ethical frameworks. I argue for the theological importance of this ‘limit’, and of the question of responsibility to future generations, drawing on the ultimate/penultimate conceptuality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics. Responsibility to future generations calls for detailed attention to a given situation, in the light of its openness to a future not within our control; and action for the sake of future (...) generations requires a suspension of one’s own judgement on that action. Christian ethics can take responsibility to future generations seriously while (and indeed through) maintaining a critique of attempts to orient action towards an innerworldly future utopia. (shrink)