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This study commends the public theology of the English Reformation as a fruitful though neglected resource for a critical analysis of the contradictions of freedom that riddle late-modern liberal democracies and a constructive response to them. Drawn from the key legal, liturgical, homiletic and confessional elements of the English Reformation, this foundational Anglican tradition provides a theological vantage point for understanding current moral and political impasses in the western legacy of natural rights.The extensive development of natural rights in pre-modern scholastic theory and practice and its continuity with theoretical development from the 17th century onward make the Reformers' criticisms of scholastic moral, political, and ecclesial thought germane to identifying the problematic features of the prevailing modern tradition and to furnishing a theological alternative to them. These features are: an individualistic and voluntarist conception of moral agency, a regulative and juridical orientation to human relationships, and an anthropocentric concentration on human rather than on divine right, judgement, and freedom. The humanity they portray is detached from its created ordering to Christological perfection and bound within a self-enclosed ethical and political self-understanding. This is effectively countered by the English reformers' presentation of the salvation of creation in Christ, faith working through love, the spiritual fellowship of the church, and the provisional character of political jurisdiction.

Public theology --- Reformation --- Natural law

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Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) was arguably this country's greatest theologian and its finest philosopher before the nineteenth century. His school if disciples (the ";New Divinity";) exerted enormous influence on the religious and political cultures of late colonial and early republican America. Hence any study of religion and politics in early America must take account of this theologian and his legacy.Yet historians still regard Edward's social theory as either nonexistent or underdeveloped. Gerald McDermott demonstrates, to the contrary, that Edwards was very interested in the social and political affairs of his day, and commented upon them at length in his unpublished sermons and private notebooks. McDermott shows that Edwards thought deeply about New England's status under God, America's role in the millennium, the nature and usefulness of patriotism, the duties of a good magistrate, and what it means to be a good citizen. In fact, his sociopolitical theory was at least as fully developed as that of his better-known contemporaries and more progressive in its attitude toward citizens' rights.Using unpublished manuscripts that have previously been largely ignored, McDermott also convincingly challenges generations of scholarly opinion about Edwards. The Edwards who emerges from this nook is both less provincial and more this-worldly than the persona he is commonly given.

Public theology --- History --- Edwards, Jonathan,

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"Desiring a Better Country is a collection of new essays by Douglas Farrow, stimulated by current legal and political and philosophical debates in North America, which challenges the common misconception that secular institutions can be a-theological or religiously neutral. It does so by treating five problems: the grounding of human rights, the dislocation of the goods of marriage, the incoherence of normative pluralism, the uncertain future of religious freedom, and distortions of the libertas ecclesiae or the doctrine of the Two. Conversely, Farrow challenges the notion that the Church can be a-political. The final essay recommends an eschatologically informed solution to the impasse of much post-conciliar political theology, rejecting both the 'social kingship' model and its de-politicized alternative in the later work of John Courtney Murray."--

Political theology. --- Theology, Doctrinal --- Public theology

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Public theology. --- Theology, Doctrinal --- Political theology

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Economics --- Public theology --- Religious aspects --- Christianity