Transforming Theology

I'm excited to announce my participation in a conversation on Transforming Theology being sponsored by Claremont School of Theology and The Ford Foundation. The goal is to "rekindle theological reflection" in an effort to transform theology (primarily academic), transform the church (local praxis), and transform theological education (I know, it's a whole lot of transformation lingo!) Most of the thinkers that will be presenting their ideas are on the more progressive-mainline edge of theological inquiry; in fact, they "are not optimistic that the conservative Evangelical groups will be highly responsive." Whether or not I fall into the last category, I hope to prove them wrong. I may not agree with most of what John Cobb assumes (or any of his proteges...the group is full of them), but what I absolutely agree with is the presupposition of the conversation:

We are Christians of many shades and stripes, colors and nationalities, beliefs and convictions. We are mainline Christians and emerging church folk, progressive Evangelicals and old-fashioned liberals, seekers and settled folks. We do not represent a single organization, denomination, "ism," or school of theology.

What bonds us together is the conviction that what you believe most deeply can and should make a difference in how you live in the world. For Christians, a set of beliefs about what is most important in the world is called a theology. So our motto is: theology matters.

"Transforming Theology" has two different meanings, and we mean the phrase in both senses. We seek to contribute to the transforming of theology, so that it remains vibrant and relevant to today's world. And we believe that vibrant theologies have transformative impacts -- on oneself, on the church, on society, and on the world as a whole. Some of us put more emphasis on the church, others more on societal change. For some of us, the theology that does the transforming is relatively orthodox; for others of us, it is rather less so. All of us are progressive in some ways and (if we are honest) not quite so progressive in others. But, again, we share this common conviction: what you believe matters. Hence, for Christians, theology matters. If we are going to change the world, we must be able to stand up and say what it is that we believe.

That's just beautiful!

So here's how this is going to work: Tripp Fuller (PhD student at Claremont and co-blogger of Homebrewed Christianity) will be sending me some goodies authored by the various participants. I'll read through them and post some of my thoughts on this blog along with a few questions that come to mind. Some of these questions will get passed along to the author while others will be for our own conversation here at Recliner Ramblings. It's that simple.

First up is John Cobb's Reclaiming the Church, which assesses the current state of affairs in the mainline church and tries to pave a road back to passion and involvement.