Author: David C. Mahan File Type: pdf Description Can poetry matter to Christian theology? David Mahan asks in the introduction to this interdisciplinary work. Does the study of poetry represent a serious theological project? What does poetry have to contribute to the public tasks of theology and the Church? How can theologians, clergy and other ministry professionals, and Christian laypeople benefit from an earnest study of poetry? A growing number of professional theologians today seek to push theological inquiry beyond the relative seclusion of academic specialization into a broader marketplace of public ideas, and to recast the theological task as an integrative discipline, wholly engaged with the issues and sensibilities of the age. Accordingly, such scholars seek to draw upon and engage the insights and practices of a variety of cultural resources, including those of the arts, in their theological projects. Arguing that poetry can be a form of theological discourse, Mahan shows how poetry offers rich theological resources and instruction for the Christian church. In drawing attention to the peculiar advantages it affords, this book addresses one of the greatest challenges facing the church today the difficulty of effectively communicating the Christian gospel with increasingly disaffected late-modern people. Endorsements Can poetry matter to Christian theology? To this question, David Mahans book comprises a resounding yes.With acute sensitivity and painstaking attention to literary detail, the author shows how Christian wisdom is hugely enriched by three major word-crafters. Far from muddying the waters of theological rigor, poetic performance renders theology more precise, lucid, and faithful. An immensely important book, demonstrating just how badly the theologian needs the artist today. --Jeremy Begbie, Thomas A. Langford Research Professor of Theology, Duke University The engagement of theologians with the poetry of recent times has usually consisted of giving theological warrant to beauty and aesthetic gratification, of finding analogies between poetry and theology, or of discovering Christian themes in Christian and non-Christian poets alike. David Mahan, in An Unexpected Light, has achieved something distinctly new and different. He has taken three examples of Christian conviction inhabiting the contemporary world in the form of poems by Charles Williams, Micheal OSiadhail, and Geoffrey Hill. With lovingly close attention to both form and content, he has brought to our attention the inscape of these examples of Christian inhabitation in poetic form. And he has judiciously asked what Christian theologians can learn from a close reading of these poems for their own way of inhabiting our world today. Its an admirable achievement! --Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology, Yale University. David Mahan is a superb close reader of poetry and also a rich theological thinker. This book shows how poetry and theology can come together to light up the great questions of human life today. Above all, his profound engagement with three fascinating poets--OSiadhail, Williams, and Hill--will expand the circle of those who recognize their great significance for the twenty-first century. --David F. Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge David Mahan shedsunexpected light on poetry as a Christian discourse. He does this by deftly elucidating common intellectual ground shared by poets and theologians. Where he shines, however, is in showing how a poem means, how ideas actually become incarnate in texts. Mahan offers beautifully lucid analysis of demanding poets who, in his sure hands, become accessible, though never merely easy. He challenges us to see their work as not only speaking to our particular historical condition but, in quirky and reticent ways, as evangelizing our imaginations. --Peter Hawkins, Professor of Religion and Director of Luce Prog **Review Mahans aim to persuade Christians of the contribution contemporary imaginative writing can make to theological discourse is an entirely laudable one. (Jonathan Herapath Theology, Vol.114, No. 2, MarchApril 2011) An Unexpected Light comes highly commended by prominent scholars in the literature and theology field. [] we have cause to celebrate the remarkable explicatory gifts on display here, and to thank the author for inspiring us to discover or to appreciate anew three poets of rare significance. (Robert Rhys The Glass, Number 23, Spring 2011) About the Author D. Stephen Long is Professor of Systematic Theology at Marquette University. amongst his ricent publications are Tragedy, Tradition, Transformism (2007), The Goodness of God (2008). Forthcoming from James Clarke & Co in Autumn 2010 is his Sovereighnty of God Debate.

Author: Robin Blackburn File Type: pdf Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln exchanged letters at the end of the Civil War. Although they were divided by far more than the Atlantic Ocean, they agreed on the cause of free labor and the urgent need to end slavery. In his introduction, Robin Blackburn argues that Lincolns response signaled the importance of the German American community and the role of the international communists in opposing European recognition of the Confederacy. The ideals of communism, voiced through the International Working Mens Association, attracted many thousands of supporters throughout the US, and helped spread the demand for an eight-hour day. Blackburn shows how the IWA in Americaborn out of the Civil Warsought to radicalize Lincolns unfinished revolution and to advance the rights of labor, uniting black and white, men and women, native and foreign-born. The International contributed to a profound critique of the capitalist robber barons who enriched themselves during and after the war, and it inspired an extraordinary series of strikes and class struggles in the postwar decades. In addition to a range of key texts and letters by both Lincoln and Marx, this book includes articles from the radical New York-based journal Woodhull and Claflins Weekly, an extract from Thomas Fortunes classic work on racism Black and White, Frederick Engels on the progress of US labor in the 1880s, and Lucy Parsons speech at the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World. **About the Author Robin Blackburn teaches at the New School in New York and the University of Essex in the UK. He is the author of many books, including The Making of New World Slavery, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, Age Shock, Banking on Death, and The American Crucible. Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States and the author of several seminal speeches and writings, including the Gettysburg Address. He died in 1865. Karl Marx was born in 1818, in the Rhenish city of Trier, the son of a successful lawyer. He studied law and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, completing his doctorate in 1841. In Paris three years later, Marx was introduced to the study of political economy by a former fellow student, Frederick Engels. In 1848 they collaborated in writing The Communist Manifesto. Expelled from Prussia in the same year, Marx took up residence first in Paris and then in London where, in 1867 he published his magnum opus Capital. A co-founder of the International Workingmens Association in 1864, Marx died in London in 1883. Frederick Engels was born in 1820, in the German city of Barmen. Brought up as a devout Calvinist he moved to England in 1842 to work in his fathers Manchester textile firm. After joining the fight against the counter revolution in Germany in 1848 he returned to Manchester and the family business, finally settling there in 1850. In subsequent years he provided financial support for Marx and edited the second and third volumes of Capital. He died whilst working on the fourth volume in 1895. Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln exchanged letters at the end of the Civil War, with Marx writing on behalf of the International Working Mens Association. Although they were divided by far more than the Atlantic Ocean, they agreed on the urgency of suppressing slavery and the cause of free labor. In his introduction Robin Blackburn argues that Lincolns response to the IWA was a sign of the importance of the German American community as well as of the role of the International in opposing European recognition of the Confederacy. The International went on to attract many thousands of supporters in over fifty regions of the US, and helped to spread the demand for an eight-hour day--enacted by Congress in 1868 for Federal employees. Blackburn shows how the International in America--born out of the Civil War--sought to radicalize Lincolns unfinished revolution and to advance the rights of labor, uniting black and white, men and women, native and foreign--born. The...