Why the Church?: self-optimization or community of faith
"Why did Christianity produce the special organizational form "church" in the first place? Is it possible to be a Christian without the church? To what extent is Christian faith in community with other believers an alternative to the mere self-optimization of individuals? In this acce...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subito Delivery Service: | Order now. |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Book acquisition: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
[2024]
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| In: | Year: 2024 |
| Series/Journal: | Cultural memory in the present
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| Further subjects: | B
Christian Sociology
B Dignity Religious aspects Christianity B Mission of the church |
| Summary: | "Why did Christianity produce the special organizational form "church" in the first place? Is it possible to be a Christian without the church? To what extent is Christian faith in community with other believers an alternative to the mere self-optimization of individuals? In this accessible and questioning new work, Hans Joas traverses theological, church-historical, sociological, and ethical territory in search of a viable conception of the church adequate to contemporary globalized societies. Across eleven essays that draw on work by Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, H. Richard Niebuhr, Leszek Kolakowski and others, Joas reflects on key debates - from the failure of so-called secularization theory to explain religiosity in modern society, to the role of Christianity and the church in relation to rampant nationalism and refugee crises, and to the question of whether or not human dignity ever was, or still is, the highest value in the West. Addressing the sociology of the church as the distinctive communal formation of Christianity for the last two millennia, Joas underscores the need for Christian conceptions of church to balance theological sensibility with concrete sociological grounding. In the process, he considers the relation of a community of faith to contemporary ideas about the optimization of life"-- |
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| Item Description: | "Originally published in German in 2022 under the title Warum Kirche? Selbstoptimierung oder Glaubensgemeinschaft." Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Physical Description: | xii, 184 pages, 24 cm |
| ISBN: | 978-1-5036-3803-7 978-1-5036-4079-5 |
