Meaning and Morality in the Contemporary World (2023)
Beilharz, Kirsty, Maureen Miner & Jane Fernandez, eds. Redeeming Truth and Community in an Age of Individualism: Meaning and Morality in the Contemporary World. Cooranbong, New South Wales: Avondale Academic Press, 2023. 291 pp.
What does Christian Truth and Community have to offer society in the age of dangerous post-truth or “alternative facts”(Lee McIntyre, MIT Press, 2018), in the age of unstable and inequitable liberal democracies, re-emerging totalitarian states, and environmental irresponsibility? “Social” media fosters isolation and insecurity, people are isolated and socially handicapped by technology, in a world that idolizes wealth and power at the cost of equality, creating an ever-widening the gap between affluence and poverty, a gulf between authoritarianism and justice. Is the search for truth and spirituality truly obsolete? If not, how can we redeem the core values of Christian teaching and enrich society?
Jesus modelled radical and countercultural inclusiveness of marginalized and alienated people in his interactions, acknowledging the dignity and value of ethnic outsiders, the vulnerable, the physically and mentally ill, people with ritually unclean professions, women, people of all classes, and those generally ostracized by society, nowhere more clearly than in the Lukan Gospel. In its sequel, Acts, the work of the early church focused on community creation and inclusiveness. How does Christianity today retrieve community cohesion, resilience, and support marginalized people from its own position of marginalization?”
Contents:
”1. Identity transformation, hermeneutics, and the unity of embrace – Maureen Miner
2. Domestic and family violence in Australia: Moving from competing perspectives to
practical responses for the Christian church – Dion Khlentzos
3. “Stay and Submit”: What have we learned from the Domestic and Family Violence body of evidence, and can Christians redeem our communities? – Erin Sessions
4. Redeeming Truth and Community in the Age of Individualism: The search for meaning,
theological understanding, spiritual life, and the foundation of morality in the
contemporary world … against these, there is no law: the flowering of spiritual fruit in
public institutions – Kate L. Bradford
5. Education for Sustainable Development: Perspectives Informed by Creation Care – Sunaina Gowan
6. Loss of Hope, Loss of Confidence: How Australian evangelical churches gave up their
power to secular authorities – Chris Gilbert
7. “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer”: Navigating Religious Love and Enmity
in an Individualistic Society – Chris Porter
8. The paradoxes of freedom: Why freedom feels like autonomy but is really a constrained
corporate reality – Nicola Hoggard Creegan
9. Leading without power: Servant Leadership for Higher Education – George Odhiambo
10. Reconciling McIntyre’s Post-Truth and Schmitt’s political exceptionalism with the ultimate Truth, Pauline obedience, and Barth’s sovereignty of God – Kirsty Beilharz”
Description from publisher.