Description
Book SynopsisVolatile social dissonance in America’s urban landscape is the backdrop as Valerie Miles-Tribble examines tensions in ecclesiology and public theology, focusing on theoethical dilemmas that complicate churches’ public justice witness as prophetic change agents. She attributes churches’ reticence to confront unjust disparities to conflicting views, for example, of Black Lives Matter protests as “mere politics,” and disparities in leader and congregant preparation for public justice roles. As a practical theologian with experience in organizational leadership, Miles-Tribble applies adaptive change theory, public justice theory, and a womanist communitarian perspective, engaging Emilie Townes’ construct of cultural evil as she presents a model of social reform activism re-envisioned as public discipleship. She contends that urban churches are urgently needed to embrace active prophetic roles and thus increase public justice witness. “Black Lives Matter times” compel churches to connect faith with public roles as spiritual catalysts of change.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Where’s the Church?
Part 1: Societal Perspectives
1. Black Lives Matter Times: Why the Church as Change Agent?
2. Toxic Silence: Rogue Practices, Double Standards, and Lemming Behavior
3. Can Dry Bones Live? Societal Challenges to Solidarity and Survival
Part 2: Theoethical Perspectives
4. Weary Hope: Restorative Ethics in the Praxis of Social Reform Activism
5. God Sees: Engaging a Womanist Theoethical Hermeneutic
Part 3: Contextual Perspectives
6. Doing the Work: Adaptive Methods for Contextual Praxis
7. On the Road to Oz: Urgency for Prophetic Social Change
