Book announcement: Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future

I'm pleased to announce that my book Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future: Story, Tradition, and the Recovery of Community has entered the production phase and is scheduled for a March 2016 release by Baylor University Press. I'll post updates regarding the book's publication, including pre-ordering information, here at Ecclesial Theology during the next few months. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, here's a draft of the copy for the catalog and back cover description:

Baptists tend to be the “problem children” of the ecumenical movement. The Baptist obsession to realize a true church birthed a tradition of separation. While Baptists’ misgivings about ecumenism may stem from this fissiparous genealogy, it is equally true that the modern ecumenical movement itself increasingly lacks consensus about the pathway to a visible Christian unity.

In Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future: Story, Tradition, and the Recovery of Community, Steven R. Harmon explores the relationship of the Baptist calling to be a pilgrim community and the ecumenical movement. Harmon argues that neither vision can be fulfilled apart from a mutually receptive ecumenical engagement. As Harmon shows, Baptist communities and the churches from which they are separated need one another. Chief among the gifts Baptists have to offer the rest of the church is their pilgrim aversion to overly realized eschatologies of the church and their radical commitment to discerning the rule of Christ by means of the Scriptures. Baptists, in turn, must be willing to receive from other churches neglected aspects of the radical catholicity from which the Bible is inseparable.

Embedded in the Baptist vision and its historical embodiment are surprising openings for ecumenical convergence. Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future urges Baptists and their dialogue partners to recognize and embrace these ecumenically oriented facets of Baptist identity as indispensable provisions for their shared pilgrimage toward the fullness of the rule of Christ in their midst, which remains partial so long as Christ’s body remains divided.

Also in the meantime, check out some other forthcoming releases from Baylor University Press.

New publication--"James Wm. McClendon, Jr.'s Narrative Christology in Ecumenical/Ecclesiological Perspective"

The November 2014 issue of the Pacific Journal for Baptist Research (vol. 9, no. 2) includes my article "James Wm. McClendon, Jr.'s Narrative Christology in Ecumenical/Ecclesiological Perspective," The issue in its entirety is available online in PDF (click on hyperlink above); the abstract for the article follows:

ABSTRACT

The reception of Baptist theologian James Wm. McClendon, Jr.’s proposal of a “two-narrative” Christology has focused on its relation to the Chalcedonian “two-natures” Christology. While not ignoring this question, this article addresses the ecumenical and ecclesiological implications of McClendon’s Christology by turning to a pair of different questions. First, what does McClendon’s seemingly non-Chalcedonian Christology look like when viewed through the lenses of the attention bilateral ecumenical dialogue has given to Christology as central to efforts toward confessing “one faith,” in particular in light of the progress in overcoming the fifth-century Christological divisions made in the ecumenical dialogues between the non-Chalcedonian churches of the East and Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches during the past four decades? Second, what are the ecumenical implications of McClendon’s suggestion of a link between his two-narrative Christology and ecclesiology?

New publication--"Free Church Theology, the Pilgrim Church, and the Ecumenical Future"

The new issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies (vol. 49, no. 3, Summer 2014) includes my journal article "Free Church Theology, the Pilgrim Church, and the Ecumenical Future" (pp. 420-42). The précis published at the beginning of the article follows below:

Within the framework of receptive ecumenism, this essay addresses the question: is there anything distinctive about theology in the Free Church tradition that constitutes some portion of the ecclesial gifts that the rest of the church might contemplate receiving from the Free Churches? The author’s own Baptist tradition serves as a particular example that represents the larger Free Church tradition in this connection. A survey of the international bilateral dialogues with Baptist World Alliance participation reveals a Free Church theology that is both radically biblical and radically catholic and yet relentlessly pilgrim in its resistance to overly realized eschatologies of the church and its doctrinal formulations. After establishing connections between Free Church and ecumenically shared expressions of a pilgrim church theology, the essay concludes by proposing seven ecclesiological theses rooted in the narrative Christology of Baptist theologian James Wm. McClendon, Jr., regarding what it might mean ecumenically for the church to embody the story of Jesus as a pilgrim people.

Updated information on January 2015 ecumenism course at Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity

Peter and Andrew Embracing, icon
presented in 1964 by Pope Paul VI to
Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras

Important format and date updates for the January 2015 short-term M.Div. course on ecumenism I'm teaching at Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity:

DSTH 401 Special Topics in Theology: The Quest for Christian Unity will now be offered as a one-week intensive course Monday, January 5 through Friday, January 9, 8:00 A.M.-4:30 P.M. each day.

The new format and schedule may make it possible for additional students to take advantage of this opportunity, which is available not only to current Gardner-Webb divinity students but also to students enrolled elsewhere who would like to transfer the course credit to their home institutions, to non-degree students, and to registered auditors. For more information, see the previous Ecclesial Theology post Ecumenism divinity course opportunity--January 2015 short term.

In Memoriam: Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928-2014)

Theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg died Friday, September 6 at the age of 85. Pannenberg's former student Philip Clayton, a theologian at Claremont School of Theology, has blogged a nice personal tribute on Tony Jones' blog.

Most theological students recognize Pannenberg's name as a theologian mentioned in their systematic theology courses, probably in connection with concepts of revelation and Christology (the two loci in which I consistently reference Pannenberg in my courses at Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity). Fewer may be familiar with his work as an ecumenist. In my article “Ecumenical Theology and/as Systematic Theology,” Ecumenical Trends 38, no.9 (October 2009): 6/134-9/137, 15/143, I wrote this about Pannenberg's ecumenical work:

The close relationship between ecumenical and systematic theology is epitomized by the career of Wolfhart Pannenberg, who long served in the dual role of Professor of Systematic Theology and Director of the Institute of Ecumenical Theology at the University of Munich, participated actively in various forums for ecumenical dialogue, wrote extensively on ecumenical themes, and treated each of the systematic loci with ecumenical comprehensiveness in his three-volume Systematic Theology with the purpose of contributing to the ecumenical goal of the visible unity of the church clearly in mind (p. 7/135).