The Family, Religion, and Culture series is published by Westminster John Knox Press. Don Browning and Ian Evison are general editors. For a complete listing of titles in this series, click here.
Don Browning, Pamela Couture, Robert Franklin, K. Brynolf Lyon, and Bonnie Miller-McLemore
Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, Fall 1997
This book combines theological, ethical, and sociological resources to argue for the Judeo-Christian voice as positive and necessary for understanding and revitalizing contemporary American family life. It argues for a new post-industrial "critical familism," based on Judeo-Christian understandings of "equal regard," involving the ideal of an equal participation of parents in both paid work and child care. It examines in-depth interviews of families around the country and survey data on American attitudes towards families in the general population and amongst family professionals of various religious and secular kinds. It discusses the various contributions that may be made to a renewed American family culture by feminists, conservatives, family therapists, blacks, evolutionary psychologists, and others.
Chapter Outline:
Part I. The Issues
Introduction
1. The Family (1990-1996): From a Conservative to a Liberal Issue
2. The Family Crisis: Who Understands It?
3. Religion and the Ideal Family: Its Nineteenth-Century Variations in North
America
Part II. The Resources
4. Love, Christian Family Theory, and Evolutionary Psychology
5. Honor, Shame, and Equality in Early Christian Families
Part III. The Voices
6. Feminism, Religion, and the Family
7. Families and the Therapeutic
8. Christian Profamily Movements: The Black Church, Roman Catholics,
and the Christian Right
9. Economic Voices: State Family, Market Family, and Civil Society
Part IV. Directions
10. A Practical Theology of Families
11. Critical Familism: New Directions for Church and Society
John Witte, Jr.
Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, Fall 1997
This book analyzes the historical interplay between Christian theological norms and Western legal principles on family life, particularly in medieval canon law, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment. While it pays attention to social practices, it is primarily a theological analysis which seeks to come to terms with the cardinal religious sources and dimensions of the modern Western marriage law as these are exhibited on the books. Issues to which it pays particular attention are the definition of a family, the role of gender, the role of children, and the role of the church.
Chapter Outline:
Introduction
1. Marriage as Sacrament in the Catholic Tradition
2. Marriage as Social Estate in the Lutheran Reformation
3. Marriage as Covenant in the Calvinist Tradition
4. Marriage as Commonwealth in the Anglican Tradition
5. Marriage as Contract in the Enlightenment Tradition
Final Reflections
Lisa Sowle Cahill
New York: Cambridge University Press, Summer 1996
This book constructs a feminist Aristotelian-Thomistic approach to issues of sex and gender. It examines notions of body and community, postmodernism (particularly in Foucault), intercultural dialogue, parenthood, and reproductive technology. It pays special attention to how these issues concern women's equality and sexual meaning.
Chapter Outline:
1. Sex, Gender, and the Problem of Moral Argument
2. Feminism and Foundations
3. Particular Experiences, Shared Goods
4. "The Body" - in Context
An Interlude and a Proposal
5. Sex, Gender, and Early Christianity
6. Sex, Marriage, and Family in Christian Tradition
7. The New Birth Technologies and Public Moral Argument
Concluding Reflections
Anne Carr and Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, eds.
Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, Fall 1996
Ecumenical in character, this book testifies to the idea that religion, feminism, and family are not incurably antagonistic to one another, a view which is contrary to the widespread popular belief. When properly defined, these traditions not only reinforce one another but are also dependent on one another for their respective fulfillments. The authors' claims can be summed up as follows: first, to gain its fullest hearing, feminism must come to terms with Western religious precedents for some of its deepest institutions; second, to regain their position in postmodern societies, Christianity and Judaism must include the insights of contemporary feminism; and finally, families themselves need both a feminism that is religiously articulate and a religion that is sensitive to the needs of families.
Chapter Outline:
Part 1: Defining the Themes
1. Religion and Feminism: A Reformist Christian Analysis
Anne Carr and Douglas J. Schuurman
2. Re-Inventing the Ties that Bind: Feminism and the Family at the Close of
the
Twentieth Century
Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen
Part 2: Jewish and Christian Families
3. The Family in the Hebrew Bible
Tikva Frymer-Kensky
4. The Family in Rabbinic Judaism
Allan Kensky
5. Christian Understandings of Human Nature and Gender
Rosemary Radford Ruether
6. A Common Love: Christian Feminist Ethics and the Family
Sally Purvis
Part 3: The Background for the Present Context
7. Christianity, Women, and the Medieval Family
Robert Sweetman
8. The Early Modern Period: Religion, the Family, and Women's
Public Roles
Merry E. Wiesner
9. Restoring the Divine Order to the World: Religion and the Family in the
Antebellum Woman's Rights Movement
Catherine A. Brekus
10. Religion, Feminism, and the American Family: 1865-1920
Margaret Lamberts Bendroth
11. "Take Your Girlie to the Movies": Dating and Entertainment in
Twentieth Century America
William D. Romanowski
12. Reluctant Feminists: Rural Women and the Myth of the Farm Family
Marvin L. Anderson
Part 4: Current Issues
13. Rethinking Private and Public Patriarchy
Pamela D. Couture
14. Family and Work: Can Anyone "Have It All"?
Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore
15. Sacrificial and Parental Spiritualities
Christine E. Gudorf
16. The "Recovery" of Fatherhood?
Rob Palkovitz
17. "Lifting as We Climb": Womanist Theorizing about Religion and the Family
Toinette M. Eugene
18. A Voice from "The Borderlands": Asian-American Women and their Families
Jung Ha Kim
19. Shakti and Sati: Women, Religion, and Development
Ivy George
Final Reflections, Anne Carr
Max Stackhouse
Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, Spring 1997
This book shows how families are profoundly influenced by the economic systems and the ideologies of economic life that surround them. The structural changes in our society--from hunting and gathering to agriculture to trade and early industrialization--and in our economy--from early capitalism to socialism, postindustrialism, and nowthe global economy--have had a profound impact onthe structure, purpose, and well-being of families. The book explores not only how families have been shaped by economies but also how the faith or religious vision that families by can shape economies (as for instance in the influences of the Reformation). It demonstrates how "covenant theology" has functioned to guide families, market, and government. This not only occurred in Geneva, England, and early America, but also can happen today and possibly in the future. For this age of corporations, global economies, dynamic markets, weakened families, beleaguered governments, and deteriorating civil societies, the book develops a "public theology" based on fresh interpretations of what it means to have covenant relationships.
Chapter Outline:
Introduction
1. Sex and Marriage: An Intense Debate
2. Household and Work: On Sex, Economics, and Power
3. Home and Religion: Sharing and Home Life
4. Welfare and Children: The Family in State and Society
5. Covenant and Love: What Have We Done?
Ted Peters
Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, Spring 1997
This book addresses one of the most disturbing challenges facing both society and churches: how to deal with the emerging possibilities for the control and management of human reproductive processes that is offered by the scientific advancements of modern biology and medicine. It sets out the challenge of these new technologies and reviews the literature, the prominent alternative perspectives, and the emerging issues in this vast new field. Making positive use of Roman Catholic ethical thought as well as his own Protestant tradition, Peters constructs a view of the future that is both realistic and hopeful. The book argues that church and society can find their way towards more liberating and generous options for reproductive decisions by applying persistently the measure of what is good for children.
Chapter Outline:
1. Choosing for Children in an Era of Disintegrating Families
2. Multiple Choice in Baby Making
3. Surrogate Motherhood: An Ethical Puzzle
4. Designer Genes and Selective Abortion
5. Sex and Baby Making in Christian Thought
6. Visions of the Future and Ethical Foundations
Carolyn Osiek and David Balch
Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, Spring 1997
This book provides the most comprehensive discussion of the family in early Christianity that exists in English or any other language. Written ecumenically by Roman Catholic Carolyn Osiek and Protestant David Balch, it sets the various New Testament teachings on the family within the social and cultural context of the Greco-Roman world. It shows how the architectural patterns of Roman homes formed and influence relationships in early Christian house churches and demonstrates how worship in these house churches influenced Christian families. It shows that early Christian women enjoyed wider ranges of freedom and leadership and that early Christian men learned to think of themselves as servants. It explains why early Christianity both valued families and subordinated them to the kingdom of God. And it documents how conservative reactions to these trends eventually emerged in early Christian communities and how, even afterward, Christian families had changed--the seeds of new understandings had been planted.
Chapter Outline:
Introduction
Part 1: Material and Social Environment of the Greco-Roman Household
Part 2: Early Christian Families and House Churches
Conclusion
Leo Perdue (ed.), Joseph Blenkinsopp, John Collins, and Carol Meyers
Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, Spring 1997
This book is the only recent comprehensive review in the English language concerning the family in ancient Israel. It profits from the many breakthroughs in the study of the Hebrew scriptures. It argues that the family in ancient Israel should be understood as a complicated, multigenerational "household" system organized around a core "covenant" between father, mother, and blood-related children. Religious ideas gave order and significance to the practical realities of life family in ancient Israel. And religious ideas in turn were not disconnected from the contingencies of household labor, land, wealth, procreation, inheritance, economic profit and loss, sickness, and dependency. The idea of "covenant" was throughout the Hebrew scriptures a highly integrative idea relating God's love and promise to household and land, parent and king, and God's rule in family and society.
Chapter Outline:
Phyllis D. Airhart and Margaret Lamberts Bendroth, eds.
Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, Fall 1996
This book tells the stories of several North American religious traditions and their struggle over the last decades to respond to the emerging debate over the family. It argues that all of the denominations and traditions studied--Baptist, Mormon, Mennonite, Catholic, African Methodist Episcopal, Methodist, Jewish, Presbyterian, United Church of Canada, Episcopal, and the NCCC and NAE--have faced the disruptive forces of modernization. All have negotiated with technical reason, the spread of market forces, the increasing involvement of government in our lives, and the rising educational levels of church members. Yet they have responded to modernity in quite different ways, with different approaches to the understanding and well-being of families.
Chapter Outline:
Introduction: Churches and Families in North American Society
Phyllis D. Airhart and Margaret Lamberts Bendroth
1. Southern Baptist: Family as Witness of Grace in the Community
Bill J. Leonard
2. Latter-Day Saints: Home Can Be a Heaven on Earth
Claudia Bushman with Richard L. Bushman
3. Mennonite: Family Life as Christian Community
J. Howard Kauffman
4. Catholic: Family Unity and Diversity within the Body of Christ
Christine Firer Hinze
5. African Methodist Episcopal: Nurturing a Sense of "Somebodyness"
William P. DeVeaux
6. Methodist: 'Tis Grace Will Lead Us Home
Jean Miller Schmidt and Gail Murphy-Geiss
7. American Jewry: Families of Tradition in American Culture
Sylvia Barack Fishman
8. Presbyterian: Home Life as Christian Vocation in the Reformed Tradition
William R. Garrett
9. United Church of Canada: Kingdom Symbol or Lifestyle Choice
Daphne J. Anderson and Terence R. Anderson
10. Episcopal: Family as the Nursery of Church and Society
Joanna Bowen Gillespie
11. Ecumenical and Interdenominational: Private and Public Approaches to Family
Issues
Eileen W. Lindner
K. Brynolf Lyon and Archie Smith, Jr., eds.
Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, Spring 1998
This book develops several practical theological case studies of a wide range of congregational ministries to families in order to provide a critical perspective on what congregations can and ought to do to address changing issues in family life. Each study undertakes a thick description as well as an evaluation of a congregation's family theology, ways of institutionalizing its family theology in practice, and congregational and family culture.
Chapter Outline:
1. Introduction: In the Household of the Lord: The Context of Family Ministry
K. Brynolf Lyon and Archie Smith, Jr.
2. The Braid of Generations: A Model of Family Ministry
Brita L. Gill-Austern
3. 'No Doubtful Disputation': A Ministry of Restoration and Reconciliation
at City of
Refuge Community Church
Sandra Smith Blair
4. 'I Don't Mean to Offend, But I Won't Pretend': Experiences of Family Life
for
Gay Men within an African-American Church
D. Mark Wilson
5. The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago: One Congregation's Response
to the Challenges of Family Life in Urban America
Lois Livezey
6. Family Ministries at Carter Temple CME Church
Lowell Livezey
7. Informal Care, Cooperative Programs, and Deliberate Process: The Family
Ministries of a Church of Language Congregations
Barbara McGinnis-Gillispie
8. Households and Families in a Community of Faith: A Roman Catholic Example
Michael J. McGinniss and Maureen Simone Kelly
9. Finding Home: Two Churches' Response to Their Search for Community,
Empowerment, and Ministry in a Changing Environment
Denise Senter and Ursula Pfafflin
10. A Pentacostal Megachurch on the Edge: Calvary Church Naperville, Illinois
Paul D. Numrich
11. Conclusion: The Future of the Church and the Future of Families
K. Brynolf Lyon and Archie Smith, Jr.
Herbert Anderson, Don Browning, Ian Evison, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, eds.
Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, Spring 1998
This book is a practical reference resource for churches and institutions working with families. It references existing models of family ministry, scriptural and liturgical resources, and useful religious and secular institutions and services. In addition, it contains articles and interludes covering Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and secular perspectives, which examine the best new research in family theology and family history relevant to an informed Christian perspective on family issues.
Chapter Outline:
Introduction
Herbert Anderson, Don Browning, Ian S. Evison, Mary Stewart
Van Leeuwen
Part 1. Families and Marriage: Contemporary Perspectives
1. Marriage
Part 2. Approaches to Special Situations of Family Ministry
11. Marital Preparation
Part 3. Resources for Congregational Ministry with Families
23. Hebrew Scriptures and the Family
Part 4. Families in History
26. Families in Ancient Israel, Tikva Frymer-Kensky
27. Families in the Greco-Roman World, S. Scott Bartchy
28. Families in Early Christianity, Carolyn Osiek
29. Families in Medieval Christianity and the Reformation,
John Witte, Jr.
30. Families in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,
Don Browning
Part 5. General Resources for Family Ministry
31. A Directory of Resources for Families