Monday, February 27, 2017

AAR's Reading Religion reviews Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future

The American Academy of Religion's online review site Reading Religion has published a review of my book Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future: Story, Tradition, and the Recovery of Community (Baylor University Press) by Spencer Boersma. Excerpts from the review appear below:

Steven R. Harmon’s Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future: Story, Tradition, and the Recovery of Community is perhaps the most constructive proposal of ecumenical reflection for Baptists to date.

Anyone acquainted with Harmon’s work will know that this is not a recent interest. In particular, his work, Towards Baptist Catholicity (Pasternoster, 2006), can be regarded as this book’s prequel. In Toward Baptist Catholicity, Harmon proposed a recovery of the authority of tradition and its content (i.e., the use of creeds, church fathers, sacramental theology, liturgy, etc.) in wider theological discussion and shows how Baptists are already indebted to this. Thus, a more conscious retrieval of tradition in Baptist theology will be beneficial. Now ten years later, Harmon presents a more refined proposal....

....Harmon’s book offers the research and wisdom of a Baptist thinker at the forefront of ecumenical work. His methodical analysis of Baptist history and ecumenical documents, coupled with practical constructive proposals for congregations to change, has made this book original, essential, and necessary to the future of Baptist life. (read the full review at Reading Religion)


Friday, February 3, 2017

Baptist World Alliance news: statement on refugees; dialogue with World Methodist Council

The Baptist World Alliance, the Christian world communion to which I belong, has issued two press releases this week of interest to readers of Ecclesial Theology.

Today (February 3) the BWA issued a statement on refugees that "decries recent actions by the United States Government to issue a blanket travel ban on seven countries that specifically targets refugees and that seems to especially affect Muslims" (click on hyperlink for full statement).

Earlier this week delegations from the BWA and the World Methodist Council convened in Jamaica for the fourth annual session of a five-year bilateral ecumenical dialogue between the two communions, February 1-8 (click on hyperlink for press release).