Description:
Traditional, secular, and fundamentalist--all three categories are contested, yet in their contestation they shape our sensibilities and are mutually implicated, the one with the others. This interplay brings to the foreground more than ever the question of what it means to think and live as Tradition. The Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century, in particular, have emphasized Tradition not as a dead letter but as a living presence of the Holy Spirit. But how can we discern Tradition as living discernment from fundamentalism? What does it mean to live in Tradition when surrounded by something like the "secular"? These essays interrogate these mutual implications, beginning from the understanding that whatever secular or fundamentalist may mean, they are not Tradition, which is historical, particularistic, in motion, ambiguous and pluralistic, but simultaneously not relativistic.
Contributors: R. Scott Appleby, Nikolaos Asproulis, Brandon Gallaher, Paul J. Griffiths, Vigen Guroian, Dellas Oliver Herbel, Edith M. Humphrey, Slavica Jakelic, Nadieszda Kizenko, Wendy Mayer, Brenna Moore, Graham Ward, Darlene Fozard WeaverBrief description: R. Scott Appleby is the Marilyn Keough Dean of Notre Dame's Keough School of Global Affairs. He also serves as lead editor of the Oxford University Press series "Studies in Strategic Peacebuilding."
Review Quotes: Christian tradition eludes precise definitions and comprehensive formulations for the simple reason that it is a living thing, encompassing every dimension of spiritual life and aspiration. Religious fundamentalism emerges only when tradition has begun to die or has suffered assault. The secular age is a crisis for Christian communities not merely because it entails a cultural rejection of Christian tradition, but because it corrupts the tradition from within with the beguiling but deeply destructive "fundamentalist option." The essays in this collection explore the crisis with rare depth and insight.---David Hart