Church, Society, and the Christian Common Good

Philip Turner's contributions as a leader and thinker in Christian missions and social ethics are here engaged by an array of friends and colleagues. Turner's scholarly and clerical career spans a key era of transition in American and world Christianity, and his thinking and teaching about the intersection between ecclesial and civil life have encouraged several generations of Christian theologians and ministers. The essays in this collection touch on key topics in which Turner has been involved: cross-cultural missions, social relations in terms of family and procreation, ecclesiology, scriptural interpretation, the nature of the public good, and the character of a human life before God. Turner has been a pioneer, within the Anglican world especially, in promoting what has been called a ""generous orthodoxy,"" and these essays by prominent theologians from America and the United Kingdom extend his witness in lively and fruitful ways. ""This book contains theology inspired by life, not simply the life of a particular modern saint, but the lives of saints, of the communities that saint indwelled. It is a life rooted in the Bible, spiritual disciplines, the learning and transmitting of wisdom from and into the world. The book explores the issue of the sufficiency of the gospel of love, played out in the issues of public debate. Themes include: the Old Testament as speaking realistically of the impoverished church, the reflection on experience in a biblical key, e.g. that repentance includes knowledge as it seeks objectivity, to know what, and how, and why wrong was done. The gracious reply by the honorand itself embodies the virtue of communal and ecclesial theology."" --Mark W. Elliott, Professor of Historical and Biblical Theology, School of Divinity, University of St. Andrews ""Philip Turner is an extraordinary missionary, priest, and scholar. His high-caliber theology of mission, rooted in Uganda and the Scriptures, ricocheted around North America. This book of honorable Anglican theology, tuned in friendship, is nourishing for all."" --Graham Kings, Mission Theologian in the Anglican Communion, and Honorable Fellow of Durham University ""This impressive set of essays does justice to the far ranging interests of the subject here celebrated. Philip Turner is, as Ephraim Radner notes in his Introduction, 'a Christian missionary, Anglican priest, scholar, and . . . [a] prophet of the Gospel."" A central theme of the essays is what Turner identifies in his Afterword as 'a red thread that connects the moral reflection to which I have devoted myself over the years'--'the necessary connection between the Gospel of Christ and the way in which we are called to live both ""in Christ"" and within the societies of which we are a part.'"" --Robert W. Prichard, Arthur Lee Kinsolving Professor of Christianity in America, Virginia Theological Seminary ""Philip Turner has been the teacher of a generation of pastors and theologians on two continents, inspiring many of us in our ministries through his intellectual engagement with the Christian tradition and his willingness to grapple with the implications of the Gospel. This fine collection of essays is a reminder of his continuing influence, and a sign of hope for the church."" --John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee Ephraim Radner is Professor of Historical Theology at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto. His recent publications include A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church (2012), Time and the Word: Figural Reading of the Christian Scriptures (2016), and A Time to Keep: Theology, Mortality, and the Shape of a Human Life (2016).