This compact volume offers a way for Christians to reflect deeply on how best to conceive Christian identity, commitment, and discipleship in today's challenged, globalized, pluralistic scene. Growing out of the recent "Rekindling Theological Imagination" initiative and led by esteemed theologian Philip Clayton and his colleagues, this volume seeks to capture and articulate the ferment in grassroots North American Christianity today and to relate it directly to the recent strong resurgence of progressive thought and politics. It argues strongly for a mediating role specifically for Christian theology, conceived first as a life practice of Christian discipleship, and its call has found enormous response from popular audiences in conferences, online, in informal Christian settings, as well as in mainline denominations and the academy.
Philip Clayton holds a triple appointment at Claremont: in the department of Religion, the department of Philosophy, and as Ingraham Professor at Claremont School of Theology. His previous teaching posts include Williams College and the California State University; he has also held invited guest professorships at the University of Munich (2 years), the University of Cambridge, and Harvard Divinity School (also two years).
Professor Clayton has published widely across the theological disciplines, as well as in
the philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, and the philosophy of religion. He has worked extensively on the relationship between science, philosophy, and religion, and he is recognized as one of the leading figures in this field internationally.
Clayton received a joint doctorate in philosophy and religious studies from Yale University. Since that time he has written or edited some 18 books and over a hundred articles in the field.
(1) As a theologian, he has sought to rekindle theological imagination in the churches and to bring academic theologians back in touch with ordinary believers. He heads up a Ford Foundation-sponsored grant to support progressive theologies that have transformative effects in churches and in American society. He is also active in interfaith collaborations aimed at reducing religious violence, supporting just peacemaking, and addressing the global ecological crisis.
(2) Within the natural sciences, Clayton's research has focused on emergent dynamics in biology and on the neural correlates of consciousness in neuroscience. He has co-authored or edited a number of publications with physicists, chemists, and biologists, analyzing emerging natural systems and exploring their significance for the study of religion. He is perhaps best known for his work in exploring the philosophical and religious implications of emergence theory, published as Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness (Oxford, 2004). In addition to his own publications, Clayton has been a leading advocate for the internationalization of the science-religion dialogue. As P.I. for the "Science and the Spiritual Quest" program, and more recently as senior advisor and judge for the "Global Perspectives in Science and Spirituality" program, both funded by the Templeton Foundation, he has been at the forefront of efforts to expand scholarship in this field into the non-Western traditions.
His book publications as author or editor include The Problem of God in Modern Thought; God and Contemporary Science; Explanation from Physics to Theology: An Essay in Rationality and Religion; Quantum Mechanics: The Problem of Divine Action; Evolution and Ethics: Human Morality in Biological and Religious Perspective; Science and the Spiritual Quest; The Re-Emergence of Emergence; In Quest of Freedom: The Emergence of Spirit in the Natural World; and Transforming Theology (September 2009).
