Give us Sightings folks a headline with the phrase “Public Church” in it, and we are poised to follow through. The Center from which these lines are emitted is, after all, dedicated to the mission of reporting and reflecting on “public religion,” “public theology,” etc. From the beginning, the shapers of this vision have insisted that, e.g., “public religion” not be equated with “political religion,” into which it can so easily be collapsed. Of course, we “sight” religion and politics, but public religion is also manifest in popular culture, the arts, the academy, and so much more.
To the point today: the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church sent us a review, by Dr. Jennifer M. Smith, of Darryl W. Stephens’s book Methodist Morals: Social Principles in the Public Church’s Witness. (See “Resources” for the link.) From Smith we learn that Stephens concentrates on the United Methodist “Social Principles”: where they come from, how they are serving, and what lies ahead. We read that in 2016 the General Conference of the United Methodist Church charged “Church and Society” with bringing recommendations to revise these Principles, to make them more “concise, theologically grounded, and globally relevant.”
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