Theology and the New Histories

Theology and the New Histories explores how Christianity, as an historical religion, is responding to the challenge of multiple readings of history--women's history, history written from the perspective of minority groups, new sources of history, including those that are non-Western, and deconstructionist history. These new histories pose challenges to the assumptions of traditional theology. They also affect our understanding of the history of Christianity and of the development of Christian doctrine.

Contributors include: Terrence W. Tilley, Justo L. Gonzalez, Michael Horace Barnes, Vincent J. Miller, Elizabeth A. Clark, Barbara Green, O.P., Ann R. Riggs, Donna Teevan, James T. Fisher, Pamela Kirk, Ann Coble, Franklin H. Littell, Brian F. Linnane, and Margaret R. Pfeil.




""In many respects this volume raises more questions than it even purports to solve. But that, perhaps, is the point. We don't know how future histories will look (in other words, what our past will become); we don't know how these histories will affect future theology...This very uncertainty, frightening as it is, surely is also equally liberating. We may be tied to the past, but we are not bound to it. The very multiplicity of the Christian past can be an ally in freeing us to choose from any number of possible Christian futures.""

--from the Preface by Gary Macy


Dr. Gary Macy, John Nobili, S.J. Professor of Theology at Santa Clara University received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Marquette University and his doctoral degree from Cambridge University in 1978. He has published ten books and over twenty articles on the history of the Christian history and ritual. He is currently Director of the Graduate Program in Pastoral Ministries.