Listening to Sam Wells at King's

Spent the day in London at a 1-day conference at King's. The highlight was listening to Sam Wells. Wells is one of my favourite theologians are I discovered his book Improvisation. This has been followed by God's Companions, Power and Passion and Speaking the Truth. I've blogged about Well's work here, here and here.

Wells was giving a lecture on liturgy as life, which was about demonstrating how worship shapes christians to be faithful disciples. It was in many ways a summary of the chapters of God's Companions. He said to me afterwards that the lecture is being planned as a book (which will be cheaper than God's Companions) and for a wide audience.

One of the things I'm looking forward to when in local church ministry is having the opportunity to make explicit worship as a means of christian formation - spiritually, politically, economically, etc. If you've not read any of Sam's books - I could not recommend them more highly. They are extremely readable, challenging and full of examples of how this might look in a local setting.

Part of the day also saw the launch of new book by Sam and Ben Quash called Introducing Christian Ethics. This looks like it will fast become a widely used text book (it will be joined in april by accompanying reader). Having a quick read on the train home, this is simply a brilliant introduction to the history and content of christian ethics. It both introduces the major figures - augustine, aquinas, luther, calvin, kant,  barth, hauerwas, o'donovan, milbank, yoder, macintyre, etc. and the way they approach ethical questions either as they looking for a universal ethic (ethics for everyone), a subversive ethic (ethics for the oppressed or marginalized) or an ecclesial (ethics for the church).

If you have any interest in Christian ethics or just want to know how different Christians have apporached war, medical ethics, sex and marriage, the environment - this is an excellent place to start. Having never being taught Christian ethics (instead I discovered Hauerwas via John Colwell's Living the Christian Story, and then went on to find Wells and others).  This will helpfully fill in all the gaps.

Comments

[Ian Packer]

Hooray! Thanks for giving some info on Wells's latest