andygoodliff

Reading Jim McClendon 6 with Stanley Hauerwas

The latest McClendon Reading Group was on the final chapter of Ethics on Narrative Ethics. We were privileged to have Stanley Hauerwas join us to talk about McClendon's work and connections with his own work. The conversation look at the place of narrative, the differences between McClendon's and Robert Jenson's systematic theologies, the Baptist Vision and more.

We start next month with the second volume of McClendon's Systematic Theology on Doctrine.

 

Reading Jim McClendon's Systematic Theology 4 & 5

A small group continues to read Jim McClendon's Ethics (volume 1 of his Systematic Theology). 

Here's the videos for the last two sessions.

We will meet in November to reflect on the final chapter of Ethics and the book as a whole, before in December moving on to begin to read volume 2: Doctrine.

Reading Jim McClendon's Systematic Theology 3

The latest gathering of McClendon readers saw us engage with Part One of Ethics, which McClendon calls Embodied Witness, chapters on Body Ethics, Sarah and Jonathan Edwards and Eros: Towards an Ethic of Sexual Love.

A few folk we're saying this was the bit of Ethics they struggled with most, some skipping over, but it was interesting to read it nearly 35 years after it was first published. In the chapter on Body Ethics, McClendon turns to what he calls black religion as embodied ethics. In the first of narrative chapters he uses Sarah Edwards, wife of the theologian and pastor Jonathan as another example of an embodied love. And in chapter 5 on Eros, he explores a theology of eros against the backdrop of the myth of romantic love. There is a sense perhaps McClendon was pioneering some of where theology as a discipline has gone in the last thirty years and while there are questions to ask in terms of his presentation of black religion and female narrative, he was doing something that few others were doing at the time. 

Amy Chilton and Mike Broadway offer brief engagements with this part of the book and this is followed by comments and conversation.

 

We will continue to read and respond to McClendon and chapters 6-8 on 17th September.

Reading Jim McClendon's Systematic Theology 2

Here's the latest videos that picks up some discussion of chapter 2 of McClendon's volume on Ethics in his Systematic Theology. Curtis Freeman, Lina Toth and Julian Gotobed give some responses to the chapter in the first video. The second video picks up some wider discussion following smaller zoom breakout groups.

 

 

Reading Jim McClendon's Systematic Theology 1

36 (from US, Canada, UK, Netherlands and Ukraine) joined the first session looking at Jim McClendon's Systematic Theology, starting with volume 1: Ethics and its first's chapter: 'How Theology Matters'. Some are season McClendon readers and some of us are reading him (properly) for the first time.

Responses were given by Andy Goodliff, Beth Newman and Curtis Freeman.

Some good conversation in the zoom chat, which spilled over into the conversation, around the importance of McClendon's listening tour of (American) Baptists institutions ahead of writing the first volume (which probably shaped his account of the Baptist vision); the reception history of McClendon in America, Europe and UK; the meaning of 'this is that' and 'then is now' (McClendon's claim for a baptistic hermeneutical principle) and a brief possible commonality between McClendon and Ephraim Radner on figural readings of scripture.

We will gathering on zoom again on 14 July to look at Ethics, chapter 2: 'What Sort of Ethics?' (The first two chapters are crucial to understanding McClendon's project) and then again on 19 August to look at Ethics, Part 1: Embodies Witness (ch.3-5).

For an invite contact me at andrew [dot] goodliff [at] regents [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk

 

Mentioned in the session:

James McClendon, Biography as Theology (Trinity)

James McClendon and James Smith, Convictions: Defusing Religious Relativism (2nd Ed; Trinity)

James McClendon, The Collected Works of James McClendon (3. Vol) edited by Andrew Ryan Newson and Andrew Wright (Baylor)

Curtis Freeman, 'Introduction: A Theology for Radical Believers and Other Baptists', which can found at the beginning of in the Baylor 2012 editions of McClendon's Systematic Theology

Amy L. Chilton and Steven Harmon, Sources of Light: Resources for Baptist Churches Practicing Theology (Mercer)

Matthew Emerson et al, Baptists and the Christian Tradition: Toward an Evangelical Baptist Catholicity (B & H)