Books by Douglas John Hall

The biblical image of the steward is highly provocative and even revolutionary. In recent years, environmentalists and peace marchers have been discovering the radical potential of the stewardship motif, while the church, sadly, has muffled this symbol's power in ecclesiastical wrappings.So writes Douglas John Hall in the first edition of 'The Steward' (1982). This provocative book has been so much in demand all over the world that Hall has completely rewritten, revised, and expanded his work, adding new material and deleting dated references. Yet Hall has kept his original book's basic format the same in this new and improved edition.In short, Hall aims to recapture the most basic meaning of the biblical metaphor of the 'steward' and to apply that meaning to our social context, one in which human beings are confused and ambivalent about their place and vocation in a threatened world. Working from numerous angles - biblical, historical, sociological, theological, and ecclesiastical - Hall explores the rich meaning and implications of stewardship.Scripture portrays the steward as a caretaker and servant. Hall compares scriptural teaching on stewardship - concentrated in Jesus' parables - with the role of stewardship in the church's history, maintaining that ever since the fourth century, the church's understanding and practice of stewardship have been distorted by its alliance with institutional power.Hall also puts forth apocalyptic warnings about the fate of the earth unless we heed the call to be stewards of the creation, work for world peace and justice, and nurture life in its many forms. The church around the world, says Hall, urgently needs to live as 'steward' - it is a matter of death and life.

""Christianity, as faith centered in Jesus as the Christ came to be called, got a foothold in the world, and for a vital and vocal minority changed the world, because it proclaimed a message that awakened men and women to possibilities for human life that they had either lost or never entertained. That message the first Christian evangelists (and Jesus himself, according to the record) called euangellion--good news, gospel. For its first two or three hundred years, Christianity was largely dependent for its existence upon the new zest for life that was awakened in persons who heard and were, as they felt, transformed, by that gospel; and at various and sundry points in subsequent history the Christian movement has found itself revitalized by the spirit of that same ''good news'' in ways that spoke to the specifics of their times and places.""The lesson of history is clear: the challenge to all serious Christians and Christian bodies today is not whether we can devise yet more novel and promotionally impressive means for the transmission of ''the Christian religion'' (let alone this or that denomination); it is whether we are able to hear and to proclaim . . . gospel! We do not need statisticians and sociologists to inform us that religion--and specifically our religion, as the dominant expression of the spiritual impulse of homo sapiens in our geographic context--is in decline. We do not need the sages of the new atheism to announce in learned tomes (and on buses!) that ''God probably does not exist.'' The ''sea of faith'' has been ebbing for a very long time."" --from the Introduction""Douglas John Hall is a treasure, a man I have known whose intellectual depth is matched only by his spirit of kindness. . . . So too is Waiting for Gospel. As people continue to discuss the place of the church in North America leaning on sociology and cultural studies, Doug Hall reminds us that in the end it will be only theology, a lived theology of existential depth, that will help. All the contemporary talk of church in North America has so often failed to provide truly unique and insightful thoughts . . . about how God''s revelation in Jesus Christ is encountering people in this context, at this time. Waiting for Gospel propels us in that direction and therefore shines brightly, giving the reader value upon value.""--Andrew RootOlson Baalson Associate Professor of Youth and Family Ministry, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MinnesotaAuthor of The Promise of Despair: The Way of the Cross as the Way of the Church (2010)Douglas John Hall is Emeritus Professor of Christian Theology in the Faculty of Religious Studies of McGill University in Montreal. He is the author of more than twenty-five books, including Lighten Our Darkness (1976, 2001); Why Christian? (1998); God and Human Suffering (1986); The Steward (1990; Wipf & Stock, 2004); and The Messenger (Cascade Books, 2011).He has lectured widely in Canada, the United States, Germany, and Japan, and is the recipient of many honors, including the Distinguished Alumnus Award of Union Theological Seminary, the Joseph Sittler Award for Leadership in Theology, and the Order of Canada.

What really is Christianity? If all the religious packaging in which it is wrapped were removed, what would remain? These were Bonhoeffer's questions, and they must be ours today--even more urgently! For in many quarters Christianity is being so narrowly identified with some of its parts, cultural associations, and past ambitions that like all militant religion, it represents a threat to the planetary future.We may no longer speak clearly of the essence of Christianity, as von Harnack and other nineteenth-century thinkers did; but perhaps we may still have a sufficiently shared sense of the kerygmatic core of this faith to be able, in the face of these misrepresentations of it, to say what Christianity is not.

Description:This is a book about the importance of mentors in the lives of the young. But rather than developing the theme of mentoring theoretically, Douglas John Hall demonstrates its significance quite personally, autobiographically. In his twentieth year and hoping to study music professionally, Hall met a young minister whose ""different"" Christianity both surprised and intrigued him. In the end, this friendship altered the course of his life.The book traces the story of this friendship of more than half a century, and the impact of the times upon the lives of its two principal figures.Endorsements:""Doug Hall weighs in again with his characteristic gracefulness and his mature, uncommon wisdom. He bears witness to the incarnational way of faith that impinges upon real life in the world. Hall is no saint-maker, but he knows one when he sees one!""-Walter BrueggemannColumbia Theological Seminary""More than any other person, Robert ''Bob'' Miller, as Travelling Study Secretary of the Student Christian Movement of Canada and bookman par excellence, brought home to the generation of Canadian university students of the 1950s through 1970s the religious and philosophical debates, the art and literature, and the social and political turmoil of post-second world war Europe. It is not surprising that he should have become the mentor of Douglas John Hall, Canada''s pre-eminent Protestant theologian, who here tells that story with great sensitivity and insight.""-Richard AllenMcMaster University""Above all, this book is about friendship between two prophets, both ministers of the United Church of Canada whose honor in their own country, or beyond, is impossible to assess. In The Messenger, Douglas John Hall''s tribute to his friend, the reader also learns a good deal about Canada''s foremost Protestant theologian who provides a fascinating window on what happened to postwar European theology as it made the transition to North America.""-Margaret PrangUniversity of British ColumbiaAbout the Contributor(s):Douglas John Hall is Emeritus Professor of Christian Theology in the Faculty of Religious Studies of McGill University in Montreal. He is the author of more than twenty-five books, including Lighten Our Darkness (1976, 2001); Why Christian? (1998); God & Human Suffering (1986); and The Steward (1990; Wipf & Stock, 2004);. He has lectured widely in Canada, the United States, Germany, and Japan, and is the recipient of many honors, including the Distinguished Alumnus Award of Union Theological Seminary, the Joseph Sittler Award for Leadership in Theology, and the Order of Canada.

""Christianity, as faith centered in Jesus as the Christ came to be called, got a foothold in the world, and for a vital and vocal minority changed the world, because it proclaimed a message that awakened men and women to possibilities for human life that they had either lost or never entertained. That message the first Christian evangelists (and Jesus himself, according to the record) called euangellion--good news, gospel. For its first two or three hundred years, Christianity was largely dependent for its existence upon the new zest for life that was awakened in persons who heard and were, as they felt, transformed, by that gospel; and at various and sundry points in subsequent history the Christian movement has found itself revitalized by the spirit of that same 'good news' in ways that spoke to the specifics of their times and places.""The lesson of history is clear: the challenge to all serious Christians and Christian bodies today is not whether we can devise yet more novel and promotionally impressive means for the transmission of 'the Christian religion' (let alone this or that denomination); it is whether we are able to hear and to proclaim . . . gospel! We do not need statisticians and sociologists to inform us that religion--and specifically our religion, as the dominant expression of the spiritual impulse of homo sapiens in our geographic context--is in decline. We do not need the sages of the new atheism to announce in learned tomes (and on buses!) that 'God probably does not exist.' The 'sea of faith' has been ebbing for a very long time."" --from the Introduction

Douglas John Hall demonstrates the continuing relevance of several of the twentieth century's greatest theologians--Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Emil Brunner, and Suzanne de Dietrich--suggesting that their neo-orthodox roots have much more in common than is traditionally acknowledged...

This bold work culminates Hall's three-volume contextual theology, the first to take the measure of Christian belief and doctrine explicitly in light of North American cultural and historical experience.Hall is deeply critical of North American culture but also of sidelined Christian churches that struggle to gain dominance within it. "We must stop thinking of the reduction of Christendom as a tragedy!" he says. The disestablishment that the churches reluctantly enjoy can enable them to develop genuine community, uncompromised theology, and honest engagement with the larger culture. To a failed culture and a struggling church Hall shows the radical implications of a theology of the cross for the shape and practice of church, preaching, ministry, ethics, and eschatology.Hall's frank and prophetic volume is the trilogy's most practical, and the most sustained probe to date of Christian life in a post-Christian context.

Writing simply for ordinary Christians "who must decide, in the long run, what will become of the churches," Douglas John Hall offers a prescription for their survival.His belief is that the gospel is entirely pertinent to the problematic of our times, but an atmosphere of frustration prevails in places where Christian faith is taken seriously. Sensitive Christians experience a new openness to the basic elements of faith on the part of many "secular" persons. At the same time, there is the conflicting experience of an emptiness, an absence of reality in the churches.Reflecting on these two conflicting experiences, he asks: What lies behind the new appreciation for the worldly realism of the gospel? Why, at the very moment when the gospel begins to seem almost real again, does so much about the churches seem unreal? Can the churches be swept up into the reality of the gospel? What would it mean for the churches to be subjected to the scrutiny of a gospel which is ready for new dialogue with the contemporary world?His solution is that the churches can participate in the reality of the gospel only if they "disestablish" themselves. He indicates how they can do this by deliberately dissociating their witnesses and practices from the official optimism of our society.

As the Christian movement nears the end of its second millennium, it faces a crisis that could not have been anticipated at the close of the first thousand yearsor, indeed, by most of our own great-grandparents. Since the most conspicuous dimensions of the waning of Christendom have to do with material decline (the decline in church membership and active attendance of Sunday services, the decline in financial and physical prosperity, the decline of influence in high places), such analyses as there are usually belabor the obvious: something drastic is happening to the churches! "Throughout most of its long history, Christianity has not required of its adherents that they should think the faith. The historical accident of its political and cultural establishment 15 centuries ago ensured that a thinking faith would be purely optional for members of the church. "But thought-less faith, which has always been a contradiction in terms, is today a stage on the road to the extinction, not only of Christianity itself, but of whatever the architects of our civilization meant by 'Humanity.' Only a thinking faith can survive. Only a thinking faith can help the world survive! "- from the Preface