In Quest of a Vital Protestant Center: An Ecumenical Evangelical Perspective - Paperback

by George Demetrion (Author), Willis E. Elliott (Foreword by)

In Quest of a Vital Protestant Center probes the relationship between Scripture and culture in twentieth-century US theology and biblical studies. It points to the necessity of turning to what Karl Barth has referred to as "the strange new world within the Bible" for any revitalization of mainline Protestantism in the tradition of the Protestant Reformers in critical dialogue with serious evangelical theology. The study includes a historical overview underlying what Demetrion refers to as the "fundamentalist/modernist great divide," which continues to resonate powerfully in contemporary US Protestant thought and culture. Demetrion offers an in-depth exploration of four representative twentieth-century Protestant theologians and biblical scholars, spanning from the conservative evangelical theology of J. I. Packer to the postliberal dialectical theology of Walter Brueggemann. The book includes a chapter on the neo-orthodox legacy as a mediating resource in bringing evangelical and postliberal theology into dialogue with the core issues of theology, biblical hermeneutics, and religious culture. Demetrion concludes with a critically empathetic review of the postliberal dialectical theology of Douglas J. Hall and the evangelical narrative theology of Richard Lints. In linking evangelical, postliberal, and neo-orthodox theology to a common search for a vital Protestant center, this book will facilitate fruitful dialogue among divergent schools of Protestant thought and culture.

Author Biography

George Demetrion is a self-educated Christian scholar who has audited courses at Hartford and Bethel Seminaries. He is a writing tutor at Capital Community College and an Adult Basic Instructor at the 1199 Training Fund in Hartford, Connecticut. He formerly worked as an adult education program coordinator at the Saint Vincent de Paul Village in San Diego, California, and teaches courses in the Online Adult Literacy Certification Program at the Virginia Commonwealth University. In addition to his two books published by Wipf and Stock--In Quest of a Vital Protestant Center: An Ecumenical Evangelical Perspective (2014) and The Historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith: Marcus Borg and N. T. Wright in Critical Dialogue (2017)--he is also the author of Conflicting Paradigms in Adult Literacy Education: In Quest of a US Democratic Politics of Literacy (2005).