There has never been one truth, despite what people claim. Theological ideas have waxed and waned through history, taking conflicting turns with changing leaders, worldviews and political forces. This fast-paced, lay-friendly book, backed by serious, inquisitive scholarship, follows this maze, shining a spotlight into dark corners and dusty shelves to observe ideas silenced and others declared eternal. As many people walk away from churches that are unwilling to face the big questions, this book offers readers permission to think for themselves.
Val Webb has done it again - bringing God-talk out of both the Academy and the Church; and into the everyday. We are all theologians - God is in our midst and we do not need permission to express what that means to us. This is is a book of liberation in that it allows each one of us to 'do our own theology' - to express what we mean by 'God' and not leave it to the ecclesiastical or scholastic authorities to make up our minds for us. Moreover, as Webb argues, theology has always been what ordinary people declare 'from their heart' about someone/something beyond themselves. This is a brave and challenging book that puts God back in the midst of people - where God belongs!
-Revd Dr Nigel Leaves, Canon of St John's Cathedral, Brisbane, Australia, author of Encountering God (2014), Religion Under Attack (2011) and The God Problem (2006)
Val Webb invites us into a broad yet comprehensive sweep of much that has influenced the theological landscape for today's 21st century Christian. In doing so Webb both encourages and provokes our thinking about who we are and what we believe. Above all, the book is a call to the lay people of the church to accept responsibility for their own theological explorations and to no longer be shrinking violets in the important matters of informed faith. I encourage the reading of this book to inform, challenge and provoke good conversations and opportunity for lay and ordained to engage and embrace a 'theology that is life transforming'.
-Rev Dr Jennifer Byrnes, Executive Director of the Centre for Theology and Ministry, Uniting Church in Australia Synod of Victoria-Tasmania.
Val Webb is an Australian who holds a graduate degree in science and a Ph.D. in theology. She has taught in universities in the United States and Australia and has written nine books including Like Catching Water in a Net: human attempts to describe the Divinewhich won the religion category of Best Books USA Award in 2007. She now lives in Mudgee, Australia. (www.valwebb.com.au)
