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The Church should be inclusive because God is inclusive. Christianity is inclusive to its core.
These are the claims made by this groundbreaking, timely and important book. To its critics, inclusive theology is little more than a capitulation to secular
pressures, but it has always been at the heart of all Christian service. Today it is rediscovering its radical, missionary voice and its roots in the biblical values of justice and the transformative power of the kingdom.
Inclusivity is not simply about whom the church excludes from its life and ministry on the basis of cultural prejudices at any given point in history. It is about the world we share and the life we lead in common with all humanity.
It is a joyful affirmation that we are all created and fulfilled by the love of God, and it challenges us to reject every limitation placed on what God has made.
The Inclusive God explores what inclusive theology begins to look like when
fleshed out by what matters most in Christianity: creation, revelation, Jesus' life, death and resurrection, the church and, above all, the nature of God. Throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus standing alongside the despised and rejected, eventually becoming the despised outsider himself. The Inclusive God asks are we on his side, or not?
About the author
Dr Steven Shakespeare is Anglican Chaplain at Liverpool Hope University and is involved with the Theology and Religious Studies Department. He wrote his PhD on Soren Kierkegaard and is author of Kierkegaard, Language and the Reality of God (Ashgate, 2001) and a number of scholarly articles. Dr Hugh Rayment-Pickard is Area Dean of Kensington and author of Philosophies of History (Blackwell, 2000), Impossible God (Ashgate, 2003), The Myths of Time (DLT, 2004) and The Devil's Account (DLT, 2004). He is a regular columnist for The Church Times.
