Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times

Justification and the Pursuit of Justice Amy Carr and Christine Helmer

Christians in the United States and around the world are politically polarized today, unable to speak to one another across deep divisions regarding urgent social issues. Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times: Justification and the Pursuit of Justice addresses this dire reality by offering a theological framework for Christian justice-seeking. Amy Carr and Christine Helmer draw on Paul’s theology to center the idea of justification by faith in Christ as the primary ground of Christian belonging and community.

This approach yields a theology of ordinary faith that resists the temptation to equate Christian identity with the performance of a heroic “here I stand” posture against moral and political positions felt to be inimical to a properly Christian life. An ordinary faith situates Christian identity on a baptismal belonging to Christ. Baptism draws Christians into the messy process of discerning together the shape of justice in and through the Beloved Community. With justification by faith as the touchstone of Christian unity, Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times reveals how Christians who inhabit different ethical and political positions can navigate the disorientations and reorientations that arise when they debate what justice-seeking looks like from within the body of Christ.

Carr and Helmer articulate ways that justification by faith grounds Christian practices of affective listening and storytelling, even on the most contentious ethical questions today, with the hope that mutual conversation in and through the Beloved Community can orient Christians who disagree towards each other again for the good of the world.

“This book speaks faithfully, compellingly, and earnestly into the current crises of politically divided Christians in the US today, providing brilliant re-framings of core Christian commitments to offer sacred spaces of generative engagement and the possibilities of transforming ’high conflict into good conflict.’”

—G. SUJIN PAK, Dean of the School of Theology, Boston University

“A grace-oriented approach that seeks common ground in a shared baptism in Christ in order to explore how justification can establish a renewed way of being in the world.”

JENNIFER POWELL McNUTT, FRHISTS, Wheaton College

“This crucial endeavor involves giving a properly theological account of the possibility and importance of patient encounter, reflection, and dialogue in our fractious and polarized cultural moment.”

PHILIP G. ZIEGLER, University of Aberdeen

“By beginning with ’ordinary faith’—the conviction that our identity is secured by grace rather than by any ethical or political performance—Carr and Helmer provide a framework for moral discernment in an ecclesial context where there often seems little on offer except silence or shouting.”

IAN A. McFARLAND, University of Cambridge

“This much-needed volume should be read by Christian leaders everywhere.”

CHERYL PETERSON, Wartburg Theological Seminary

ISBN 978-1-4813-2093-1

$119.99 | Hardback

ISBN 978-1-4813-2094-8

$59.99 | Paperback

640 pages

6 x 9

April 15, 2024