R. William Franklin is Michael Blecker Professor of the Humanities at St. John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota. He is the author of Nineteenth-Century Churches: The History of a New Catholocism in Wuerttemberg, England, and France. Joseph M. Shaw is Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota. He is the author of The Pilgrim People of God.
Description
Reviews
Mark A. Noll -- Wheaton College "Franklin and Shaw provide a convincing case for the essential compatibility of humanism and the Christian faith. Careful definitions and learned historical inquiry clear the ground for substantial commentary on the 'humanism' (properly understood) of the Bible, worship, and theology. The arguments give pause, and then illuminate a set of fruitful conjunctions too often abandoned by partisans of a non-Christian humanism or an anti-humanistic Christianity," George H. Williams -- Harvard Divinity School "In their comprehensive and critical description of various thrusts of historic and contemporary humanism, the authors encourage Christians of all communions to repossess and expand the rich Christian humanism that draws on such fertile tributaries as biblical, patristic, medieval mystical, and scholastic sources and on such diverse streams as Renaissance and Reformation and even Enlightenment Age piety. Franklin and Shaw portray this variegated Christian humanism of liturgy, devotion, art, and ethical reflection as a precious Christian legacy offering the distinct possibility of personal and societyal wholeness."