Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World: Lessons for the Church from MacIntyre's "After Virtue"

This book describes several aspects of contemporary culture that create both opportunities and threats to Christian mission. It offers insights and practices that the church today must embrace in order to live faithfully and witness effectively to the gospel. Following a presentation of the church's history in relation to Western culture, several chapters draw upon specific suggestions in Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue--that we live in a fragmented rather than a pluralistic world; how the church has compromised its faithfulness by accommodating the mainstream of morality; implications stemming from the collapse of the Enlightenment project; and the need for a new monasticism together with forms the life of the church must take to sustain a faithful witness in contemporary culture. Jonathan R. Wilson is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, CA, and the author of Theology as Cultural Critique.