“Some church people say that what you do is more important than what you believe, but I can’t buy that,” Val Webb once declared in an interview with Australia’s journeyonline.com.au, “because what you believe is going to influence what you do.” She, on a speaking tour in England, affirmed for pcnbritain.org.uk, “All of us have to…find a working theology that can function in our…lives. …we are responsible for what we do believe.”
So, even though a Brisbane church has it right—much of Testing Tradition and Liberating Theology “is an history of the development of (Christian) theology”—that’s not what the lay theologian from Down Under was seeking to accomplish: “Webb’s goal in this book is to unlock theological process from the rarefied academic world of the seminary,” according to progressivechristianity.org, “and encourage everyone to do their own theological thinking.”
In its magazine, Revive, the Uniting Church of Australia finds this book “particularly valuable because of its autobiographical thread which covers Dr. Webb’s own lay theological journey of discovery from the early certainties of an evangelical faith to the doubts” that this age “throws at us.” UCA cleric Noel Preston calls Webb their country’s “most eminent” lay theologian.
Testing Tradition and Liberating Theology: Finding Your Own Voice
By Val Webb
Wipf & Stock, 2015
The previous Featured Book, God in Us: A Case for Christian Humanism, by Anthony Freeman, is now available in the Library.
