Description

Married and family life around the world has undergone a revolution in the last several decades: the radical democratization of intimacy in spousal and parent-child relationships. Previous principles of hierarchy, inequality, and duty that defined the relationships between husband, wife, and children have been challenged and often replaced by more fluid bonds of equality, intimacy, emotional self-disclosure, communication, and mutual trust. The key question that has emerged for our times, then, is how exactly do families sustain genuine mutuality, democracy, and strong relationships?

Figuring out good answers to this question is the major theme of this book and the origin of the title Mutuality Matters. Three common strategies for creating just marriages have arisen: political and legal reform, smarter negotiating by women, and new cultural perceptions of marriage. While the authors in this book attend to all three strategies to different degrees, the primary focus is the third strategy: changing our cultural understanding of women and men in marriage. Moreover, to effect genuine cultural change, the authors recognize the need to enlist the help of religion as a key culture-forming element. Mutuality has become a common way for theologians from a variety of perspectives to talk about a more just love, a love that combines affection and justice. But many questions have been left unanswered: What exactly do people believe they have promised when they align themselves with Christian claims about love in their rituals of marriage and partnership? Do Christian views of love include the ideal of justice in marriage? Because accommodation or sacrifice is inevitable in any intimate human community, how can families insure that it will be mutual and just? How is marriage strengthened if justice is added to love at the core of mutuality? What does mutuality mean across time and distance, when participants are parents and children, when fathers are absent, when parents should be honored, or within a violent c

Table of Contents

Part 1 I. Perspectives on Love and Mutuality
Chapter 2 The Family as a Crucible of Grace: Learning and Living the Language of Love
Chapter 3 Just Love? Marriage and the Question of Justice
Chapter 4 Mutuality, Reason, and Public Policy
Chapter 5 Who submits to Whom? Submission and Mutuality in the Family
Part 6 II. Mutuality Matters in Marriage
Chapter 7 Between Rhetoric and Reality: Women and Men as Equal Partners in Home, Church, and the Marketplace
Chapter 8 Gender Narratives and the Epidemic of Violence in Contemporary Families
Chapter 9 Is Equality Tearing Families Apart?
Chapter 10 Navigating Between Cultures: The Bicultural Family's Lived Realities
Part 11 III. Mutuality Matters in the Family
Chapter 12 Sloppy Mutuality: Just Love for Children and Adults
Chapter 13 Over the River and through the Woods: Maintaining Emotional Presence across Geographical Distance
Chapter 14 Honor Your Father and Your Mother: A New Look at "Family Values"
Chapter 15 In Search of Goodenough Families: Cultural and Religious Perspectives
Part 16 IV. Fostering Mutuality through Ministry
Chapter 17 The Black Churches' Response to Father Absence in the African American Family
Chapter 18 More than a Family Affair: Reflections on Baptizing Children
Chapter 19 Conversion or Nurture: When We Thought the Debate Was Over
Chapter 20 The Congregation as a Healing Community

Product details

Published Nov 11 2003
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 272
ISBN 9780742531550
Imprint Sheed & Ward
Dimensions 229 x 150 mm
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Herbert Anderson

Anthology Editor

Edward Foley

Anthology Editor

Bonnie Miller-McLemore

Anthology Editor

Robert Schreiter

Contributor

Joel Anderson

Contributor

Homer Ashby

Contributor

Dianne Bergant

Contributor

Don Browning

Contributor

Pamela Couture

Contributor

Anthony Gittins

Contributor

Thomas Groome

Contributor

Carolyn Osiek

Contributor

Gilbert Ostdiek

Contributor

Paul Wadell

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Environment: Staging