Best Contemporary Theology Meme

I got tagged by Bob Cornwall to share three books that I consider to be the best in contemporary theology. At first I was embarrassed to have no good answers.

The task presented me with an interesting dilemma. Back in my seminary days (before the arbitrary cut-off of 25 years as "contemporary"), I wrote a paper in a theology class on Latin American Liberation Theology where my basic thesis was that liberation theology didn't count as "real" theology. It didn't provide a systematic exposition of the historic (read modern) theological themes. It wasn't particularly concerned about orthodoxy, indeed, it was clear that orthodoxy wasn't even on the radar. The seeds were planted though.

A few years later, I read James Cone for the first time along with some other agenda theologies and I began to get it. They were not systematic theologies. They were a new way of doing the task and thinking about faith. Orthodoxy was seen as less important than praxis. A post-modern world that was peeking over the horizon.

Since then, I have been much more interested in how everyday folk do theology in their daily lives. I have been thrilled to see theologizing move out of the academy and into the small group. I find I read a lot more blogs than books these days and much of what I read is removed from academia. At the same time, I realize that I have been lax on my part of the endeavor. There are folk in the academy who are doing amazing thinking and it is my responsibility to help move those thoughts along the chain so that the folk in the small groups can critique them. There are some titles at the master list of titles proposed so far that I really do need to read...

Until then, I a little embarrassed but I'm also excited to reaffirm that there is extremely important theologizing being done on blogs, in living rooms, and dare I say it... even in churches.