Keith Clements – författare

Dietrich Bonhoeffer remains one of the twentieth century's most influential theologians and this is a short, accessible and engaging introduction to the man. Written by an internationally acclaimed Bonhoeffer scholar, the book considers the role Bonhoeffer played in resisting the Nazis and his attitude to the Jews and the Holocaust.

The Moot was the study and discussion group set up by J.H. Oldham (1874-1969) following the 1937 Oxford Conference on "Church, Community and State." Its purpose was to continue, in an informal, confidential but serious way, exploration of the relation between church and society and the realisation of Christian ethics in the public sphere. The Moot met twice or three times a year from 1938 to 1947 (21 times in all) and was convened by Oldham with the conscious intention of responding to the grave crisis that was felt to be facing western society in Britain no less than on the continent of Europe. Overall some 35 people attended the Moot at one time or another, but its core comprised a small number of regular members who were representative of the highest levels in theology, social science and public affairs. In addition to Oldham himself they included John Baillie, T.S. Eliot, H.A. Hodges, Eleonora Iredale, Adolf Löwe, Karl Mannheim, Walter Moberly, John Middleton Murry and Alec Vidler. Other participants included Kathleen Bliss, Fred Clarke, Christopher Dawson, H.H. Farmer, Hector Hetherington, Walter Oakshott and Gilbert Shaw, while notables such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Melville Chaning-Pearce, Donald Mackinnon, Philip Mairet, Lesslie Newbigin, William Paton, Frank Pakenham (later Lord Longford), Michael Polanyi and Oliver Tomkins made occasional "guest appearances." Against the background of impending and then actual war, the discussions in the Moot repeatedly focused on the "planned" nature of modern society and therewith the roles (if any) within it of moral choice and the Christian community.

J.H. Oldham is one of the greatest pioneers of ecumenism in the 20th century. Sections relate to Oldham''s time as a missionary in India, his role as secretary of the World missionary Conference and his role in the Life and Work movement.'

Keith Clements sets out how and why Dietrich Bonhoeffer, more than seventy-five years after his execution by the Nazis, still speaks cogently both to the churches and society. Beginning with the earlier reception of him as a martyr-figure and then as a provocatively original theologian, this book argues his relevance to contemporary engagement with public ethics, ecumenism, truth-telling and reconciliation, the relation between faith and democracy in a time of political extremisms, the issues of national identity signalled by Brexit, and the challenge of finding an ethical response to such challenges as the global pandemic. Bonhoeffer’s perception that living representatively on behalf of others is both the key to who God is as known in Jesus Christ, and the basis of all truly human community, provides the connecting thread running through these chapters on what it means to believe and be responsible in a fragmenting world. Clements also links this thread to the seventeenth-century spiritual writer Thomas Traherne and the Catholic Modernist Friedrich von Hügel.