[From Ben Voth, Editor, Argumentation and Advocacy, bvoth@mail.smu.edu]
The AFA (American Forensics Association) journal Argumentation and Advocacy is seeking submissions for a special edition on Christianity and Argument. Ideally, the articles gathered will reflect a Christian epistemological standpoint regarding argument. As the overall editor, I have written a book chapter in my 2014 book—The Rhetoric of Genocide–entitled “Christianity as Critical Theory” that is in some sense an exemplar. A quotation from that chapter that has also been unitized in other articles published in AA is from Jurgen Habermas and may help stir a response on this:
“Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than a mere precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in the light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.”–Jurgen Habermas, Habermas, Jurgen. Time of Transitions. Cambridge, UK: Polity, (2006): 150-151.