Words and Witnesses: Communication Studies in Christian Thought from Athanasius to Desmond Tutu

摘要

This wonderful collection looks back through Christian history and explores those theologians and religious thinkers who have acknowledged the importance of communication. Beginning with the idea that communication has played a role in Christian reflection, the editors invited communication scholars to explore individuals who, in one way or another, had addressed communication. They traced the beginnings of their idea to their own graduate school education. They write "in graduate school, committed professors helped us to understand better how theology functions as a lens for thinking Christianly about communication, and how some of the earliest communication theories actually could be identified in the writings and deeds of Origen, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Ignatius Loyola, to name several" (pp. xxiii). Explaining that they longed for more, they looked for other Christian thinkers who could serve as guides for contemporary reflection or whose writings might speak to contemporary issues in communication study. They assembled a list of 43 individuals, ranging from Justin Martyr in the first century to Stanley Hauerwas, a contemporary.