Public theology and political responsibility

The author highlights the need to explore how the churches can participate of public debate, a participation called for by many today. It mirrors itself in the Declaration of Barmen of the Confessing Church, revering the ethics and public action of theology in Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The author indicates that public theology emerges as an attempt to offer orientation in basic social questions and in discourse in a pluralist society. The text further describes the history of the term public theology in the United States, Germany, South Africa and in other societies in transition, as is the case with Brazil. The Global Network for Public Theology is presented as the main forum in which institutes all over the world act together in the continuous elaboration of such theology capable of combining a clear theological profile with a language that is comprehensible to the public environment and to secular discourses. The text also highlights the pretensions of public theology and its prophetic critique. Ecumenism is the necessary connection of this theology and the author indicates six features that define its content: a biblical-theological profile, a bilingual discourse, interdisciplinarity, competence for political counseling, prophetic quality and intercontextuality. Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon provide a valid foundation for these times of globalization for the acknowledgment of the Christian faith's power for formation in politics and the economy. Four dimensions of a public theology of the church are specified: pastoral, discursive, of political counseling and prophetic, this latter being indispensable in view of the biblical foundation. The text concludes that the path to be followed by public theology goes from the lectern to the pulpit and continues in direction of the mayor's office, parliament, and centers of administration.