ABSTRACT
This chapter explores an exhaustive accounting of the possibilities for public theology, but they are representative of important trends in the public theology movement in the United States. It clarifies the nature of public theology as a discipline by considering three prominent public theologians: David Tracy, Ronald Thiemann, and James Skillen. In The Analogical Imagination, David Tracy outlines a proposal for a public theology grounded in three complementary 'publics', the public of the church, the public of the academy, and the public of society. Thiemann's approach is rooted in a 'narrative understanding' of Christian theology that bears some similarities to the perspective of Stanley Hauerwas. Key to Skillen's approach to religion and public life is his analysis of the highly differentiated nature of American society. Moltmann's most recent writing on the relationship between religion and public life is structurally similar to Tracy's approach in The Analogical Imagination.
