The study, American Grace by Putnam and Campbell affirms the sociological significance of religion as a distinctive vitalising form of social capital. With its stress on virtues of trust, altruism and communal affiliation realised through social networking in congregations, this civil religion, one peculiar to the U.S.A., accomplishes a form of grace that resolves the puzzle of belief and pluralism by generating harmony and religious tolerance. This solution bears a price of rendering religion as end in itself, one detached from exclusivist theological claims in regard to salvation. In exposing this conundrum, the study reveals a highly significant and unexpected facet of the secularisation thesis.

This paper is an attempt at proposing Thomas Aquinas’ metaphysics of ‘relationship’ and ‘participation’ as a corrector of a contemporary theological trend that conflates ‘person’ with ‘relation’ in its understanding of the trinity, turning God, eventually, from a self-existing, particular personal Being into an idealist expression of a network of relational movements reflective of what the human personhood means. Thomas Aquinas’ theology of relation and participation invites contemporary theology to retrieve a theology that keeps ‘transcendence’ characteristic of God's personal being in order not to turn the participation of God in the finite's realm of existence into a panentheist or one-sidedly, human-centered relationality.

Viewed from the perspective of the nineteenth century there is little in the details of contemporary political life that would seem special. Tensions between great powers, ethnic and religious divisions, trade rivalries, economic recessions, currency crises, civil unrest, etc. are all part of the fabric of the modern world. Social life in the West has been marked by the dissolution of families and communities into voluntary and market associations of individuals; but while that was a distinctive feature of the twentieth century and has extended into the twenty-first, it is a continuation of trends well-established in previous times principally through industrialisation and urbanisation.

Apologists such as N.T. Wright, Gerald O’Collins, Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig, and Gary Habermas have appealed to the post-mortem appearances, the empty tomb, and the origin of the disciples’ belief in the resurrection to lend credibility to Jesus’ resurrection. The earliest and most pertinent evidence concerning the earliest church's worship and devotional life has not been utilized to defend the resurrection (or to defend the historicity of the evidence itself).

On the other hand, scholars of early worship such as Richard Bauckham, Larry Hurtado, and James Dunn have not seen their work as having apologetic import. This essay seeks to bridge the gap between these research paradigms and show that they can only complement each other for the better, especially for the sake of apologetic purposes.