Drawing from a variety of religious and civic perspectives, the renowned contributors to this book-from the fields of theology, philosophy, and the social sciences-offer a broad understanding of repentance and its many applications. The essays question the legitimacy of repentance as a religious concept for the civic culture, exploring the way in which the religious origins of repentance might both illuminate and facilitate our civic usage of the idea.

Contributions by: Mahmoud Ayoub, Guy Beck, Harold O. J. Brown, Harvey Cox, Malcolm David Eckel, Amitai Etzioni, John Lyden, Jeffrie Murphy, Jacob Neusner