1st Edition

Structural Sin and the Death of Institutions

By Susannah Cornwall Copyright 2026
270 Pages
by Routledge

270 Pages
by Routledge

Structural Sin and the Death of Institutions explores how Christian understandings of sin map onto institutional failures. It argues that institutions frequently create conditions in which individuals are disempowered and disposed to sin, and that uncritical appeals to redemption, reconciliation and restoration perpetuate harm. The book engages the turn to despair, abolition and termination in... Read more

Part 1

Introduction: Institutional Death Without Resurrection?

1. What is an Institution? What are Institutions Like?

2. "These Things Don’t Live Outside of Us": Living in Sin

3. Palliative Care for a Dying Church?

4. Death, Termination, and the Toxicity of Hope

Part 2

5. Responsibility and the Exposure of Unaccountable Power

6. Forgiveness Without Forgetting

7. Abolitionist Imagination Toward Revolutionary Resurrection

8. In the Middle of the Broken World, We are Already Otherwise: Remedies for Sin

Epilogue

Biography

Susannah Cornwall is Professor of Constructive Theologies at the University of Exeter, UK.