What is the task of theology in a complex religious and secular world? What are theologians called to contribute to society, the churches, and the academy? Can theology be both fully faithful to Christian tradition and Scripture, and fully open to the challenges of the twenty-first century? In this book, an international team of contributors, including some of the best-known names in the field, respond to these questions in programmatic essays t ...
What really is Christianity? If all the religious packaging in which it is wrapped were removed, what would remain? These were Bonhoeffer's questions, and they must be ours today–even more urgently! For in many quarters Christianity is being so narrowly identified with some of its parts, cultural associations, and past ambitions that like all militant religion, it represents a threat to the planetary future. We may no longer speak c ...
Every individual has a story–painful or happy–and the story will only be complete and meaningful when shared with others willing to listen to it. These are the stories of several people who embarked on a journey toward healing from abortion, adoption, abuse (sexual and spousal), anger, bullying, cutting, infertility, divorce, grief, people pleasing, and fear, as well as people struggling to break the chains of psychological colonialism/neocoloni ...
"Worship the Lord." Too many churches assume that those in their pews and those who pass through their doors know what worship is and why the Lord commands it. The purpose of this booklet, then, is to educate and acquaint members of Reformed churches but most of all those who inquire within their walls, with a basic knowledge of what Reformed churches mean when they say, «Worship the Lord.» In knowing what to expect, the worshippers' ...
What is it to confess the Christian faith, and what is the status of formal confessions of faith? How far does the context inform the content of the confession? These questions are addressed in Part One, with reference to the Reformed tradition in general, and to its English and Welsh Dissenting strand in particular. In an adverse political context the Dissenters' plea for toleration under the law was eventually granted. The question of tol ...
Can Christians be spiritual and religious? Do they even know the difference between the two? Through a guide for guardian angels entering into basic training for service to «womankind,» Bound, an Earth Walker's handbook overhauls Western Christianity with integrity and clarity. Tackling subjects such as hypocrisy, racial prejudice, and misogyny, Bound cuts traditional religion back to its healthy roots: love, rigorous honesty, and ...
The Many Sides of Peace comes out of thirty years of living in a Catholic lay community, attempting to understand and practice the compelling ideas of gospel-centered nonviolent love. The book attempts to speak to the signs of these times for those who seek peace and liberation from both war and the looming ecological Armageddon. It is a faith based on the revelation of Jesus and the conviction that a love that is nonviolent will save this envir ...
It is one thing for a religious leader to confront and challenge political leaders; it is altogether another thing when such a leader becomes a partisan political leader. This is what happened in the case of Bishop Abel Tendekai, a bishop of the United Methodist Church. For such a religious leader to attempt to traverse both worlds political and religious are in some ways uncharted waters; in other ways, they are treacherous waters. The pages w ...
Using the form of the classical symphony as an analytical and critical tool, Sidney Green examines the concepts of orthodoxy and heresy and their historical development in the Christian church and applies those to the confessional approach of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON). Using examples from history of the early church, the Reformation, and the contemporary emerging church, Green examines how the concept of boundaries ...