Bury the Dead is a collection of personal encounters with death: stories of Alzheimer's, AIDS, cancer, hospice, suicide, murder, systemic violence, genocide, and war. In this book a teenager tenderly washes her mother's body, a community organizer cries outrage over his blood-soaked comrade, a father builds a coffin for his infant son, martyrs are honored by a former political prisoner, a young scholar's experiences in Palestine s ...
Through Iraqis' eyes–through their stories–this book «tells the truth» about what war and the U.S. government's antiterrorism policies have really meant for them. Iraqis recount the abuses they experienced in the U.S. and new Iraqi detention systems, the excessive violence, and collective punishment of the U.S.-led occupying forces, as well as tensions between Kurds and Arab Iraqis–tensions rooted in Saddam Hussein's genocide agai ...
Kids and Kingdom challenges the traditional view that Jesus was deeply concerned over children. Instead, it is argued that despite the Synoptic authors' attempts to convince us that children are fully included in the kingdom of God–that «Jesus loves the little children»–their presentations fail to conceal images of household disruption and alienation of children brought about by Jesus' eschatological movement. After establishin ...
Readers of the Gospels are typically attuned to the words of Jesus while paying comparatively little attention to what other characters in the narratives say about him. This innovative study of John's Gospel looks at the text through the lens of a routinely misunderstood mode of speech, namely, gossip. Focusing on talk about Jesus in John, the author unpacks the intricate relationship between gossip and various social dynamics of Jesus&apos ...
New Brethren in Flanders is the story of the planting and remarkable growth of Brethren churches in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium at the end of the twentieth century. The Evangelische Christengemeenten Vlaanderen (ECV) began in the early 1970s as a result of evangelistic church-planting efforts led by a group of Canadian Christian Brethren missionaries. In just under twenty years, the ECV grew from one evangelistic, home Bible study to over ...
Where in the world is the church? These articles, essays, opinion pieces, and blog posts gather around that question. If we quit on the question in despair, we are lost. If we answer it too quickly, we are not digging deeply enough. But if we hunt hard with the help of the Holy Spirit, we'll find Christ's body alive, active, working, growing, and making things new. In Discerning the Body, Jason Byassee goes hunting for the chur ...
What happens after a congregation welcomes new Christians into its ministry? Building on the work of the first volume in this series, Faith Forming Faith, Paul Hoffman interprets how a congregation that intentionally practices baptism and its renewal is itself re-formed. Pastors, teachers, lay leaders, students of ministry, and people in the pew: all will find the compelling story of the ministry of Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church in Seattle, Wash ...
The repeal of the government's policy on homosexual military service, known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT), has caused much concern among Christian military service members, especially chaplains, and has led to much debate about the morality of homosexuality, the ideal of free speech, and the role of clergy in public service. Can it be scientifically demonstrated that homosexuality is normal? What has homosexual political activit ...
The author of Ephesians shows an interest in the Isaianic new exodus (INE) in facilitating his focus on the present triumph of the people of God. The recipients required both insight and confidence, especially in regard to the certainty of their salvation, its mysterious nature, Jewish-Gentile relations, and their former manner of life. In the face of these challenges the author maintains that victory is secured through God's choice of them ...
