Historians have painted a picture of nineteenth-century Baptists huddled in clapboard meetinghouses preaching sermons and singing hymns, seemingly unaware of the wider world. According to this view, Baptists were «so heavenly-minded, they were of no earthly good.» Overlooked are the illustrative stories of Baptists fighting poverty, promoting abolition, petitioning Congress, and debating tax policy. Politics and Piety is a careful look a ...
Drawn from three decades of parish ministry experience, Steward of Stories opens the delightfully complex and nuanced world of the congregation to a wider audience beyond, but including, local parish pastors. Each chapter brings together dramatically different stories about ordinary ministry situations organized around a core thematic connection, including pastoral incidents focused on topics like «Paying Attention,» «Marry Me,» and «Time to Go. ...
Seeking in Solitude examines select forms of contemporary Roman Catholic eremitic life and practice in the United States. Given the sustained presence of, and increased interest in, the eremitic life and practice, this book responds to the question of the place of the hermit in American Catholicism in a way that neither mystifies nor mythologizes it, but rather attempts to understand it. ...
No Man's Land is a book of poems of searching, longing, and belonging overlaid by the ancient struggle with home, family, and God. These poems are often confessional, persistent, and speak to the interior journey of our lives. They acknowledge the paradox of this journey, which often leaves us empty-handed and with more questions than answers, yet they still offer praise and gratitude, however faint. ...
Colleges can do it. Hospitals can do it. Workplaces can do it. Why does the church in the United States still find it so difficult to integrate across racial and ethnic divides? In Blessed and Beautiful Lisa Lamb trains her sights on one often overlooked facet of forging life together: the magnetic power of shared memories. Those common narratives bind ethnic groups together and keep them apart. This book explores the sociological and theologica ...
In Spirit Unleashed, Anne Benvenuti uses analysis of real encounters with wild animals to take us on an intellectual tour of our thinking about animals by way of biological sciences, scientific psychology, philosophy, and theology to show that we have been wrong in our understanding of ourselves amongst other animals. The good news is that we can correct our course and make ourselves happier in the process. Drawing us into encounters with a dese ...
I began studying American theological education in the 1970s, and Piety and Plurality is the third of three studies. In Piety and Intellect, I examined the colonial and nineteenth-century search for a form of theological education that was true to the church's confessional traditions and responsible to the intellectual demands of the age. In Piety and Profession, I described how that model was modified under the impact of the new biblical c ...
Loving Samuel is a retelling of the experience of welcoming and loving my son Samuel, who was diagnosed in utero with a chromosomal abnormality known as Trisomy 18. Samuel died January 2, 2012, just five hours after his birth. The experience of loving him and grieving his loss has profoundly shaped the character of my family. Loving Samuel weaves together both the narrative of our experience and broad thematic reflections on the human condition, ...
Combining thematic analysis and stimulating close readings, The Collar is a wide-ranging study of the many ways–heroic or comic, shrewd or dastardly–Christian ministers have been represented in literature and film. Since all Christians are expected to be involved in ministry of some type, the assumptions of secular culture about ministers affect more than just clergy. Ranging across several nations (particularly the U. S., Britain, and Canada), ...
