In the controversy over the role of women in the church, complementarians/hierarchists routinely claim to be upholding the «traditional» position. Like the little boy who declared that «the emperor has no clothes,» J. G. Brown exposes the fallacies in this claim. The authentic traditional interpretation of passages such as 1 Timothy 2:11-14 differs substantially from contemporary readings, whether egalitarian or hierarchist. Most prominent Prote ...
This book contains two stories, but the first one is nested in the second one. The first part is Bruno Corduan's short autobiography, which begins with him as a boy in a family of rather limited means growing up in Germany during the Nazi era. Having come to trust Christ at an early age and carrying no illusions about the Nazis or their opposition to biblical Christianity and those who practiced it, one might wonder with what anxieties and ...
The Greeks and Romans often exposed their babies, especially if the child was of the wrong gender, malformed or from the wrong father–or, more simply, when a child was not needed. It was lawful, but Jewish and then Christian teachers did everything to prevent the practice among their own groups. Most of the arguments used by Christians were borrowed from their Jewish predecessors. The unique value of every human being and God's commandments ...
Fostering faith in children is a shared privilege and responsibility of parents, godparents, and the church community. We promise our children at baptism that we will support them in their faith formation–in the formation of their relationship with God. We need to take this promise seriously. This book is intended to be an accessible and helpful resource for parents and other adults who seek to foster children's faith. This book succinctly ...
In this volume, Richard Hiers challenges the popular assumption that the Bible has a low view of women and that biblical law either ignores women or requires them to be subject and subservient to men. He does so by identifying and carefully examining hundreds of biblical texts and allowing them to speak for themselves. Among the findings: – that biblical tradition generally represents women positively, as strong and independent per ...
With simple, heartbreaking detail, Das Maddimadugu recalls the joys and tragedies of his childhood in a destitute family of the untouchable caste, nearly sold into slavery, and «adopted» by a single Mennonite missionary woman. In her care, he was taught about Jesus' love and given the opportunity to discover his gifts for wide-ranging study, loyal friendship, community organizing, and dreaming redemption for those at the bottom of society&a ...
Trouble in the Diocese is a petulant, funny book of poetry. Its contrary protagonist/antagonist, the Apprentice, embraces life in both the large and the absurdly small. At the same time, he emphatically rejects the easy rigidity of doily-headed orthodox Catholics as well as the impulse in the Catholic literary Pixar world that seeks to serve two masters. Jesus and his Church are lifted up here, but so is the cross. Discipleship necessarily invo ...
Sparked by phrases from the book of Psalms, these poems question and occasionally affirm our everyday ideas about life, mortality, the afterlife, God, family, and belief. In vigorous contemporary language–complaining, lamenting, and wisecracking on everything from Job's wife to baseball, crows to angels, circus elephants to Mary Magdalene–but in traditional form, these sonnets, or little songs, «speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. ...
Given the upcoming five-hundred-year anniversary of Luther's ninety-five theses, it is appropriate to reflect on the impact of Luther's ideas. This collection of essays, which began as conference papers on the literature of Luther, seeks to initiate conversations on the many and varied receptions of the reformer. Most of the essays are interdisciplinary, crossing boundaries between literature, history, and theology. Both Catholic and P ...
