Lyn Brakeman was among the first women to enter the ordination process in the Episcopal Church just after the General Convention voted in 1976 that women could be priests. The bishop of her diocese had voted against ordaining women priests and hospitality towards female aspirants was guarded at best. So why would a forty-year-old institutional naif, suburban housewife, and mother of four enter such unfriendly territory to seek priestly ...
Pain is universal. It comes in all shapes and sizes, but sooner or later it comes to us all. Colleen Peters hopes that what she has learned and written about while living with Multiple Sclerosis for more than a decade will reassure, challenge, and encourage those in pain to see that life can be rich in spite of, and at times because of, pain. ...
In a time when Charles Wesley's hymns, and even his name, are slowly fading from the purview of many Christians, this book is intended to recover the precious heritage of our past, and to bring to the reader's attention a sample of the massive body of Christian verse which that genius composed throughout his life. The main body of the book is a selection of well known, lesser known, and unknown hymns and Psalm paraphrases, intended for ...
Few twentieth-century theologians have had a bigger impact on theology than Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man who lived his faith and died at the hands of the Nazis. For Bonhoeffer, the theological was the personal, life and faith deeply intertwined–and to this day the world is inspired by that witness. Yet the true story of the women in this remarkable man's life has until now been obscured by a conventional narrative that has distorted their rol ...
The 2010 earthquake in Haiti buried Renee Splichal Larson in concrete rubble, killing her husband and leaving her a widow at age 27. Surviving only to be overwhelmed by loss and trauma, she wondered if life was still possible for her. Even as she trained to become a pastor, her faith in a loving God was shaken and battered by the earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and took the lives of many thousands. This is Renee's moving s ...
Almost every person has owned a pet at one time or another in life or known someone who has. In all world religions, animals serve as spirit guides; there is spirituality to animal and human dialogue. Animals have the ability to help us reach wholeness if we learn their wisdom and integrate it into our lives. This abecedarian–a book whose contents are in alphabetical order–explores the spiritual growth that is possible by reflecting on the wisdo ...
Questions regarding the orthodoxy of Dale Moody and Ralph Elliott propelled the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) toward a re-evaluation of its doctrinal statement, the Baptist Faith and Message (BFM). The SBC adopted this document in 1925 under the leadership of E. Y. Mullins when faced by the challenge of modernism. This dissertation argues that the 1962 Committee on Baptist Faith and Message produced a document that expressed subtle shifts in ...
Before there were worshippers of Jesus, there were followers of Jesus. Before there were organized churches with creeds and doctrines, there were small communities of love, equality, and sharing dedicated to the practice of Jesus' teachings and committed to a wholly new way of living. Today, the churches of the Global North are in decline and younger generations no longer seek meaning there. Traditional «church Christianity» is grad ...
Jesus before Pentecost studies the history of Jesus' ministry from William P. Atkinson's Pentecostal perspective. This perspective affects both his method and the book's content. In terms of method, Atkinson puts forward a strong argument for looking carefully at John's Gospel, as well as the synoptic gospels, as a reliable historical source for Jesus' life. And in terms of content, his main areas of study follow key Pen ...
