Dawn and Margo were sisters born next to each other. They should have grown up together, but were separated. They went on to lead very different lives, but would they ever get to chance to meet, and share happiness together?
Examines the role of Sophia, Divine Wisdom in the writings of Thomas Merton. A more personal and less academic presentation than in "Sophia: the hidden Christ of Thomas Merton," the author's earlier book on this topic.
The Victorian era was the first great ";Age of Doubt"; and a critical moment in the history of Western ideas. Leading nineteenth-century intellectuals battled the Church and struggled to absorb radical scientific discoveries that upended everything the Bible had taught them about the world. In "The Age of Doubt," distinguished scholar Christopher Lane tells the fascinating story of a society under strain as virtually all aspects of life changed abruptly. In deft portraits of scientific, literary, and intellectual icons who challenged the prevailing religious orthodoxy, from Robert Chambers and Anne Bronte; to Charles Darwin and Thomas H. Huxley, Lane demonstrates how they and other Victorians succeeded in turning doubt from a religious sin into an ethical necessity. The dramatic adjustment of Victorian society has echoes today as technology, science, and religion grapple with moral issues that seemed unimaginable even a decade ago. Yet the Victorians'; crisis of faith generated a far more searching engagement with religious belief than the ";new atheism"; that has evolved today. More profoundly than any generation before them, the Victorians came to view doubt as inseparable from belief, thought, and debate, as well as a much-needed antidote to fanaticism and unbridled certainty. By contrast, a look at today';s extremes-;from the biblical literalists behind the Creation Museum to the dogmatic rigidity of Richard Dawkins';s atheism-;highlights our modern-day inability to embrace doubt.
Christian Doctrine, Christian Identity is an elegant study of Augustine's Confessions, a classic narrative of Christian experience written 1600 years ago. With insights concerning character, the development of integrity and the organic nature of moral experience, Confessions provides an excellent example for those wishing to promote a narrative approach to Christian theology. In this book, Christopher Thompson investigates the impact of Augustine's work on leading figures in narrative ethics, including MacIntyre, Hauerwas, Stroup, and Crites. He then considers Confessions on the subject of Creation and discusses the influence of this important theological theme on the nature of Christian identity. By considering contemporary narrative ethics in light of Augustine's reflections, Thompson eloquently reveals that a doctrine of creation is essential for truly understanding the meaning of life. Theologians and other religious scholars will find much to their liking in this thought-provoking study.
While numerous studies have celebrated Thomas Merton's witness as an interfaith pioneer, poet, and peacemaker, there have been few systematic treatments of his Christology as such, and no sustained exploration to date of his relationship to the Russian Sophia" tradition. This book looks to Thomas Merton as a "classic" theologian of the Christian tradition from East to West, and offers an interpretation of his mature Christology, with special attention to his remarkable prose poem of 1962, Hagia Sophia. Bringing Merton's mystical-prophetic Vision fully into dialogue with contemporary Christology, Russian sophiology, and Zen, as well as figures such as John Henry Newman and Abraham Joshua Heschel, the author carefully but boldly builds the case that Sophia, the same theological eros that animated Merton's religious imagination in a period of tremendous fragmentation and violence, might infuse new vitality into our own. A study of uncommon depth and scope, inspired throughout by Merton's extraordinary catholicity. Christopher Pramuk, PhD, is assistant professor of theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the author of two books and numerous essays, and the recipient of the Catholic Theological Society of America's 2009 Catherine Mowry LaCugna Award.
We believe that there is a God, but is this the way God would run the world with death and destruction and all sorts of evil. If God is loving, why isn’t every thing perfect? There are the whys in life. How did this all get started? Why are we born and why do we die?
Guiding Gideon chronicles the encounters between Gideon, a young man in his thirties in the midst of crisis, and his spiritual guide, Julian. With Julian accompanying him to attend prayerfully to the life directly before him, Gideon traverses the troubled landscape of his interior life, where he encounters grace, his deepest wounds become "sacred," and he is invited into fuller participation in the kingdom of God. Julian reflects prayerfully on each session, conscious that he is a privileged witness to the restorative movements of the Spirit within Gideon's life and that the same Spirit is forming him in the way of Jesus. Guiding Gideon is for all who desire to become more attentive to their formation in the likeness of Christ. It is also for spiritual guides who want their mentoring, counseling, pastoral care, or spiritual directing to reflect and embody the way of Jesus. Written as a narrative, Guiding Gideon offers prayerful reflection within the context of guiding a fictional pilgrim and also invites readers to witness the formation of a fictional guide. Reflective of the contemplative vision of New Monasticism, Guiding Gideon models a prayer-action praxis inspired by Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
In this article, the author discusses the great Biblical verse, Luke 11: 9-10. The question here is what is the spiritual underpinning from which one must ask to bring forth that which one wants? Where is that placement in our hearts (or souls) from which we must ask? If only we could be in alignment in our asking--all would unfold perfectly in our lives. Author Bio: Christopher Alan Anderson (1950 - ) received the basis of his education from the University of Science and Philosophy, Swannanoa, Waynesboro, Virginia. He resides in the transcendental/romantic tradition, that vein of spiritual creativity of the philosopher and poet. His quest has been to define and express an eternal romantic reality from which a man and a woman could together stand in their difference and create a living universe of procreative love. Mr. Anderson began these writings in 1971. The first writings were published in 1985. On a personal note, when Mr. Anderson was asked to describe the writings and what he felt their message was he responded, "Spiritual procreation. Mankind has yet to distinguish the two sexes on the spiritual level. In this failure lies the root of our problems and why we cannot yet touch the eternal together. The message of man and woman balance brings each of us together in love with our eternal other half right now." Keywords: Man and Woman Balance, Relationships, Procreation, Spirituality, Love, Metaphysics, Eternal, Creation, Sexuality, & Soul.
The dramatic untold story of how Norman Vincent Peale and a handful of conservative allies fueled the massive rise of religiosity in the United States during the 1950s Near the height of Cold War hysteria, when the threat of all-out nuclear war felt real and perilous, American minister Norman Vincent Peale published The Power of Positive Thinking. Selling millions of copies worldwide, the book offered a gospel of self-assurance in an age of mass anxiety. Despite Peale's success and his ties to powerful conservatives such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover, and Joseph McCarthy, the full story of his movement has never been told. Christopher Lane shows how the famed minister's brand of Christian psychology inflamed the nation's religious revival by promoting the concept that belief in God was essential to the health and harmony of all Americans. We learn in vivid detail how Peale and his powerful supporters orchestrated major changes in a nation newly defined as living "under God." This blurring of the lines between religion and medicine would reshape religion as we know it in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Should evangelical spirituality be grounded in doctrine, experience, neither, or both? If in one, which, and why not the other? If in both, how might the two co-exist without cancelling out each other's distinctives? If in neither, then what practical value does either have for the Christian life? In this book, the author has combined critical research, pastoral awareness, and thoughtful reflection to show how the radicalizations of doctrine and experience have not only polarized contemporary evangelicalism into two nearly irreconcilable camps, but also has opened the door for a subtle but potent form of idolatry to creep into our midst. In an attempt to purge these idols and bridge the gap, this book contextualizes the biblical teachings and practices of our original spiritual instructors, asking the double-edged question of what it means for us today that the Word of God is normative and that the Spirit is Lord. The author concludes that evangelicals should seek an incarnate, cross-centered spirituality that is informed by meticulous attention and obedience to sound doctrine, but only as it is lived out in a deeply felt faith that is made perfect as we experience God daily in any number of ways.
A comprehensive history of censorship in modern Britain For Victorian lawmakers and judges, the question of whether a book should be allowed to circulate freely depended on whether it was sold to readers whose mental and moral capacities were in doubt, by which they meant the increasingly literate and enfranchised working classes. The law stayed this way even as society evolved. In 1960, in the obscenity trial over D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, the prosecutor asked the jury, "Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?" Christopher Hilliard traces the history of British censorship from the Victorians to Margaret Thatcher, exposing the tensions between obscenity law and a changing British society. Hilliard goes behind the scenes of major obscenity trials and uncovers the routines of everyday censorship, shedding new light on the British reception of literary modernism and popular entertainments such as the cinema and American-style pulp fiction and comic books. He reveals the thinking of lawyers and the police, authors and publishers, and politicians and ordinary citizens as they wrestled with questions of freedom and morality. He describes how supporters and opponents of censorship alike tried to remake the law as they reckoned with changes in sexuality and culture that began in the 1960s. Based on extensive archival research, this incisive and multifaceted book reveals how the issue of censorship challenged British society to confront issues ranging from mass literacy and democratization to feminism, gay rights, and multiculturalism.
To borrow imagery from C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Timothy George's perspective as a historical theologian is the wardrobe that we can walk through to get to Narnia, an exciting new place where we discover the wonderful works of Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Luther, Wesley, and many others. George is one of the most respected church historians, theologians, and Christian educators of our time. But how did this Baptist preacher from Tennessee become a premier church historian and follow in the footsteps of great historians like the Harvard scholar George Huntston Williams (who was a Unitarian), the Duke scholar David Steinmetz (who was a Methodist), and the Yale scholar Jaroslav Pelikan (who was a Lutheran and later Eastern Orthodox)? This book will uncover how each of these influences contributed to George's eye-opening, heart-warming, and kingdom-advancing approach to the study of church history.
In some places, and against prevailing trends, Christian belief and practice is not being chased out of the public square but rather, it is very active in stimulating new forms of civic and social engagement. Like two blades of scissors, an applied theology requiring both being grounded in biblical work as well as social policy, can create faith-based action that develop collaborative platforms that pass muster in today's secular culture. The theological grounding is incarnational; Incarnational suggests identification. The Identification Principle offers a new impetus to holistic and practical engagement by the church with our world. All too often, incarnational ministry is divorced from proclamation and prayer. The author, who is an Anglican minister, is responsible for a large and innovative Christian social project on the edge of city centre, which is developing new forms of community engagement in a way that does not lose the importance of spiritual formation. Word and work go hand in hand. This fresh take on incarnational life, church and society draws together recent academic research and cutting-edge ministry. It presents a renewed theology of Christian action for a new generation of evangelical leaders who have to intuitively hold together action with word and worship. The book offers both theology and praxis. Exploring the role of the atonement, the honour of God and His divine worth, the incarnation and the role of Christ. The author argues the effectiveness of proclamation, intercession, and the confronting of systemic and individual wrongs to create new types of communities that engage culture and re-focuses mission.
ARE YOU PRESSED BETWEEN SOME THINGS? Sometimes life can make us feel like we’re literally squeezed between some things, like a set of hardbound books pressed tightly between two huge and heavy bookends! And we often feel stuck right in the middle, between where we are and where we want to be. This book will inspire you to..... • Take Your Mess, Make it a Miracle! • Face Your Shame, Embrace Your Honor! • Receive Healing as You Serve Others! • Press Through Difficult Realities to Achieve Your Highest Dreams! • Live with Great Expectation! Within these pages you’re guaranteed to find information that is practical, insightful, and applicable for anyone seeking inspiration and hope!
This book uses real-world examples, case studies, and commentary from practitioners to reveal the many and varied strategies American and English lawyers use to protect truth. It shows how they tackle their conflicting duties, and highlights the 'tragic choices' lawyers everywhere routinely make through their 'power of decision'. What emerges are new ways of understanding the critical role lawyers play in society – and their professional responsibilities. 'Truth is so precious it should always be protected by a bodyguard of lies.' Churchill said this about wartime deception plans, but lawyers' clients may think their truth - especially an 'inconvenient truth' - is so precious it too should be protected. Lawyers are 'bodyguards of lies' when they use so-called 'tricks of the trade' not only to keep clients' secrets but to construct a reality that is far from real. But should they? Lawyers have a divided loyalty. The book presents a unique and fascinating account of what happens when lawyers' duties to clients conflict with their duties to the legal system, and looks in detail at the ethical codes and laws that regulate their conduct.
By bringing four contemporary companioning narratives into dialogue with gospel descriptions of Jesus' encounters with people, this book demonstrates how wonderfully diverse interpersonal ministry--pastoral care, counselling, chaplaincy, mentoring, spiritual companioning, and spiritual direction--is active participation in his shepherding, healing, restorative, and guiding purposes. Jesus' invitation, as the true shepherd, master guide, and companion, is to embody and reflect his humble, life-giving, and restorative dynamic. With the essence of his way encapsulated in the words, "Come unto me" (Matt 11:28-30), and gospel accounts opening to us his person and his interpersonal dynamic, we are invited and gifted to offer to pilgrims profound respect as persons created in the likeness of God; the accompaniment of a gentle and humble heart; welcoming and sacred spaces; relational solidarity; creative and often non-directive entry points into the deeper rhythms and flows of their human experience (noting Jesus' use of metaphor, imagery, enlivened imagination, parable, paradox, wakefulness, and attentiveness to the everyday); and, the prayerful attentiveness that will guide them to find rest for their souls. The encouragement is to get on the road with this master guide-companion and experience his kingdom breaking through, in, and around the lives of pilgrims and their companions.
Daniel L. Smith-Christopher focuses on the life and efforts of Keir Hardie, one of the founders of the UK Labour Party and one of the foremost figureheads of trade unionism. Drawing upon the work of two contemporary and significant American theorists-Herbert Gutman's classic essay on “Working-Class Religion” and Michael Gold's call for “Proletarian Literature”-Smith-Christopher marries British and American historical and theoretical debates to argue that Hardie's work is surely the quintessential example of a “proletarian exegesis” of the Bible. Beginning with a summary of the major events in Hardie's life, Smith-Christopher draws both upon existing biographies and more recent historical discussions that question assumption of British social history. He then reviews previous debates upon the influence of Hardie's own Christian faith upon his journalistic output, and assesses three Christian Socialists whose work was advertised and reviewed by Hardie himself: Dennis Hird, John Morrison Davidson, and Caroline Martyn. Smith-Christopher proceeds to Hardie's copious writings, both for The Labour Leader and separately published lectures, pamphlets, and somewhat longer works of autobiography and comment. Highlighting Hardie's tendency to cite favorite texts (heavily from the Gospels and James, but also some notable Old Testament discussions), Smith-Christopher proves Hardie's serious discussion of these texts beyond mere political rhetoric; concluding by comparing a selection of Hardie's favorite Biblical arguments with contemporary research in Biblical Studies about these same passages, evaluating the problems and possibilities of proposing a “Proletarian Exegesis”.
In the last sermon he ever preached, John Stott echoed the Apostle Paul when he said that God’s greatest desire and plan for us is to become like his Son, Jesus Christ. BUT HOW? Stott prayed daily that God would bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit in his own life; a prayer clearly answered and evident in his Christlikeness. Chris Wright, a close friend of John Stott, reflects on all nine qualities that the Apostle Paul includes in the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians. He shows how they are rooted in the character of God, first revealed in the Old Testament, and modelled and taught by Jesus. With applications to encourage biblical growth with depth, and questions at the end of each chapter, this is an ideal resource for preachers, study groups and personal reflection. Many people rightly stress the importance of the gifts, power and ministries of the Holy Spirit, but easily neglect Paul’s command to live and walk by the Spirit and cultivate the fruit that only he can bear in our lives. Paying close attention to the beautiful and robust qualities that Paul includes in the fruit, and seeking daily to cultivate them with God’s help, is surely one way we can become more and more like Jesus.
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