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Though Christendom has come to an end, it appears that old habits die hard. Jesus promised his followers neither safety nor affluence, but rather that those who come after him should expect persecution. Christian discipleship and tribal nationalism, however, despite the legal separation of church and state, continue to be co-opted into the nation-state project of prosperity and security. This co-option has made it difficult for the church to recognize her task to be a prophetic witness both for and against the state. That only a small pocket of Christians bear witness against such an accommodation of Christian practice is disconcerting; and yet, it breeds hope.
In Living on Hope While Living in Babylon, Tripp York examines a few twentieth century Christians who lived such a witness, including the Berrigan brothers, Dorothy Day, and Eberhard Arnold. These witnesses can be viewed as anarchical in the sense that their loyalty to Christ undermines the pseudo-soteriological myth employed by the state. While these Christians have been labeled pilgrims, revolutionaries, nomads, subversives, agitators, and now, anarchists, they are more importantly seekers of the peace of the city whose chief desire is for those belonging to the temporal cities to be able to participate in the eternal city–the city of God. By examining their ideas and their actions, this book will attempt to understand how the politics of the church–an apocalyptic politic–is necessary for the church to understand her mission as bearer of the gospel.
The Question
Two thousand years ago, Jesus challenged the religious system of his day. It had become infiltrated with traditions and man-made practices that had nothing to do with the word of God or the Lord's intervention for his people. Many of the people with whom Jesus came in contact had doubts and were oppressed by this religious system. Jesus challenged the people of his day by asking 233 questions–more than any other leader in recorded history. The uniqueness of this book is threefold: First, in two thousand years, no other book has been written that summarizes these extraordinary questions. Second, the questions that Jesus asked pressed the very heart and root of the issues that were universally significant during that period. Third, these questions, the answers to these questions, and Jesus's authentic resolutions transcend time and space to the current condition of our culture today. They cover every aspect of our lives, whether we deal with the purpose of life, our relationships to one another, or how God wants to impact our conventional society. The Question builds a bridge between what Jesus said two thousand years ago and his empirical message to what we desperately need to hear today. Jesus has a unique way of communicating, inspiring us to reach down deep into our very being. His questions are piercing and challenging and cause introspection that could only be inspired by the Almighty. It is a unique and unusual process of communication created by the world's greatest leader.
My Heart Got Married And I Didn't Know It
Alice was a raven-haired beauty who fell in love with easygoing James. They dated for about eight years, during which time they were monogamous, sexually intimate, and eventually lived together. They finally married in an elegant weekend celebration only to divorce before their second anniversary. What happened?
How indeed can a couple date for so long, act married in most ways, and make such a terrible mistake? What Alice and James did not know was their hearts married long before their wedding day and that, in fact, was the problem. They are just one of many couples that you will meet in My Heart Got Married and I Didn't Know It. This nonfiction, self-help book introduces and names the concept of heart marriage as a relationship in which a couple becomes intimately bound in a profound way; yet they have not clearly or intentionally articulated the desire or commitment to be married. With today's relationship trends, this occurs often, and as a result couples are short-circuiting the natural developmental process of getting to know each other in a way that is critical in deciding whether the relationship is right for the long-term commitment of marriage. Because heart marriage occurs silently and unannounced, it is a perilous path that can lead to much unhappiness. My Heart Got Married and I Didn't Know It will help couples recognize if they are heart married, discern whether ending the relationship through a heart divorce is warranted, identify strategies to prevent heart marriage from occurring, and outline steps to transition from a heart marriage into a fulfilling, committed, and legal marriage.
Teach from the Heart
How can a teacher remain whole and happy, able to teach well for an entire semester, an entire year, and an entire career? Teach from the Heart is about finding, rediscovering, or holding on to the heart of the teaching life, which is, quite literally, the teacher's heart. It is an encouragement to take up teaching as more than a service to provide, a profession to master, or a job to perform. It is an invitation to artisanry, teaching as a craft that we master by working with our hands over long periods of time, producing results that bear the mark of their maker. Whether you're just beginning, or in it for the long haul, sit down with Teach from the Heart and deepen your heart for the teaching life. We need not bring to class the wisdom and knowledge we gained elsewhere; we can take up teaching as a spiritual practice, with the classroom as a sacred space for our own formation as persons. With nearly forty years' experience as both student and teacher, Jenell Paris's perspective is hard-won, but still lighthearted and enthusiastic. Teachers from any context will benefit: stories and examples include preschool, K-12, community education, and college teaching.
Border-Crossing Spirituality
Border crossing is a significant experience in the global era when many people cross borders, whether in cultural, geopolitical, relational, or existential terms. Border crossing can provide a great opportunity for spiritual growth, yet it is often a violent and dangerous process. Thus there is a need to explore border-crossing spirituality: to examine how various aspects of border crossing impact human life, analyze why border crossing happens, and explain how the act of border crossing provides transformation. Border crossing is an action undertaken to expand one's own boundaries, and from it emerges the borderland–a third space where one's transformation can occur. This book primarily focuses on various teachings of border crossing and the notion of «being in between.» Almost every religious tradition has within it a spiritual teaching of border crossing and the importance of the borderland. This book is, by nature, cross cultural, interreligious, and interspiritual. Through the action of border crossing, transformation occurs in the borderland, and border-crossing spirituality can be crystallized as living a radical hospitality, valuing friendship, remaining in the present, and reclaiming subjectivity.
Can God Come Out To Play?
Liturgy is not a religious frill or Sunday morning ceremonial exercise. It is a communal response to the sacred. The liturgies, ceremonies, and rituals in our lives are the stuff of reality and have the power to heal and inspire us. From archaic times they have had this capacity, as they have always been our interaction with God and the gods. This book is filled with essays and stories, ancient and modern. Some of its liturgies are tried and proven, creative, ecumenical services of worship and others are nonreligious, spirit-filled events. Can God Come Out To Play? is aimed at those who are looking for a spiritual approach to today's challenges and are interested in imaginative forms and methods to guide them. Educators, clergy, divinity students, event facilitators, care workers, and environmentalists will appreciate this book as a valuable resource. And all its readers will have one thing in common–a willingness to recognize God as their mysterious, playful companion.
David of Sassoun
The Armenian folk epic David of Sassoun was performed and transmitted orally for over one thousand years before a variant was discovered and transcribed in 1873. The publication of this variant marks the beginning of a long period of discoveries of other variants. The fifty variants collected by1936 are the source of the epic's unified text.
The action of the epic is centered on the preservation of the House of Sassoun, or freedom from invaders. The oaths taken by heroes create conflicts of loyalties that work against this central concern. The curse, another form of the oath, leads to the decline of the House of Sassoun. The father's curse, which condemns the son to barren immortality, also puts heroic life in suspension until the eschatological vision is realized.
Confronting Religious Denial of Science
Confronting Religious Denial of Science: Christian Humanism and the Moral Imagination traces the cultural backstory of contemporary conflicts between biblical literalists who oppose evolution and «New Atheists» who insist that religion is so pernicious it should be outlawed, if not exterminated. That's a clash of fundamentalisms. It's a zero-sum game derived from high Victorian misunderstanding of both religion and science. The God whom science supposedly replaces is the Engineer Almighty sitting at his keyboard, controlling every event on earth. But that's not a viable concept of God. Far better, Wallace argues, to understand Christianity in Clifford Geertz's terms as a system of symbols that both constitutes a worldview and, according to David Sloan Wilson, encourages prosocial behavior. That reframing makes it possible to reclaim what biblical scholars have said for decades: the miracles of Jesus were confrontational symbolic actions. They contradicted the political status quo in colonial Palestine, not the laws of biology. Prayer, she explains, is not magical thinking. It's a creative, highly disciplined introspective process, most familiar to many people in forms like mindfulness meditation. Wallace offers an intriguing exploration of issues that believers seldom discuss in ways that make sense to the religiously unaffiliated.
Sympathy for Jonah
The story of Jonah is sacred to all three Abrahamic faiths and remains a recognizable legend even in the most secularized corners of the West.
And yet the maritime prophet's story has been trivialized as a quaint children's tale, his character has been blasted by unsympathetic commentators, and even his alleged tomb has now been destroyed by Islamic State militants who, in 2014, took the city of Mosul on the Nineveh Plains.
Now that Nineveh is once again in the grip of tyrannical violence and communities across the West and the Middle East are deep in a time of discord and soul-searching, we might do well to recover the story of Jonah, a guiding light, who marches into the very heart of empire and confronts it with the radical politics of the kingdom of God, even as his own certainties are shaken to the core.
Marduk
The time is Earth Year 2333 AD–a year at the beginning of a horrible new reality for civilization. The location is the city of Chicago, one of the last cities in the United States that remains. But it, too, has suffered great devastation. Death and destruction have been directed on it by the other cities that were caught up in what turned out to be a self-destructive competition to gain preeminence. Most of the people are gone, and the believers that remain in Chicago are thrust into survival mode.
Marduk, a vicious leader of the forces loyal to the Leader, sees the remnant as a threat and makes his personal goal to wipe them out. Victor Steinhouse and his friends are all that stand in his way. But who will win this contest of wills? And what will it cost? And will the believers glorify God as they deal with such opposition?
Yet the bigger question remains: Is faith all you really need when faith is all you have?