Sarah Travis
Список книг автора Sarah TravisMetamorphosis
Post-Christendom, Christian leaders and preachers in North America struggle to respond to anxiety and despair about the future of the church. Declining participation, fewer resources, decreased influence, and confusion about pastoral and ecclesial identity lead to fear for the survival of the institutional church. Preaching must speak to the despair and confusion faced by congregations today, as well as cast a hopeful vision for an uncertain future. This book argues that preachers can change the narrative of the church post-Christendom, by urging an exit from Christendom ecclesiology and promoting the construction of an identity that embraces vulnerability and incarnation instead of power and permanence. Counterintuitively, failure, decrease, and marginalization constitute good news for the church. Through wide-ranging conversation partners including postcolonial theory and theology, social science, systematic theology, and homiletic literature, this book engages preachers and scholars who seek to reimagine both gospel and ecclesial identity in order to bring new life to communities in despair. Preachers participate in a process of metamorphosis, in which the church's self-understanding is transformed into a vulnerable, incarnate community that leaves behind the character of Christendom.
Decolonizing Preaching
Colonialism and imperialism continue to impact the personal and social identities of North American preachers and listeners. In Decolonizing Preaching, Sarah Travis argues that sermons have a role in shaping the identity and ethics of listeners by helping them formulate responses to empire and colonization. Travis employs postcolonial theories to provide important insights for the practice of preaching today. She also turns to the social doctrine of the Trinity to offer a vision of the divine/human community that effectively deconstructs colonizing discourse. This book offers preachers and other practical theologians a gentle introduction to colonial history, postcolonial theories, and Social Trinitarian theology, while equipping them with tools to decolonize preaching and strategies for preventing, resisting, and responding to colonizing discourse. Travis effectively casts a vision of a «perichoretic space» in which preacher and listener encounter the living God-in-Trinity and are transformed, reconciled, and sent out to others in the church and beyond.