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What does it mean to be church? Is it spending an hour on Sunday with people who look, think, and act much as we do? Or is it something more incarnational that seeks out those who are different, the ones living on the margins? For centuries Christians have presumed that we are to take the gospel to the poor. Instead, Wendy McCaig invites us to receive the gospel from the poor. Through a series of encounters with incarcerated, homeless, and impoverished individuals, Wendy McCaig experienced the mysterious power of Christian hospitality that turns strangers into family. Her gift for storytelling brings this mysterious transformation to life. Inspired by the dreams of a homeless mother who wanted to help her neighbors, McCaig started a ministry that empowers formerly homeless individuals to live out their dreams. Together these dreamers are transforming their city one person, one community, and one church at a time. Her true stories of the least, the lost, and the forgotten in her community will show you the Good News becoming reality in the midst of injustice in ways that will inspire you and deepen your faith. These twenty stories-within-a-story about what ordinary people can do when they come together across racial, economic, and geographic divides to fight poverty will expand your vision of what it means to be the church. With your eyes opened to the needs and gifts of your neighbors, you too can begin to dream God-sized dreams for a hurting world. And as you pray ""thy kingdom come on earth,"" you will be inspired to live in such a way as to make it happen in your own community.""From the Sanctuary to the Streets is the story of how one person began to help others--the broken of our world--dream and realize those dreams. She invites us into her world and introduces us to her friends. It is through this eye-opening account of Wendy''s story and the individual stories of her friends that we get a glimpse of God''s power to heal and mend the broken and transform them into a community of dreamers.""--Eric Swansonco-author of The Externally Focused Church""McCaig''s vision of Christian hospitality involves opening ourselves to the most vulnerable-the abused wife, the drug addict, the ex-felon, the abandoned elderly-and discovering there the presence of God. Friendships with those close at home-family and neighbors-as well as with those across racial and class lines illustrate how ''God never works alone.'' This beautifully written book is a call to all of us to embrace our dreams, whether large and small, and in so doing respond to God''s call to be Christ''s body for the world.""--Elizabeth Newmanauthor of Untamed Hospitality: Welcoming God and Other Strangers""This is one of the best, most challenging, and hope-filled books I''ve read in a long time. What makes From the Sanctuary to the Streets so different from other books on the subject is it''s narrative quality--it reads like a novel, chalk-full of personal stories and wisdom born of experience. McCaig has captured qualities of holiness and hope that blossom in some of the most desolate corners of the inner city.""--Stephen Brachlowauthor of The Communion of Saints: Radical Puritan and Separatist Ecclesiology 1570-1625""Years ago, God gave Joseph an unpopular but ultimately redemptive dream that altered the course of his nation. Today, God has spoken a dream of the same fabric to my friend and courageous leader Wendy McCaig. Those who are wise enough to listen to this dreamer will become a part of a movement of the Church Distributed and will touch their communities with grace and hope.""--John P. Chandlerauthor of Courageous Church Leadership: Conversations with Effective PractitionersWendy McCaig is the founder and Executive Director of Embrace Richmond, an urban ministry in inner-city Richmond, Virginia. She holds a MDiv and has worked for more than ten years as a leader in the local church, and for another six years serving the homeless. However, her greate

Working with selected miracles of Jesus from the canonical Gospel traditions and with background studies in the general understanding of miracles in the Greco-Roman world of the Hellenistic period, this collection of essays shows how we may understand the theological reasons why the early followers of Jesus included these stories in their traditions that constituted the canonical Gospels. Using individual stories from the Gospels, three of the essays demonstrate how literary-critical analysis can show the theological intent of the miracle story. A second set of three essays examines the way Mark and Luke view the miracle tradition within their larger task of writing the story of Jesus. A final set of three articles examines the Hellenistic background of such stories, and the way they were used in secular and Jewish sources, to gain perspective on what the early Christians intended with the miracle stories of Jesus.""Drawing upon insights from the Jewish and Hellenistic culture in which Jesus lived, and judiciously examining how the miracle traditions about Jesus were incorporated into the Gospels, Achtemeier demonstrates the central role that Jesus''s mighty deeds played in his ministry. This volume provides readers with new and rich insights to the miracle tradition, enabling them to understand the theological and historical significance of Jesus''s mighty deeds. For those seriously interested in the Gospel miracles, this is the book to read.""--Frank J. Matera, author of New Testament Ethics""Pastors will value Achtemeier''s careful attention to the narratival function of the miracles. Scholars will appreciate the deft hand as redactional layers are peeled away to the earliest traditions. One of the world''s leading biblical scholars revisits the miracle stories of Jesus--a treasure-trove!""--A. Andrew Das, author of Solving the Romans DebatePaul J. Achtemeier is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Interpretation at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. His other books include The Quest for Unity in the New Testament Church, Romans, and Inspiration and Authority.'' He has served as President of both the Society of Biblical Literature and the Catholic Biblical Association.

While some of the chapters focus on systemic issues, others probe the depths of individual Gospel passages. The author''s keen eye for textual detail, archaeological data, comparative materials, and systemic overviews make this volume a joy for anyone interested in understanding Jesus in his own context. The volume is organized into three interrelated parts: 1) political economy and the peasant values of Jesus, 2) the Jesus traditions within peasant realities, and 3) the peasant aims of Jesus.""Anyone who has ever wondered why the Lord''s Prayer asks for the gift of bread and the forgiveness of debts has got to read this book. Anyone who has never wondered has even more cause to read this book. Anyone curious about the real value of a denarius or Jesus''s take on the morality of money or how many calories were necessary to keep from starving or how Jesus advised to resist an economic system geared for devouring widows'' houses--anyone, in short, eager to learn of the day-to-day realities of first-century Palestine as the matrix for Jesus''s message can''t get and read this book soon enough.""Behind the rich information on the peasant world of Jesus and his appeal to first-century peasants is a constant hermeneutical question humming in the background: what does this mean for us today? What are those ''general human concerns'' that suggest some link or bridge between ancient Israelite farmers and urban yuppies? How might a ''realist'' stance of reading find in the biblical experience and its symbols voices that speak about ''the essentially human''?""The information that Oakman provides in these essays is essential for understanding the world of Jesus and his peasant perspective. The moves Oakman suggests for bridging the gap from past to present are essential for keeping a reading of the Bible from becoming an exercise in canonical archaeology or an illusion that the Bible is hot off the divine press.""--John Elliott, University of San Francisco, EmeritusDouglas E. Oakman is Professor of New Testament and Dean of Humanities at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. He is also the author of Jesus and the Economic Questions of His Day and coauthor of Palestine in the Time of Jesus.

In the aftermath of World War II, seven American Mennonite graduate students spent eleven days together in Amsterdam discussing their concerns around the state of North American Mennonite churches. Out of this historic gathering came a publication project known as Concern: A Pamphlet Series for Questions of Christian Renewal. While the series extended from 1952 to the early 1970s, the first four volumes, now printed in this single volume, comprise the roots, that is, the foundations that preceded the many articles that were written thereafter.Throughout The Roots of Concern, the discussion revolves around the recovery of an Anabaptist view of church life and discipleship. Here we find the seeds of a theme that would gain much attention in later years: the primary identity of the church as alternative community as opposed to its positive identification with the world. The fourteen articles in this volume cover a variety of issues such as form and spirit in the church, preaching, fellowship, discipleship, dissent, and property. An article coauthored by Yoder reveals his seminal thoughts around Mennonite church organization in relation to both biblical and contemporary denominational structures.""In these essays we see the excitement of discovery and the enthusiasm and passion of youth. We see a theological engagement with ''the Anabaptist vision,'' offered, as the 1954 editorial note said, ''For a strengthening of prophetic Christian faith and conduct.'' Here we have, among these essays, some of the first incisive theological reflections of John Howard Yoder.""-Mark Thiessen Nation, Eastern Mennonite Seminary""The larger world opened to us via a college education was breathtaking. As newly minted Anabaptists the realities of post-World War II Europe confronted us with serious cognitive dissonances. There seemed to be a need for firm ''markers'' to deal with these dissonances, but what and where were they?""-Calvin Redekop, Harrisonburg, VAContributors Include:Paul PeacheyJohn MillerJohn H. YoderDavid ShankNorman Kraus

This work focuses on a reality central to each human life and basic to every branch of theology; namely, the immanent transcendence of God. This study begins by exploring that theme of mystery hidden yet revealed from the perspective of the interrelationship of transcendence, self-actualization and creative expression. The book goes on to describe the interplay of those three elements in the lives and the works of,Thomas Merton, monk and writer, and Georgia O''Keeffe, artist. People from a wide variety of backgrounds and traditions will find this study a stimulating source of insight for their spiritual quest.What is missing so badly in our current culture is a sensitive, deeply intuitive yet compelling understanding of how meaning and transcendence work and support our ordinary efforts to be the best persons we are called to be. What Dr. Coombs so vividly describes for us, through two very valuable case studies - Thomas Merton and Georgia O''Keeffe - is that we are never alone on this journey. Dr. Michael RockUniversity of Guelph M.A. and MBA programsGuelph, Ontario, Canada''Mystery Hidden Yet Revealed'' is a dynamically engaging work of art. Coombs weaves the threads of paradox into a tapestry of beauty. Like all art, this work needs to be contemplated over and over. Each line, each paragraph opens new insight and wonder, causing the reader to stand back in awe only to be drawn deeper into the creative process which makes this book unique.Through presenting Merton and O''Keeffe as icons, Coombs helps us experience Mystery unfolding and finding expression throughout their lives and their particular works.This book is a mystical vision of the interrelatedness within all of life. Readers will be captivated by its message and excited about its possibilities.--Jean SpringerEREMOS, A center of Contemplative Lifewww.eremos.orgMarie Theresa Coombs lives as a canonically recognized hermit at Lebh Shomea, a contemplative-eremitical house of prayer in the desert region of south Texas. She earned a Ph.D. in Theological Studies from Graduate Theological Foundation, South Bend, Indiana. Besides co-authoring several books on prayer and spirituality, she is a frequented spiritual director.

FEATURING:Barbara Brown TaylorPhilip C. KolinAmy FrykholmJoyce PolancePLUS:The Enduring World of Dr. Schultz: James Baldwin, Django Unchained, and the Crisis of WhitenessPainloveSoulful Resistance: Theological Body Knowledge on Tennessee''s Death RowThis Cursed WombThe Problem of Gay FriendshipAND MORE . .

One day, Matthew Eaton was walking through an impromptu animal shelter display at his local pet store when suddenly an eight-month-old kitten dug his claws into Eaton''s flesh. Eaton recognized that the ""eyes of this cat and the curve of his claw"" compelled a response analogous to those found in the writings of Buber, Levinas, and Derrida. And not just Eaton but a whole community of theologians have found themselves in an encounter with particular places and animals that demands rich theological reflection. Eaton enlisted fellow editors Harvie and Bechtel to collect the essays in this volume, in which theologians listen to horses, rats, snakes, cats, dogs, and the earth itself, who become new theological voices demanding a response. In this volume, the voice of the more-than-human world is heard as making theology possible. These essays suggest that what we say theologically represents not simply ideas of our own making subsequently superimposed onto the natural world through our own discovery, but rather flow from an expressive Earth.""It is often said in hyperbolic praise of a book that it is ''a revelation.'' Encountering Earth is in the most literal way a collection of revelations. At once deeply personal, rigorous, and erudite, there is no other collection like it. Rarely has a scholarly volume elicited such depth of affective response in me, not only provoking questions but evoking tears and laughter and, in their wake, hope.""--Aaron Gross, Theology and Religious Studies Department, University of San Diego""The original essays in this outstanding and wide-ranging book deserve a broad and global readership. When we encounter nonhuman animals--aka animals--and are open to the messages they clearly send to us about who they are and what they want from us, the more-than-human world opens widely and we are obliged to help them in all ways possible. Other animals help us to re-wild our hearts and remove us from a narrow and damaging anthropocentric view of the diverse community of beings with whom we are blessed to share our fascinating and magnificent planet.""--Marc Bekoff, Author of Rewilding Our Hearts""Our meetings with non-human creatures are both key motivations for academic work about them, and illuminative sites of reflection. The non-human creatures that we encounter in the pages of this volume lead the authors to vivid, engaging, and original insights, which together make an important new contribution to the field.""--David Clough, Professor of Theological Ethics, University of ChesterTrevor Bechtel is Creative Director of the Anabaptist Bestiary Project. Matthew Eaton is Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Fordham University in New York. Timothy Harvie is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at St. Mary''s University in Calgary, Canada.

The year 2017 marks the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, if that event is dated from the posting of Martin Luther''s Ninety-Five Theses. Admittedly, 2017 is an arbitrary and somewhat artificial milestone. Nevertheless, anniversaries can be special occasions that allow for an appreciation and evaluation of memorable persons and events. As a number of Reformation anniversaries approach, the historical significance of the Reformation merits increased attention. Employing a variety of historiographical methods from intellectual history to postcolonial theory, this volume demonstrates how four major traditions observed the Reformation: Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, and Roman Catholic. The foreword and preface place the essays into the contemporary and broader historical contexts in the history of reform. Commemorations of the Reformation varied in different periods, often influenced by immediate historical contexts. How are those sixteenth-century events, which caused both renewal and conflict in church and society as well as divisions between those expressions, to be viewed in the twenty-first century in a setting broader than Europe?""All Christians must salute the editor and contributors to this volume, which could not have been written on the500thanniversary of the traditional birth of the Reformation. Only a century of serious ecumenical discussion (and coordinated action for the good) has made the production of this book possible.Here we have four substantial essays, each historically and theologically well-informed, that address, in order, the evolving image of Luther, the developing relationship of the Anglican to the Lutheran communions, the fascinating influence of the Reformed tradition on Christian India, and maturing Roman Catholic views of central Lutheran doctrines revolving around justification. An exemplary conversation in print, this is an intellectual feast.Into it, not only historians and the ordained but all the baptized are invited, and from it all will be richly nourished.""--Kevin Madigan, Harvard Divinity School""Reformation Observances goes beyond simple commemoration of Martin Luther''s Ninety-Five Theses. Its contributors examine past centennials in historical context, while looking at ecumenical dialogue concerning the theological issues dividing Christian denominations. Most intriguing, one contributor reaches beyond the West to Christianity in India. In relatively few pages, Reformation Observances challenges us to see the dawn of the Reformation in an ecumenical, multicultural light.""--Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers University""Much attention is being given to 2017 as the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and especially to the present ecumenical setting. Yet 2017 can only be appreciated and understood by giving attention to how the Reformation has been observed in the past. How did the Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, and Roman Catholic traditions in the course of 500 years note or not note the Reformation? The answer to this question can only enrich consideration of the Reformation in this century. This volume of collected essays seeks to supply an answer. Anyone interested in the significance of this anniversary of the Reformation will gain insights by means of this collection of reflections.""--William G. Rusch, The Divinity School, Yale UniversityPhilip D. W. Krey, Ministerium of New York Professor Emeritus at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and president there from 1999 to 2014, is Senior Pastor at St. Andrews Lutheran Church in Perkasie, Pennsylvania. He has coedited Romans 9-16 (2016) and The Catholic Luther (2016), both with his brother, Peter D. S. Krey.

Promise has a long pedigree in the history of Christian understandings of the gospel. This volume gathers together leading homileticians to consider the breadth of its understanding today in light of the struggle to reconcile God''s grace with God''s justice. Assuming that promise is a core sense of the gospel, how does this relate to the variety of contexts in which homiletical theology is done? In this final volume in the series, six homileticians from a variety of contexts and perspectives try to move specifically toward a homiletical theology of promise as a way to articulate the central theological gift and task that is preaching the gospel today.""Each chapter of this compelling book teaches a vital aspect of the promissory nature of preaching: as a lure to new forms of human dwelling and action, as a unique way of liturgically embodying eschatology, as a key to homiletical genre, as God''s unique way of acting and speaking in sermons, and as the way preaching becomes provisional good news in difficult situations. Highly recommended for all serious students of preaching.""--John S. McClure, Vanderbilt Divinity School""Continuing the ''turn to theology'' in contemporary homiletics, this thoughtful and wide-ranging collection of essays explores preaching as a theological expression of divine promise that embodies and empowers our human response. Jacobsen is to be congratulated for bringing this important project to completion."" --Michael P. Knowles, McMaster Divinity College""These final six essays of the Promise of Homiletical Theology series proceed from the central conviction that any hope worth preaching proceeds from the world-transforming, justice-making promises of the God revealed in Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord of God''s new creation. Strikingly varied in their methodological approaches and rich in theological creativity, these writers urge hope-fueled preaching that is healing and prophetic, poetic and theologically discerning, accompanied by locally embodied, diverse, and hope-infused practices of worship and witness."" --Sally A. Brown, Princeton Theological SeminaryDavid Schnasa Jacobsen is Professor of the Practice of Homiletics and Director of the Homiletical Theology Project at Boston University School of Theology. His books include Preaching in the New Creation, Preaching Luke-Acts, Kairos Preaching: Speaking Gospel to the Situation, and Mark.

Fakes, Forgeries, and Fictions examines the possible motivations behind the production of apocryphal Christian texts. Did the authors of Christian apocrypha intend to deceive others about the true origins of their writings? Did they do so in a way that is distinctly different from New Testament scriptural writings? What would phrases like ""intended to deceive"" or ""true origins"" even mean in various historical and cultural contexts? The papers in this volume, presented in September 2015 at York University in Toronto, discuss texts from as early as second-century papyrus fragments to modern apocrypha such as tales of Jesus in India in the nineteenth-century Life of Saint Issa. The highlights of the collection include a keynote address by Bart Ehrman (""Apocryphal Forgeries: The Logic of Literary Deceit"") and a panel discussion on the Gospel of Jesus' Wife, reflecting on what reactions to this particular text--primarily on biblioblogs--can tell us about the creation, transmission, and reception of apocryphal Christian literature. The eye-opening papers presented at the panel caution and enlighten readers about the ethics of studying unprovenanced texts, the challenges facing female scholars both in the academy and online, and the shifting dynamics between online and traditional print scholarship.

Twenty years before his famous trial, Galileo Galilei had spent two years carefully considering how the results of his own telescopic observations of the heavens as well as his convictions about the truth of the Copernican theory could be aligned with the Catholic Church's position on biblical interpretation and the authority of the magisterium. The product of these two years was an unpublished letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, the mother of his patron, Cosimo II de' Medici.Much has changed since this letter was written in 1615, but much has remained the same. This collection of articles by renowned international scholars provides the historical context of the letter as well as a description of the scientific world of Galileo. It also explores those issues that make this 1615 letter a document for our time: the public role of religious authority, the truth of the Bible, and the relationship of scientific inquiry to social justice. Galileo's letter to Christina has become a classic text in the history of the relationship between science and religion in the West for good reason; this volume explores why the letter has earned its rightful place as a classic even for today.

In literature, the advice often given is to show and not tell. In academia, it is the opposite: tell and do not show. Sigurd's Lament is a text that asks the question, can scholarship show rather than tell? On the surface, it is the collected work of a mid-twentieth-century scholar, Hawthorne Basil Peters, who has curated the life's work of his father--the translation of a Welsh epic into the alliterative meter of the English Revival. The poem is produced in full, but so too is the historic introduction, commentary, and academic apparatus. Peters, for the first time, shares with the world his father's wonderful translation and his previously unpublished academic ideas. In a text rife with distention, however, Peters draws the reader's attention to the unexpected flexibility of language and asks only one thing in return: drink deeply. For Sigurd's Lament is a text of the most serious play. It is ambiguous and obfuscating and riddled with footnotes that have lurking within them--like goblins in the weeds--future tales of past narratives.

Philip Turner's contributions as a leader and thinker in Christian missions and social ethics are here engaged by an array of friends and colleagues. Turner's scholarly and clerical career spans a key era of transition in American and world Christianity, and his thinking and teaching about the intersection between ecclesial and civil life have encouraged several generations of Christian theologians and ministers. The essays in this collection touch on key topics in which Turner has been involved: cross-cultural missions, social relations in terms of family and procreation, ecclesiology, scriptural interpretation, the nature of the public good, and the character of a human life before God. Turner has been a pioneer, within the Anglican world especially, in promoting what has been called a "generous orthodoxy," and these essays by prominent theologians from America and the United Kingdom extend his witness in lively and fruitful ways.