Acting Religious

Acting Religious
Author: Victoria Rue
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2010-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 160899211X

My passion is embodied learning. Through twenty-five years of teaching, I've learned that students engage with material best when their bodies are active participants in the learning process. I have found this to be particularly true in teaching religious studies and theology. --from the Introduction People are torn by conflict, fractured by cultural, religious, racial, and economic divides. Religion has often been a prime motivator for this violence. Classrooms must be places in which we learn to hold differences and commonalities. Classrooms are opportunities to rehearse, to practice, how we want to live with one another. Religions, says Rue, are more than ideas: they are lived, enacted by human beings in particular ways. And courses in religion need more than a cognitive understanding of central concepts. Rue asserts that students need to viscerally encounter belief, religious practice, religious imagination, and religious experience. Acting Religious, a practical handbook, maps a new approach that uses theatre to teach religion. For many years, Rue has used theatre techniques and plays to introduce students to what she calls the experience of religion, showing how theatre makes theological ideas palatable, visceral, and available. Acting Religious is at once a call to experience meaning and a theatre method to embody it. Experienced and beginning teachers at both college and high school levels, as well as religious educators, will learn how to use the following techniques in the religion or theology classroom: improvisation, characterization, memorization, script writing, performance. From these methods, students will be able to engage religious traditions experientially as well as cognitively.

Believing and Acting

Believing and Acting
Author: G. Scott Davis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199583900

How should religion and ethics be studied if we want to understand what people believe and why they act the way they do? An energetic guide to the study of religion and ethics, rejecting theories from postmodernism and cognitive science in favour of a return to pragmatic enquiry.

Jesus > Religion

Jesus > Religion
Author: Jefferson Bethke
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2013-10-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1400205409

Abandon dead, dry, religious rule-keeping and embrace the promise of being truly known and deeply loved. Jefferson Bethke burst into the cultural conversation with a passionate, provocative poem titled "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus." The 4-minute video became an overnight sensation, with 7 million YouTube views in its first 48 hours (and 23+ million in a year). Bethke's message clearly struck a chord with believers and nonbelievers alike, triggering an avalanche of responses running the gamut from encouraged to enraged. In his New York Times bestseller Jesus > Religion, Bethke unpacks similar contrasts that he drew in the poem--highlighting the difference between teeth gritting and grace, law and love, performance and peace, despair, and hope. With refreshing candor, he delves into the motivation behind his message, beginning with the unvarnished tale of his own plunge from the pinnacle of a works-based, fake-smile existence that sapped his strength and led him down a path of destructive behavior. Along the way, Bethke gives you the tools you need to: Humbly and prayerfully open your mind Understand Jesus for all that he is View the church from a brand-new perspective Bethke is quick to acknowledge that he's not a pastor or theologian, but simply an ordinary, twenty-something who cried out for a life greater than the one for which he had settled. On this journey, Bethke discovered the real Jesus, who beckoned him with love beyond the props of false religion. Praise for Jesus > Religion: "Jeff's book will make you stop and listen to a voice in your heart that may have been drowned out by the noise of religion. Listen to that voice, then follow it--right to the feet of Jesus." --Bob Goff, author of New York Times bestsellers Love Does and Everybody, Always "The book you hold in your hands is Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz meets C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity meets Augustine's Confessions. This book is going to awaken an entire generation to Jesus and His grace." --Derwin L. Gray, lead pastor of Transformation Church, author of Limitless Life: Breaking Free from the Labels That Hold You Back

Acts of Faith

Acts of Faith
Author: Eboo Patel
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2020-09-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 080705108X

With a new afterword Acts of Faith is a remarkable account of growing up Muslim in America and coming to believe in religious pluralism, from one of the most prominent faith leaders in the United States. Eboo Patel’s story is a hopeful and moving testament to the power and passion of young people—and of the world-changing potential of an interfaith youth movement.

Acting the Miracle

Acting the Miracle
Author: John Piper
Publisher: Crossway
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2013-09-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1433537907

Sanctification | noun | sa(k)-t-f-k-shn : a big word for the little-by-little progress of the everyday Christian life Fighting sin is not easy. No one ever coasted into greater godliness. Christian growth takes effort. But we are not left alone. God loves to work the miracle of sanctification within us as we struggle for daily progress in holiness. With contributions from Kevin DeYoung, John Piper, Ed Welch, Russell Moore, David Mathis, and Jarvis Williams, this invigorating book will help you say no to the deception of sin and yes to true joy in Jesus.

Acting Liturgically

Acting Liturgically
Author: Nicholas Wolterstorff
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2018
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198805381

Participation in religious liturgies and rituals is a pervasive and remarkably complex form of human activity. This book opens with a discussion of the nature of liturgical activity and then explores various dimensions of such activity. Over the past fifty years there has been a remarkable surge of interest, within the analytic tradition of philosophy, in philosophy of religion. Most of what has been written by participants in this movement deals with one or another aspect of religious belief. Yet for most adherents of most religions, participation in the liturgies and rituals of their religion is at least as important as what they believe. One of the aims of this book is to call the attention of philosophers of religion to the importance of religious practice and to demonstrate how rich a topic this is for philosophical reflection. Another aim is to show liturgical scholars who are not philosophers that a philosophical approach to liturgy casts an illuminating light on the topic that supplements their own approach. Insofar as philosophers have written about liturgy, they have focused most of their attention on its formative and expressive functions. This book focuses instead on understanding what liturgical agents actually do. It is what they do that functions formatively or expressively. What they do is basic.

The Prophetic Imagination

The Prophetic Imagination
Author: Walter Brueggemann
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2001
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780800632878

In this challenging and enlightening treatment, Brueggemann traces the lines from the radical vision of Moses to the solidification of royal power in Solomon to the prophetic critique of that power with a new vision of freedom in the prophets. Here he traces the broad sweep from Exodus to Kings to Jeremiah to Jesus. He highlights that the prophetic vision and not only embraces the pain of the people but creates an energy and amazement based on the new thing that God is doing. In this new edition, Brueggemann has completely revised the text, updated the notes, and added a new preface.

On Job

On Job
Author: Gustavo GutiŽrrez
Publisher: Orbis Books
Total Pages: 259
Release: 1987
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1608331245

One of this century's most eminent theologians addresses the eternal questions of the relationship of good and evil, linking the story of Job to the lives of the poor and oppressed of our world.

Changing Signs of Truth

Changing Signs of Truth
Author: Crystal L. Downing
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2012-05-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 083086685X

Crystal Downing brings the postmodern theory of semiotics within reach for today's evangelists. Following the idea of the sign through Scripture, church history and the academy, Downing shows you how signs work and how sensitivity to their dynamics can make or break an attempt to communicate truth.

Performing the Gospel

Performing the Gospel
Author: Deborah Sokolove
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2019-03-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498296963

What is the difference between good worship and good entertainment? Too often, people disparage some aspect of worship by calling it “just entertainment” or “just a performance.” Others say that they do not need to go to church because they have profound spiritual or even religious experiences at concerts, plays, movies, or dances. How is worship different from these performing arts? How is art different from entertainment? This book looks at the history of the performing arts both in worship and as worship, with particular attention to the attitudes that shape our ideas about both worship and entertainment. Working definitions of words like “art,” “excellence,” “liturgy,” and “play” help to illuminate what different people mean when they use them in conversations about Christian worship. Putting theological, scriptural, and practical writings on worship and the performing arts in conversation with interviews with dancers, musicians, actors, preachers, and liturgical scholars, this volume is intended to help pastors, performers, and everyone who plans, leads, or cares about worship talk with one another in mutually respectful and helpful ways.