Unsettling Worship

Unsettling Worship
Author: Sarah Travis
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2023-08-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1666746614

Settler churches across North America have committed to the work of conciliation and reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. Worship is a space in which these commitments are expressed and nurtured. As we are embraced by God’s reconciling love in worship, we are equipped to carry that reconciling love into our relationships beyond the worship space. Worship equips us for the work of conciliation, but the liturgy itself needs to be decolonized if it is to truly honor Christian commitments to God and neighbor. This book explores the reformed liturgy in its pattern of Gathering, Word, Table, and Sending, searching it both for colonial vestiges, and spaces of new possibility. Unsettling Worship invites the reader into a conversation about reformed worship in a setting of ongoing colonization. Worship should both unsettle us, and equip us for the essential work of making things right with Indigenous neighbors.

Unsettling Truths

Unsettling Truths
Author: Mark Charles
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2019-11-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0830887598

You cannot discover lands already inhabited. In this prophetic blend of history, theology, and cultural commentary, Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah reveal the damaging effects of the "Doctrine of Discovery," which institutionalized American triumphalism and white supremacy. This book calls our nation and churches to a truth-telling that will expose past injustices and open the door to conciliation and true community.

Wide Welcome

Wide Welcome
Author: Jessicah Krey Duckworth
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2013-06-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0800699394

Jessicah Krey Duckworth presents the stark differences between the established congregation, which cares for current members and congregational identity, and the disestablished one, which gains purpose and identity in the task of relating to the newcomer. By allowing the questions, insights, and experiences of newcomers to reverberate through the entire congregation, both they and the church are changed. Wide Welcome does far more than point out the faults and weaknesses in current practice. Duckworth intentionally lays out possible designs for newcomer welcome that are local and particular. Book jacket.

Calling on the Spirit in Unsettling Times

Calling on the Spirit in Unsettling Times
Author: L. William Countryman
Publisher: Church Publishing, Inc.
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2012-04-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0819227714

Based upon addresses given to Anglican audiences in North America and Australia, Bill Countryman directly confronts the challenges that face Anglicans and other Western Christians at a time of internal division and increasing indifference to religion on the part of educated elites. He regards these challenges as a work of the Holy Spirit, who is clearing the ground for a new era of building, and help readers start thinking about what kind of future the Spirit is leading us toward. The book begins by presenting the Spirit as a demolition expert, endeavoring to shake us out of our complacency. It then focuses on three central elements of Christian faith and life: the image of Jesus, the sacraments, and the scriptures, and notes some different ways in which we have seen and utilized them over the ages. It holds out the communion of saints as the key to understanding the ongoing value of the church today. It calls faithful people of all stripes to reject our tendency to turn God’s gifts into idols and to rediscover a humility that will be open to the rebuilding that must now be done with the leadership of the Spirit.

The Need for Roots

The Need for Roots
Author: Simone Weil
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2020-04-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000082792

Hailed by Andre Gide as the patron saint of all outsiders, Simone Weil's short life was ample testimony to her beliefs. In 1942 she fled France along with her family, going firstly to America. She then moved back to London in order to work with de Gaulle. Published posthumously The Need for Roots was a direct result of this collaboration. Its purpose was to help rebuild France after the war. In this, her most famous book, Weil reflects on the importance of religious and political social structures in the life of the individual. She wrote that one of the basic obligations we have as human beings is to not let another suffer from hunger. Equally as important, however, is our duty towards our community: we may have declared various human rights, but we have overlooked the obligations and this has left us self-righteous and rootless. She could easily have been issuing a direct warning to us today, the citizens of Century 21.

Religion in a Free Market

Religion in a Free Market
Author: Barry Alexander Kosmin
Publisher: Paramount Market Publishing
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2006
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780976697367

From the pulpits to the op-ed pages, several messages about religion in the U.S. are heard again and again: It's said that Americans are flocking to churches and other religious institutions in greater numbers than ever before, that non-Christian faiths are growing rapidly, and that a new religious fervor among the young is filling up the pews. All of these frequently heard messages are incorrect, according to this book. The book, by professors Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., is based on a major national survey which they conducted. The U.S. Census is prohibited from asking questions about religion, so this survey, the American Religious Identification Survey, contains the most complete and reliable source of data on religion in America today. This book argues that religion in America can best be understood as a product on offer in the marketplace of ideas. It says that "religious ferment in America is as strong as it has ever been, so whatever you learned about religion in the U.S. a generation ago is out of date."

Growing an Engaged Church

Growing an Engaged Church
Author: Albert L. Winseman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2007-03-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1595620435

Growing an Engaged Church offers unique, research-based, often counterintuitive solutions to the challenges facing churches today, including declining congregant participation, decreasing contributions, and slumping membership. Ministers, priests, and church boards will find the evidence and answers in this book provocative, eye-opening, and, most importantly, actionable. What if members of your congregation . . . • were 13 times more likely to have invited someone to participate in your church in the past month? • were three times as satisfied with their lives? • spent more than two hours per week serving and helping others in their community? • tripled their giving to your church? What would your church — your parish — look like? And how would you go about creating this kind of change? One thing is certain: Church leaders are never going to inspire more people to be actively and passionately involved in their congregations by doing the same things over and over again. Pastors and lay leaders need something fresh. Something new. The last thing they need is “just another program” or to set up a laundry list of new activities for members. Based on solid research by The Gallup Organization, Growing an Engaged Church will appeal to both Protestant and Catholic clergy and lay leaders who are looking for a way to be the Church instead of just “doing church.”

Subversive Stages

Subversive Stages
Author: Ileana Alexandra Orlich
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2017-05-05
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9633861160

Exploring theater practices in communist and post-communist Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, this book analyzes intertextuality or ?inter-theatricality? as a political strategy, designed to criticize contemporary political conditions while at the same time trying to circumvent censorship. In the Soviet bloc the theater of the absurd, experimentation, irony, and intertextual distancing (estrangement) were much more than mere aesthetic language games, but were planned political strategies that used indirection to say what could not be said directly. Plays by Romanian, Hungarianÿand Bulgarian dramatists are examined, who are ?retrofitting? the past by adapting the political crimes and horrifying tactics of totalitarianism to the classical theatre (with Shakespeare a favorite) to reveal the region?s traumatic history. By the sustained analysis of the aesthetic devices used as political tools, Orlich makes a very strong case for the continued relevance of the theater as one of the subtlest media in the public sphere. She embeds her close readings in a thorough historical analysis and displays a profound knowledge of the political role of theater history. ÿ