What happens when the celebration is over? When the fire has gone out and the food consumed; when the singing is over and silence descends upon the room, what happens in the morning? And not just the next morning but all the other mornings that come with ordinary regularity.
Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Volume 1 (Advent through Transfiguration), edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. WJKP, 2008. Hb., 463 pp. $39.99.
Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution — A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First, by Alister McGrath. HarperOne, 2007. Hb., 560 pp. $29.95.
Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy by Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt, and David L. Weaver-Zercher. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: 2007. Hb., 203 pp., $24.95.
The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America, by Jim Wallis. HarperOne, 2008. Hb., 352 pp. $25.95.
Before you read the first word of Jim Wallis’ transformative new book, you know something is different. Lined up like a political and theological renewal of the old television show The Odd Couple are names we know separately as representatives of vastly different worldviews.
Picturing Christian Witness: New Testament Images of Disciples in Mission, by Stanley H. Skreslet. William B. Eerdmans, 2006. ISBN 0802829562. Pb., 263 pp. $24.
In his book Imagining a Sermon (Abingdon, 1990), Tom Troeger suggests a marvelous image for readers in the church. He pictures the shelves of a pastor’s study as a “city,” the residents of whom are the authors of the books whom the pastor engages in conversation through reading.
This book is certain both to challenge and to enrich our preaching. J. Barrie Shepherd is both a poet and a preacher and so it is not surprising that his writing is more intuitive than analytic and more metaphorical than argumentative.
The liturgical renewal movement produced significant changes to the worship patterns of Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant congregations during the last fifty years. For Presbyterians, increase in communion frequency, recovery of a fuller liturgical year, and the use of the Revised Common Lectionary all serve as major milestones on the road to a richer worship life. In the midst of fairly rapid changes in worship practice, a fuller theology and practice of baptism has remained elusive.
Ten years ago I moved from a different part of the country to northern New Jersey, within easy commuting distance of New York City. Needless to say, the context of ministry changed dramatically for me. New Jersey is one of the most diverse and densely populated states in the country. Formerly, an interfaith marriage meant a Roman Catholic and a Protestant. Now, there are many Christian-Jewish and Christian-Muslim marriages in the congregation. The local clergy association includes Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and others.
The Necessity of Reforming the Church, in Calvin: Theological Treatises, edited by J. K. S. Reid. WJKP, 2000 (Reprint, The Westminster Press, 1954), pp. 183-216. ISBN 9780664223670. Pb., 356 pp. $39.95.
There is a haunting, enigmatic characteristic to Calvin's writing. You rarely catch this at first. It all seems to be so didactic and straightforward. But as you spend more time with him, you begin to sense that there is more than meets the eye. And as this occurs, you cannot help but wonder why you assumed at first that you understood what he said.
Tight lipped when it came to self-disclosure, expository of the text in a pre-critical way, deeply layered from the earlier theologians he had absorbed, and, above all, persistent in his analysis of the human will, Calvin's own style seemed to wall off further penetration. Over the course of the years, however, I came to find that the structure of his texts, the choice of his themes, and the syntax of his writing began to yield more. Like many human fathers, our father in the Reformed faith was more complex than I had thought.
Augustine, Teaching Christianity, intro., trans., notes by Edmund Hill, O.P. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. New City Press, 1996. ISBN 1-5648-049-X. Pb., 259 pp. $22.95
Teaching Christianity (De doctrina christiana) was written in two parts. The major portion was written (396) shortly after Augustine became bishop of Hippo Regius and shortly before he wrote the Confessions (397-401); the latter portion was composed about three decades later (427). To some degree the Confessions and Teaching Christianity interpret each other. The former describes the restless wandering of the human heart until it rests in God. The latter offers rules for finding in Scripture God's message to the wanderer. Augustine would have us see that Scripture guides and encourages the yearning rather than satisfying it. Faithful interpretation and communication of this divine address will engage the "unquiet" of the audience and urge it on.
In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism, by James Hudnut-Beumler. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807830798. Hb., 288 pp. $29.95.
Early in the American Protestant experience a decisive shift took place. The forms of Christianity that had been conceived of and supported as public goods in the European context came to be regarded as private goods in this new setting. James Hudnut-Beumler's account of that historical turn and the ensuing story is an important volume for any concerned about issues of money in the life of American churches.
