LITMIR.BIZ

Contrary to what many philosophers believe, Calvinism neither makes the problem of evil worse nor is it obviously refuted by the presence of evil and suffering in our world. Or so most of the authors in this book claim. While Calvinism has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years amongst theologians and laypersons, many philosophers have yet to follow suit. The reason seems fairly clear: Calvinism, many think, cannot handle the problem of evil with the same kind of plausibility as other more popular views of the nature of God and the nature of God's relationship with His creation. This book seeks to challenge that untested assumption. With clarity and rigor, this collection of essays seeks to fill a significant hole in the literature on the problem of evil.

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Jesus did not die to save us from God. He died because the Romans did not tolerate charismatic teachers who attracted a lively following. Jesus attracted that following through his personal compassion, his confrontational inclusivity, and his skill in using laughter as a nonviolent weapon of mass disruption.
The Gospel authors picked up Jesus' witty techniques. They adeptly parodied the literary conventions of heroic biography, laying out «the kingdom of God» in a point-for-point contrast with the empire of Caesar Augustus. Most of this contrast was Jewish Prophetic Rant, Standard Edition: the God of the Jews had always demanded justice for workers, food for the hungry, care for those unable to earn a living, and an end to monopolizing natural resources for private and imperial profit.
Jesus added a fourth and telling point: God is nonviolent. God smites no one. God's loving-kindness and compassionate presence embraces all of humanity equally. We are all the children of God.
Then and now, that's a revolutionary claim. It portrays our obligation to the common good as a sacred obligation. It's owed to God. In cultural terms, that's the most potent variety of obligation. This is the cultural heritage at risk from fundamentalism, which portrays God as both crazy-violent and vindictive.

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What does it mean to be a visual aid in worship? Moving Liturgy: Dance in Christian Worship provides readers with powerful ideas to bring prayers, parables, hymns, and scripture passages to life in the most direct way–storytelling in dance and movement through the body–the best visual aid!
This book offers practical and artistic information for anyone interested in learning about, or re-affirming, the use of dance and movement in worship. Jane Wellford has worked extensively in the arts of liturgical dance and drama in collaboration with clergy, musicians, conductors, visual artists, dancers, and entire congregations. Successful ideas for worship, as well as creative possibilities, are all included in this book.
I believe that worship should be made multi-sensory, exciting, and as connected to real life experiences as possible. The more senses that are involved in worship, the more likely the message will be received. When we hear the word of God shared through words or music, see it come to life through dance, drama, or other visual arts, experience it through speaking the prayers, confessions, or creeds, and sing it through hymns or chants, we are more actively engaged in the experience of worship.

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Are humans just complex biochemical machines, mere physical parts of a causally closed materialist universe? Are we approaching the so-called «Singularity» when human consciousness can (and will) be downloaded into computers? Or is there more to the human person–something that might be known as soul or spirit? As this book makes clear, the answers to these questions have profound implications to topics such as heroism, creativity, ecology, and the possibility of reason and science. In exploring this important topic, Dickerson engages the ideas of some well-known twentieth- and twenty-first-century espousers of physicalism, including philosopher Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained), biologist Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), futurist-engineer Raymond Kurzweil (The Age of Spiritual Machines), psychologist B. F. Skinner (Beyond Freedom and Dignity), and mathematician-philosopher Bertrand Russell (Why I Am Not a Christian). Through a careful reading of their works, Dickerson not only provides a five-fold critique of physicalism, but also offers a Christian alternative in the form of «integrative dualism,» which affirms the existence of both a physical and spiritual reality without diminishing the goodness or importance of either, and acknowledges that humans are spiritual as well as bodily persons.

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"Bless me Father, for I have sinned," says the penitent to open the dialogue in Catholic confessionals across the globe and throughout the ages. Along with the priest's words, «For your penance . . .» this encounter is an icon of Catholic life. But does the script, and the practices it signifies, have any relevance beyond the confessional? In The Politics of Penance, Michael Griffin responds yes. He explores great figures of the Christian tradition–the early Irish monks, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Pope St. John Paul II–to offer surprising insights for social repair. The result is a new ethic, which Griffin applies to contemporary crises in criminal justice, truth and reconciliation, and the treatment of soldiers returning from war.

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A recent journal article stated, «There is something missing in the way the churches do Communion.» Why is it that this central act of Christian worship is often so dull, dreary, and formal? Indeed at times it can be as somber as a funeral with people silently queuing cafeteria style in lines to receive a morsel of bread or a rice paper emblem of bread and then joining the wine queue for a tiny sip of wine. Strangely the churches call the Eucharist a «supper,» but there is no meal in the gathering. Indeed on occasions it can feel a bit like the Mad Hatter's tea party, which was supposed have mouth-watering festive things to eat but there was only bread! Where is the convivial joy and fellowship of a Passover celebration? Why is there no overwhelming joy like that of the two disciples who encountered the risen Jesus in the breaking of bread in their house in the village of Emmaus on that first Easter evening? This book, The New Passover: Rethinking the Lord's Supper for Today, traces the way the Christian churches changed the simple meal of the New Passover into an esoteric theological public ritual. Luther and the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers abolished the Mass and restored the bread and wine to the people but they only half completed the task. They recognized that Jesus intended the Eucharist to be a Supper but there was nothing in their liturgies to satisfy physical hunger. This book argues that the Last Supper was a Passover meal and that churches today need to celebrate the Lord's Supper Passover style in the context of an evening meal with ordinary bread and wine, in small groups of believers only and in houses and homes. It is to be a joyous celebration meal providing spiritual strength, fellowship, thanksgiving, and remembrance.

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This book offers two things in particular: first, these are papers that have been commented on and re-worked in the context of a set of lively sessions from (International) SBL conferences from 2012 to 2014 (Amsterdam, St. Andrews, Vienna). Second, they offer an insight into the origins of the discipline as one which became conscious of itself in the early modern era and the turn to history and the analysis of texts, to offer something exegetical and synthetic. The fresh wind that the enterprise received in the latter part of the twentieth century is the focus of the second part of the volume, which describes the recent activity up to the present «state of the question.» The third part takes a step further to anticipate the way forward for the discipline in an era where «canon»–but also «Scripture» and «theology»–seem to be alien terms, and where other ideologies are advanced in the name of neutrality. Biblical Theology will aim to be true to the evidence of the text: it will not always see clearly, but it will rely on the best of biblical criticism and theological discernment to help it. That is the spirit with which this present volume is imbued.

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Throughout history Christians have prayed for the dead–both for continual growth of the faithful and for their advancement from purgatory, though not for the deliverance of the unsaved from hell. This book defends all three kinds of prayer. It challenges Protestants, who seldom pray for the dead, to begin doing so–and Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, who pray only for the Christian dead, to include the unsaved as well. James Gould addresses the biblical credentials of prayer for the dead and provides a historical overview of such prayers from ancient Christianity to the current practice of the three main branches of the church. He also discusses the logical assumptions prayer for the dead requires–that prayer is effective, that the dead are conscious, and that the afterlife involves change–and lays out a theological framework for such prayers. Prayer for the departed raises the most basic of theological questions, matters that go to the center of God's purpose in creating spiritual beings and redeeming sinful humankind. The argument, while revisionary in some respects, is orthodox, ecumenical, and integrative, engaging a range of academic disciplines so as to be biblically accurate, historically informed, and philosophically reasoned.

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Since six months after landfall, Ellen Blue has taught «The Church's Response to Katrina.» It sidesteps disaster response, where clearly the church should be involved. What was unclear was how leaders in a connectional denomination like United Methodism should decide which churches to merge or decommission after floods destroyed seventy churches and displaced ninety pastors, and no one knew how many members would return. Katrina gave the church a chance to re-make itself without deteriorating structures in no-longer-thriving neighborhoods. Yet as members returned to chaos, they sought solace. Should the church meet needs for Sanctuary and reassurance or use newfound flexibility to seek justice? In Case of Katrina examines leadership strategies and the theological convictions that underlay them during the struggle to decide. The larger United Methodist Church controls real estate, and the hierarchy had the power to choose. Instead they let verdicts spring primarily from congregants and pastors on the ground through a long, controversial process. Recovery has been entwined with issues of race and class. Cooperation among African American and Anglo congregations has birthed vibrant multi-racial worship and ministries. Yet other prophetic ministry was left undone, and it should set the agenda for the next decade.

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Christianity and the Culture Machine is a precedent-shattering approach to combining theories of media and culture with theology. In this intensive examination of Christianity's role in the cultural marketplace, the author argues that Christianity's inability to effectively contest the ideology of secular humanism is not a theological shortcoming, but rather a communications problem: the institutional church is too wedded to an outmoded aesthetic of Christianity to communicate effectively. Privileging authority and obedience over the egalitarian and transformative goal of Christianity, the church fails to recognize how it undermines the vitality of the Christian narrative and message. In the absence of a more compelling vision offered by the official church, a new aesthetic can be found forming within the margins of popular culture texts. Despite its past failures in representing the Bible in mainstream film and television, the culture industry now offers more compelling versions of core Christian theology without even realizing it–within the margins of the main storylines. This book analyzes the aesthetic principles employed by these appropriations and articulations of Christian discourse as a means of theorizing what a new aesthetic of Christianity might look like.

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