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Christian theology has affirmed throughout its history that God is a «living» God. But what does it mean that God lives? Why does it matter? Does God live like us? If God does not live like us what is the difference between our living and God's living? These are the questions Adam Pryor addresses in The God Who Lives. The book considers «life» as a conceptual problem, examining how new studies about the emergence of life have critical implications for interpreting the religious symbol «God is living.» In particular, Pryor suggests how absence and desire, what is termed «abstential desire,» are critical principles of life for scientific and philosophical thinking today. He goes on to develop a constructive theological proposal in which the theological meaning of the symbol «God is living» is interpreted in terms of the insights garnered from the principle of abstential desire, concluding that God can be understood as akin to the role played by absence in living things. Life is an absent but effective whole in relation to the material parts of which it is comprised. God as living is a similarly effective absence in relation to the world.

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Good Sex presents sexual ethics in the light of faith. Speaking on behalf of Christianity, Buss describes «love your neighbor as yourself» as the only Christian «rule»; it is a positive rule rather than one that focuses on prohibitions. Since this call is never fulfilled in practice, it is joined by forgiveness for oneself and others. More concrete guidelines need to be aided by «wisdom,» which is not specifically Christian. Detailed biblical support is provided at the end. Stipe, a contemporary Pagan, advocates respect for all living things and doing no harm as a minimal ethical guide, leaving positive prescriptions to individual judgment. Buss and Stipe discuss details of sexual ethics in largely positive terms–what is good to do–but also with a concern for problems that should be avoided. They agree in many practical matters, just as Christians and Pagans did many years ago, before sexual equality became an ideal. They discuss various kinds of sex, including seeing and being seen, touching, masturbation, and penetration; different sexual identities; committed and uncommitted relationships, including the advisability of extended relations; having and raising children; abortion; and sensuous awareness in a spiritual setting.

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Communities of Faith is a collection of essays on the multicultural Christian spirit and practices of churches around the world, with particular attention to Africa and the African diaspora. The essays span history, theology, anthropology, ecumenism, and missiology.
Readers will be treated to fresh perspectives on African Pentecostal higher education, Pentecostalism and witchcraft in East Africa, Methodist camp meetings in Ghana, Ghanaian diaspora missions in Europe and North America, gender roles in South African Christian communities, HIV/AIDS ministries in Uganda, Japanese funerary rites, enculturation and contextualization principles of mission, and many other aspects of the Christian world mission.
With essays from well-known scholars as well as young and emerging men and women in academia, Communities of Faith illuminates current realities of world Christianity and contributes to the scholarship of today's worldwide Christian witness.

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Most accounts of Canada and the First World War either ignore or merely mention in passing the churches' experience. Such neglect does not do justice to the remarkable influence of the wartime churches nor to the religious identity of the young Dominion. The churches' support for the war was often wholehearted, but just as often nuanced and critical, shaped by either the classic just war paradigm or pacifism's outright rejection of violence. The war heightened issues of Canadianization, attitudes to violence, and ministry to the bereaved and the disillusioned. It also exacerbated ethnic tensions within and between denominations, and challenged notions of national and imperial identity. The authors of this volume provide a detailed summary of various Christian traditions and the war, both synthesizing and furthering previous research. In addition to examining the experience of Roman Catholics (English and French speaking), Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Mennonites, and Quakers, there are chapters on precedents formed during the South African War, the work of military chaplains, and the roles of church women on the home front.

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John William Fletcher (1729-1785) was a seminal theologian during the early methodist movement and the Church of England in the eighteenth century. Best known for the Checks to Antinomianism, he worked out a theology of history to defend the church against the encroachment of antinomianism as a polemic against hyper-Calvinism, whose system of divine fiat and finished salvation, Fletcher believed, did not take seriously enough either the activity of God in salvation history or an individual believer's personal progress in salvation.
Fletcher made the doctrine of accommodation a unifying principle of his theological system and further developed the doctrine of divine accommodation into a theology of ministry. As God accommodated divine revelation to the frailties of human beings, ministers of the gospel must accommodate the gospel to their hearers in order to gain a hearing for the gospel without losing the goal of true Christianity. This book contains insights for pastors, missionaries, and Christian thinkers on true Christianity from Fletcher, who devoted himself, according to Wesley, to being «an altogether Christian.»

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Luke wrote this Gospel so «that you [Theophilus] may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught [i.e., catechesis]» (1:4). It proceeds with a barrage of questions. The first comes from Zechariah: «How shall I know?» (1:18). This is a question of knowledge. The angel Gabriel answers that we shall know by the word of God (1:19). The second comes from Mary: «How will this be?» (1:34). This is a question of agency, of how the Son of God can become human. Gabriel answers that it will be by the power of God (1:35). The third comes from Elizabeth: «Why me?» (1:43). Why should the gospel of Jesus Christ come to her? Mary answers that it has to do with God's choice, election, mercy, and salvation (1:47-55). The fourth has to do with John: «What then will this child be?» (1:66). Zechariah answers that he will be a prophet (1:76-79). John is not the Christ, but he will go before the Christ. Thus begins the catechism according to Luke, a series of questions in order that we may have certainty concerning the things we have been taught.

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Trygve Johnson invites us to consider a new metaphor of identity of The Preacher as Liturgical Artist. This identity draws on a theology of communion and the doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ to relocate the preacher's identity in the creative and ongoing ministry of Jesus Christ. Johnson argues the metaphorical association of the preacher and artist understood within the artistic ministry of Jesus Christ frees the full range of human capacities, including the imagination to bear upon the arts of Christian proclamation. The Preacher as Liturgical Artist connects preachers to the person and work of Jesus Christ, whose own double ministry took the raw materials of the human condition and offered them back to the Father in a redemptive and imaginative fashion through the Holy Spirit. It is in the large creative ministry of Jesus Christ that preachers find their creativity freed to proclaim the gospel bodily within the context of the liturgical work of God's people.

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It has been widely accepted that few individuals had as great an influence on the church and its theology during the twentieth century as Karl Barth (1886-1968). His legacy continues to be explored and explained, with theologians around the world and from across the ecumenical spectrum vigorously debating the doctrinal ramifications of Barth's insights. What has been less readily accepted is that the Holocaust of the Jews had an equally profound effect, and that it, too, entails far-reaching consequences for the church's understanding of itself and its God. In this groundbreaking book, Barth and the Holocaust are brought into deliberate dialogue with one another to show why the church should heed both their voices, and how that may be done.

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The content of the gospel never changes; however, communicating it constantly fluctuates. Conveying the gospel to a homeless, hungry woman may include providing a hot bowl of chili, while an agnostic co-worker might be open after several rounds of golf. The message is the same, but the method of communicating it is as wide and varied as life itself. Finding the correct method is like hitting the «sweet spot» on a tennis racket or golf club. It takes time, study, and practice, but once you find it you have more success. The «sweet spot» in missions is called contextualization and involves much more than learning a new language. It means knowing a country's religious, political, and social conditions. Correct theology, financial backing, and language acquisition are meaningless without contextualization. This book tells the story of a German organization struggling to contextualize the gospel in a very hostile environment. Its mission was to revive a dying church, characterized by centuries-old religious pride and pluralism. This study details the challenges of faithfully communicating the gospel in a post-Christian culture and serves as a study to enable missionaries to recognize and respond to cultural issues affecting the contextualization process.

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Work is one of the most dominant and unavoidable realities of life. Though experiences of work vary tremendously, many Christians share a common struggle of having to live in seemingly bifurcated spheres of work and faith. Beginning with the conviction that Christian faith permeates all aspects of life, Joshua Sweeden explores Christian understandings of «good work» in relationship to ethics, community practice, and ecclesial witness. In The Church and Work, Sweeden provides a substantial contribution to the theological conversation about work by proposing an ecclesiological grounding for good work. He argues that many of the prominent theological proposals for good work are too abstract from context and demonstrates how the church can be understood as generative for both the theology and practice of good work. This needed ecclesiological development takes seriously the role of context in the ongoing discernment of good work and specifically explores how ecclesial life and practice shape and inform good work. Christian understandings of good work are inconceivable without the church. Accordingly, the church is not simply the recipient and a dispenser of a theology of work, but the locus of its development.

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