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Christian Spirituality in Africa holistically approaches the convergence of East/West, and Christian/Traditional African religions. Its theological, historical, and anthropological perspectives contribute to a balanced understanding of Christian spirituality/transformation in an African context.

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What is the task of theology in a complex religious and secular world? What are theologians called to contribute to society, the churches, and the academy? Can theology be both fully faithful to Christian tradition and Scripture, and fully open to the challenges of the twenty-first century? In this book, an international team of contributors, including some of the best-known names in the field, respond to these questions in programmatic essays that set the direction for future debates about the vocation of theology. David Ford, in whose honor the collection is produced, has been for many years a key figure in articulating and shaping the role of contemporary theology. The contributors are his colleagues, collaborators, and former students, and their essays engage in dialogue with his work. The main unifying feature of this exciting collection is not Ford's work per se, however, but a shared engagement with the pressing question of theology's vocation today.

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University is a major way that our society prepares professionals and leaders in education, health, government, business, arts, church–all components of our communal lives. Although the beginnings of the first universities were Christian, academia has become more and more adrift from these foundations. We have lost not only the union, the interwovenness of theological and academic understandings, but also the relational and communal process of learning which teaches students to be other-centered in their practice.
A Glimpse of the Kingdom in Academia tells the story of the social sciences department of a small Christian university that took seriously the mandate to prepare their students to be salt and light in a secular society. Here are stories of the transformation in students' lives, as well as description of classroom practices, and the epistemological theory behind those practices. The book explores academic knowing, Christian worldview, relational epistemology, inner knowing, and wisdom–all ways of knowing that a Christian university should teach. The process of transformation, the context of community, and the bigger picture of life's journey and changing images of God are identified as important aspects of kingdom life in academia. The institutional setting is also critiqued with the recognition that power practices need to align with the kingdom of the Christ who emptied himself.

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Here is a concise, inviting introduction to the greatest of the early Christian missionaries, the Apostle Paul–his life, his letters, his thinking–and the life-transforming gospel he proclaimed.
Readers will find this book academically stimulating, theologically rich, and personally challenging. It highlights the ways Paul's life and thinking differ from–and challenge–the life and thinking of Christians today.
Written in nontechnical language for both Christian students and general Christian readers, this book–the result of a lifetime of studying and teaching Paul's letters–will be helpful to all students and teachers of the Bible who want a deeper understanding of Paul, his theology, and the implications of his powerful letters for Christians today.

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–What does healing mean for Christians and others in an age of science? –How can a person relate scientific findings about one's body, philosophical understanding of one's mind, and theological investigations about one's spirit into a coherent and unified model of the person capable of leading one deeper into one's soul? –How does God continue creating through nature and direct one's wandering toward becoming created co-creators capable of ministering to others?
The reality of human suffering demands that theology and science mutually inform each other in a shared understanding of nature, humanity, and paths to healing. Mark Graves draws upon systems theory, pragmatic philosophy, and biological and cognitive sciences to distinguish wounds that limit who a person may become, and uses information theory, emergence, and Christian theology to define healing as distinct from a return to a prior state of being and rather instead as creating real possibility in who the person may become.

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Take My Hand is an invitation to experience a year of preaching through the eyes of a first-year pastor. Andrew Taylor-Troutman reflects on his experience of ministry as a dynamic exchange between his theological education and the people in the pews. Each chapter consists of Taylor-Troutman's reflections about a particular aspect of living as a faith community and concludes with a sermon exploring similar themes and ideas. As this book journeys through the Christian liturgical year, Taylor-Troutman considers a wide range of contemporary church issues, including the role of children in worship and the communal practice of Sabbath. He discusses topics as diverse as the Rapture, the death penalty, and church league softball. Along the way, readers will laugh at Sunday morning bloopers, study biblical texts from new perspectives, wrestle with theological questions, and discover parallels between their own experience of faith and the life of this small rural congregation. More than just a retrospective summary of events, Take My Hand poignantly illustrates how a pastor's work on Sunday morning grows out of his or her engagement with the hopes and fears of daily life, and the inspiring faith of men, women, and children in a church.
The Group Study Edition encourages people of different ages and experiences to discuss and enjoy the book, while applying insights to their own communities of faith.

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What does it mean to believe in the church? What is the relationship between the church we believe in and the church we experience? Is there an invisible church that is different from the visible?
This book is an argument for an ecclesiology of the visible. The only church, the real church, is a concrete reality made up of people, just like any other fellowship. What distinguishes it as church is the presence of the triune God among those who gather in the name of Jesus, making it a sign and anticipation of the fellowship of the kingdom of God.
From this premise Dr. Hegstad analyzes such issues as the relationship between church and world, mission and diakonia, church as fellowship and organization, ministries in the church, worship, and the unity of the church, as well as discussing the relationship between a sociological and a theological understanding of the church.

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Early Christian writers preferred to speak of the coming resurrection in the most bodily way possible: the resurrection of the flesh. Twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth took the same avenue, daring to speak of humans' eternal life in rather striking corporeal terms. In this study, Nathan Hitchcock pulls together Barth's doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh, anticipating what the great thinker might have said more systematically in volume V of his Church Dogmatics. Provocatively, Hitchcock goes on to argue that Barth's description of the resurrection–as eternalization, as manifestation, as incorporation–bears much in common with some unlikely programs and, contrary to its intention, jeopardizes the very contours of human life it hopes to preserve. In addition to contributing to Barth studies, this book offers a sober warning to theologians pursuing eschatology through notions of participation.

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The Swiss theologian Adolf Keller was the leading ecumenist on the European continent between the two world wars. In this book the historian Marianne Jehle-Wildberger delineates his life and its achievements.
Based on research in forty archives in Europe and the United States, a picture emerges that shows a wonderful man who was a personal friend oft Karl Barth, C. G. Jung, Thomas Mann, and Albert Schweitzer–and thus who was influenced by the spiritual tendencies of the twentieth century.
Keller cooperated closely with the National Council of Churches. His Central Bureau of Relief in Geneva (Inter-Church Aid) was supported by American churches. His lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary on «Religion and Revolution» (1933)–in which he was one of the first commentators to denounce National Socialism in Germany–set a new standard of political discussion and are unsurpassed.
Marianne Jehle-Wildbergers' book is an important contribution to twentieth-century church history and to the history of the twentieth century in general.

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Right Texts, Wrong Meanings takes some popular New Testament texts and meanings to illustrate how many Christians have misunderstood the Bible. Along the explorative journey, readers will learn that meanings are not as obvious as they seem. At the same time, they will also learn that with the right method, the possible meanings are within their grasp.

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