LITMIR.BIZ

Blessed is a collection of dramatic monologues that engage the gospel narratives surrounding Mary, the mother of Jesus, through the experiences of contemporary women. Bridging proclamation and protest through theater, the pieces invite the reader to stand at the intersection of faith and doubt alongside women giving birth to the Word in the world, women like Mary–broken and blessed.

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What is Jesus like? What kind of a person is he? Is he emotional or stoic? Is he proud or humble? Is he aloof or friendly? This book attempts to answer these types of questions. After demonstrating that Jesus is the promised Christ and that he is both divine and human, this book examines Jesus' personal characteristics as they are displayed in the four Gospels. The four Gospels are clearly not a typical biography of Jesus. Nonetheless, they do provide an informative account of his life here on earth, from which we can discover what he is like as a person.

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In concluding the series of lectures given while he made his first and only visit to the U.S., Dr. Karl Barth expressed his hope to see a theology of freedom for humanity originating from the U.S. As a respectful response to the expressed hope of Karl Barth, Albert Walsh presents this essay as a pastoral proposal on the subject of freedom from the point of view of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Walsh presents both biblical and theological foundations for a theology of freedom, which he calls «graced-freedom,» contending that this is that transcendent freedom that God alone confers and sustains as a freedom for humanity.

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In this serial work of religious historical fiction, Magda, a «fallen woman» from Berlin turned maidservant in the house of Soren Kierkegaard, seeks the full life that has thus far eluded her. Two journals set in the summer of 1847 record Magda's responses to the Luther Bible, Goethe's Faust, and her elusive yet compelling master, who is simultaneously crafting his Works of Love. Three journals set in the fall, winter, and «people's spring» of 1847 and 1848 reflect Magda's ongoing engagement with secular and sacred writings, her sporadic yet intimate interactions with her master, the precariousness of her position in his household, and the rapidly changing social landscape, at the same time as Kierkegaard begins, revises, or completes several of his most existential and prophetic works. A sixth journal set in the summer of 1848 reveals Magda's final disposition. Is she judged, or is she saved?

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This book will help seminary students and ministers with no training in accounting to expand their core management competency and church leadership skills to include basic issues of finance and accounting. It will also provide pastors/ministers with financial management orientation to become better leaders/managers of their churches and organizations. Specifically, this book is designed to bring pastors, ministers, and seminary students up to speed in the language of accounting and money in contemporary American society. It gives them practical resources for effective (not hands-on) management of church finances. Among others, it will offer training on basic accounting and budgeting, reading of financial reports, and elementary tax and legal issues in order to develop pastors'/students' core competency in stewardship leadership. After going through this book, most students and pastors should be able to read, exegete, and make sense of the financial reports that will be given to them by church accountants (treasurers, finance committees). This book helps pastors to understand and interpret the accounting and monetary issues of their ministries in a professional and theologically sound way.

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How do people think about God as they look death squarely in the face? This is the central question in The Spiritual Lives of Dying People. Here are the stories of fifteen people who confront death in their own ways and who find spiritual strength in their faith. This is also the story of a remarkable and gifted priest, one who has made ministry with the chronically ill a special focus of his pastoral life and has guided people not only through their dying but also to God. In this book, readers will find the inspiring stories of people who found hope and courage in life so that they could meet death. Readers will also glean insights into how they might approach their own deaths or care for others who are in the midst of making the last journey of life. This is a book that illuminates how to answer one of life's most important questions: How shall I die?

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After Mary, St. Francis is clearly the most popular and influential of all the disciples of Jesus Christ. He embodies the spiritual poverty, humility, and childlikeness which are absolutely essential for anyone who wants to grow. And it is fitting, too, to examine his life in poetry, since Francis is considered by many to be the father of Italian poetry. In these St. Francis Poems, David Craig gives us what literature should: slices of Henry James's «lived life» as they move past sentimentality to get to the hard-edged, visceral realities in the original texts–though they never lose sight of laughter or of simple joy. These poems invite us to celebrate with Lady Poverty around her meager table, which is fitting, since that is the only place we will ever be fed.
This project itself revisits the haunts of David Craig's first book, The Sandaled Foot (1980). But here St. Francis seems to come even more deeply alive–next to shelves of cool, protected water, in the red meadows of praise.

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The Courageous Gospel is intended for use alongside a commentary (Ashton, Brown, Bultmann, Barrett, other) in a class introducing the Fourth Gospel. The book has four parts:
–A succinct summary of key matters of introduction;
–A collection of sermons on the Gospel's core chapters, with reflective reminiscence and remembrance of what Raymond Brown said in lecture about the Gospel thirty years ago;
–A series of background lectures that attempt, on the one hand, to honor the key insights of the current opinion communis (that Jewish apocalyptic explains John) and, on the other hand, to open the door to further insights from an older perspective needed for a full appreciation of John (that the Hellenistic Gnostic background explains John);

–A set of pedagogical appendices, employable in the classroom, to aid discussion.
Together these components attempt to provide the necessary second book for an introduction to the Fourth Gospel, engaging the commentaries with the hermeneutical, homiletical, exegetical, and pastoral implications of a first-level study of John.

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As an artist, Deborah Sokolove has often been surprised and dismayed by the unexamined attitudes and assumptions that the church holds about how artists think and how art functions in human life. By investigating these attitudes and tying them to concrete examples, Sokolove hopes to demystify art–to bring art down to earth, where theologians, pastors, and ordinary Christians can wrestle with its meanings, participate in its processes, and understand its uses. In showing the commonalities and distinctions among the various ways that artists themselves approach their work, Sanctifying Art can help the church talk about the arts in ways that artists will recognize. As a member of both the church and the art world, Sokolove is well-positioned to bridge the gap between the habits of thought that inform the discourse of the art world and those quite different ideas about art that are taken for granted by many Christians. When art is understood as intellectual, technical, and physical as well as ethereal, mysterious, and sacred, we will see it as an integral part of our life together in Christ, fully human and fully divine.

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