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Finding the Voice of the Church is written for a broad audience interested in the challenges facing the contemporary Catholic Church. These challenges are ones that should concern all Christians, not only Catholics. Noted scholar and commentator George Dennis O'Brien poses (and answers) three provocative questions: What is the proper voice of the church? Is there a voice of Christian faith? Can what is said about Christianity be fundamentally distorted by how it is said? Through his clear and relevant discussion of the basic content of Christianity, O'Brien concludes that the primary voice of Catholic Christianity, the papal teaching voice, must be radically "re-understood" if the Church is to be the proper medium and voice of the gospel message. O'Brien begins with the primary voice of the Church: baptism, gospel, and Eucharist. He contends that too much official teaching from the Roman magisterium to the local pulpit reverses the order of the ancient formula lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of faith) and therefore misses its message. In the second part of the book, he turns to specific consideration of the papal voice as the teaching voice of the Church. O'Brien concludes with a series of practical suggestions for how the practices and institutions of the Church can again become the authentic voice of faith. This is a book all concerned Christians will want to read and discuss.
Answers offered by the most religiously conservative among us frequently sound too narrow. Questions asked by those outside the faith seem broad and unmoored. As thoughtful Christians, we often find it difficult to talk about our faith because at one extreme we're met with simplistic truths and at the other extreme complex wonderings. In Finding Your Voice, Jim Dant offers the thinking Christian a manageable and credible faith language. While respecting the evangelical language of his childhood and those who gave it to him, Jim addresses and offers fresh language regarding the issues of: God, Scripture, Jesus, Salvation, the church, the world, and more. He provides a language for the things we believe but are not quite sure how to say. Jim takes us to his childhood home and introduces us to the language offered him by his faith community. He gives an honest accounting of that faith and, with an extreme dose of humanity and trust, shares with us how that faith has changed. The result is a language that makes sense both in and out of church. Whether you agree or disagree with Jim's conclusions, you are invited into a conversation and perhaps the discovery of your own voice.
In a culture that praises blending in over standing out, productivity over purpose, and noise over truth, many women find their God-given voice compromised, quieted, or even mocked. We all long to live out our divinely designed passions and unique talents, yet too often it becomes so much easier in the face of opposition to stay silent altogether. What if God is calling you to so much more? As a working mom, wife, artist, and abolitionist, Natalie Grant has struggled to live on purpose while battling the worldly demands of keeping up the appearance of perfection. Emerging from her own dark spiral of suffocating inadequacy, Natalie found fresh hope in the truth that God has already given women everything they need to live out their God-given identity, passions, and calling. Finding Your Voice offers the heart-rallying, life-giving truth that a woman’s voice is not an uncalled for interference to be silenced, but a gift to be used for God's Kingdom purposes. In voice lessons as in life, a strong vocal identity requires us to first stand firm, breath deep, and finally, go for it--loud and clear. With rich scriptural study and personal stories infusing every chapter, Finding Your Voice reveals how to discover your own unique talent, train it according to God's Word, and start using it for the good of others--without guilt and apology.
In this collection of essays, outstanding scholars and pastors reflect on the many "languages" of the Catholic liturgy--the aural, spatial, temporal, kinetic, and iconic--which blend together into a single voice, a single act of praise.
In this postmodern age, women preachers are finding their "voice" a distinctive way of proclamation. This book looks at the metaphor of voice, how women are moving to voice from silence, and how individuals can make themselves heard by those who don't want to hear.
When the people of God returned from exile, they built a Second Temple. "But many of the priests and Levites and heads of father's houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy" (Ezra 3:12). The Second Temple existed from around 516 BC to AD 70 and served as the temple for Jesus and Paul. But the Second Temple was missing five things: the ark of the covenant, the glory, divine fire, the Urim and Thummim, and the prophetic voice. Many people of God are weeping today because they experience a church empty of presence and glory. There is something missing. We have lost the glory of His presence. We no longer carry discernment or speak the prophetic word to the nations. Could the church today be missing the same things as the Second Temple? The church, as the final temple of God, should be the place of His presence and fullness of the Spirit. We should be the fiery voice of discernment and truth. The church must recover what is missing. We can restore what is missing, or we can become the Church of the Missing Five.
While nearly half of Americans identify themselves with a fundamentalist brand of religion, and a sizable minority has rejected religion altogether, there is a vast middle ground. This book is aimed at that huge group of people who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. In other words, people who are open to encountering the divine and the transcendent, and indeed actively seek these experiences. The authors help readers improve their understanding of the religious nature of the psyche, the origins of myths and religions in the collective unconscious, and the ways in which organized religion has often worked to infantilize its followers. They leave the reader with an empowered ability to claim his or her own spiritual authority and lead a more abundant, authentic life. Many of those who have left organized religion have done so because it has hurt them in some way or because it failed to address their needs, yet they maintain a strong yearning to reconnect with the divine and transcendent level of human existence. As religious fundamentalism continues to influence so much of our national discourse, and as atheistic books rank high on bestseller lists, the time has never been more crucial for a book to address a third way between fundamentalism and atheism - a way that encourages readers to connect with their true religious nature, while at the same time maintaining their intellectual integrity and claiming their own authority. McGehee and Thomas offer that third way.
The word religion scares people, making them think of extremists and obnoxious blowhards--or, worse, hypocritical cultural throwbacks. Increasingly, "nonreligious" people see "religion" as bad for the world, something to be repented of. In reality, however, everyone is religious. Religion is the outward and interpersonal expression of our
How do we listen for the voice of God within the soundscapes of our lives and how do we find our own voice? Our lives are lived against the backdrop of an internal and external soundscape. The sounds, noises and music with which we are surrounded in modern life have spiritual implications. There is also a soundtrack within us that plays constantly through memory, dreams, anxiety or thought. What are these soundscapes, and how do we listen for the voice of God within them. How too do we find our own voice? These questions bring together the previous academic interest (history and sociology) and the present, practical life (public ritual, music, and public speaking) of an author who is sensitive to the cadences of modern life, and reflects on this through the prism of Scripture and the tradition
When we lack a basic understanding of what the Church teaches, we can feel as if we’re on a road without a map, or have the wrong map, or only pieces of the map. So how can we journey to the Father and the eternal life Christ won for us? Rerouting addresses this problem head on, putting the map once again into our hands—or, in today’s language, providing us with the voice of a GPS device telling us where we must go in order to come safely home. Fr. Riccardo, in his distinctive, incisive way, brings us face-to-face with Christ as the Church has proclaimed him from its earliest days. Guiding us around obstacles we often face as we try to understand our faith, this book answers questions Catholics commonly ask: What is the goal of human life? What really happens at Mass? Why is sexuality holy, and why must it be treated as such? In the culture in which we live, we can often be blinded to transcendence—and therefore to the saving work of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. Rerouting presents us with a sweeping vista of what we believe in a way that makes sense and causes our faith to grow and flourish, both in our hearts and in the world.