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Stories from across North America of contemporary church leaders, parishioners and religious activists who are working to define a new environmental movement, where honoring the Creator means protecting the planet. Sacred Acts documents the diverse actions taken by churches to address climate change through stewardship, advocacy, spirituality and justice. Contributions from leading Christian voices such as Norman Wirzba and the Reverend Canon Sally Bingham detail the concrete work of faith communities such as: Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis, IN, where parishioners have enhanced food security by sharing canning and food preservation skills in the church kitchen Georgia's Interfaith Power & Light, which has used federal stimulus funds to weatherize congregations, reduce utility bills and cut carbon emissions Earth Ministry, where people of faith spearheaded the movement to pass state legislation to make Washington State a coal-free state. Sacred Acts shows that churches can play a critical role in confronting climate change - perhaps the greatest moral imperative of our time. This timely collection will inspire individuals and congregations to act in good faith to help protect Earth's climate.
Looks at the efforts of churches all over North America to confront climate change through stewardship, advocacy, spirituality and justice. Original.
Acts is the sequel to Luke's gospel and tells the story of Jesus's followers during the 30 years after his death. It describes how the 12 apostles, formerly Jesus's disciples, spread the message of Christianity throughout the Mediterranean against a background of persecution. With an introduction by P.D. James
From Zora Neale Hurston to Derek Walcott to Toni Morrison, New World black authors have written about African-derived religious traditions and spiritual practices. The Sacred Act of Reading examines religion and sociopolitical power in modern and contemporary texts of a variety of genres from the black Americas. By engaging with spiritual traditions such as Vodou, Kumina, and Protestant Christianity while drawing on canonical Eurocentric literary theory, Anne Margaret Castro presents a novel, nuanced reading of power through the physical and metaphysical relationships portrayed in these great works of New World black literature. Castro examines prophecy in the dramas of Derek Walcott, preaching in the ethnography of Zora Neale Hurston, and liturgy in the novels of Toni Morrison, offering comparative readings alongside the works of Afro-Colombian anthropologist Manuel Zapata Olivella, Jamaican sociologist Erna Brodber, and Canadian fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson. The Sacred Act of Reading is the first book to bring together literary texts, historical and contemporary anthropological studies, theology, and critical theory to show how black authors in the Americas employ spiritual phenomena as theoretical frameworks for thinking within, against, and beyond structures of political dominance, dependence, and power.
In a fast-paced world full of distractions, spiritual practice can help us become more centered-more in touch with ourselves and others, more in touch with the world around us, more in touch with God. Sacred Pauses is an introduction to this more centered way of life. The author, a pastor in British Columbia, begins with her own longing for personal renewal. What would it take to feel renewed every day? Instead of waiting for a vacation to smooth out the tensions of life, instead of waiting until the end of the week to shed our weariness, what if we could take time out every day? Live a renewed life every day? Be refreshed by God every day? Sacred Pauses offers simple ways for readers to do just that. Each chapter explores a different spiritual practice-from the classic disciplines of Scripture reading and prayer to other creative approaches such as paying attention, making music, and having fun. With plenty of stories from real life and ideas to try, this book is personal and practical. Its flexible format is appropriate for personal use or in a group, every day or any time. Free downloadable study guide available here.
This engaging book guides readers through one of the most colorful books of the Bible, illuminating passages from Acts that show the Christian gospel expressing itself through the lives, speech, struggles, and adventures of Jesus's followers. The book emphasizes the disruptive character of the Christian gospel and shows how Acts repeatedly describes God as upsetting the status quo by changing people's lives, society's conventions, and our basic expectations of what's possible. Suited for individual and group study, this book by a New Testament scholar with a gift for popular communication asks serious questions and eschews pat answers, bringing Acts alive for contemporary reflection on the character of God, the challenges of faith, and the church.
What message was the author of Acts seeking to convey, and what would the original audience have understood? How is God speaking to believers today through Acts as it has been used by the church throughout the centuries? In this addition to the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, respected New Testament scholar William Kurz offers a close reading and explanation of the entire narrative of Acts, grounded in the original Greek but keyed to the NABRE for liturgical use. This volume, like each in the series, relates Scripture to life, is faithfully Catholic, and is supplemented by features designed to help readers understand the Bible more deeply and use it more effectively.
Framed around one ordinary day, this book explores daily life through the lens of liturgy, small practices, and habits that form us. Each chapter looks at something author Tish Harrison Warren does in a day—making the bed, brushing her teeth, losing her keys—and relates it to spiritual practice as well as to our Sunday worship.
This meticulously edited collection contains the essential books of the Jewish faith, the most sacred text of Judaism, history books, as well as philosophical and theological writings concerning Jewish faith._x000D_ Contents:_x000D_ Religious Texts:_x000D_ "Tanakh" – The Hebrew Bible_x000D_ "Talmud" – The Central Text of Rabbinic Judaism _x000D_ "Torah – Bilingual (English/Hebrew)" – Five Books of Moses_x000D_ "Tales and Maxims from the Midrash" – Biblical exegesis by ancient Judaic authorities_x000D_ "The Kabbalah Unveiled" – Translations and commentaries of the Books of Zohar_x000D_ "The Sepher Ha-Zohar" – Zohar, or Splendor is the most important text of Kabbalah._x000D_ "Siddur – The Standard Prayer Book" – The Authorized Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations_x000D_ "The Union Haggadah" – Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder._x000D_ History:_x000D_ The Jewish Wars (Flavius Josephus)_x000D_ Antiquities of the Jews (Flavius Josephus)_x000D_ History of the Jews (Heinrich Graetz)_x000D_ The Legends of the Jews (Louis Ginzberg)_x000D_ Philosophical Works:_x000D_ Kitab al Khazari (Kuzari) (Judah Halevi)_x000D_ The Guide for the Perplexed (Moses Maimonides)_x000D_ Ancient Jewish Proverbs (Abraham Cohen)
Late antique and early medieval hagiographic texts present holy women as simultaneously pious and corrupt, hideous and beautiful, exemplars of depravity and models of sanctity. In Sacred Fictions Lynda Coon unpacks these paradoxical representations to reveal the construction and circumscription of women's roles in the early Christian centuries. Coon discerns three distinct paradigms for female sanctity in saints' lives and patristic and monastic writings. Women are recurrently figured as repentant desert hermits, wealthy widows, or cloistered ascetic nuns, and biblical discourse informs the narrative content, rhetorical strategies, and symbolic meanings of these texts in complex and multivalent ways. If hagiographers made their women saints walk on water, resurrect the dead, or consecrate the Eucharist, they also curbed the power of women by teaching that the daughters of Eve must make their bodies impenetrable through militant chastity or spiritual exile and must eradicate self-indulgence through ascetic attire or philanthropy. The windows the sacred fiction of holy women open on the past are far from transparent; driven by both literary invention and moral imperative, the stories they tell helped shape Western gender constructs that have survived into modern times.