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In the face of apparently rampant individualism, there has been a steady call for a return to community and tradition, particularly in religious communities and in recent Christian theology and ethics. The form of contemporary life upheld by modern ideals like freedom and universalism, the story goes, turns out to divide people from each other and from the communal sources of our traditionally moral values. But the call to community too often confuses individualism with individuality, assuming that any appeal to individuality as a value or ideal is a rejection of communal goods, rather than a mode of promoting those goods. What's necessary now is a recovery of the individual that understands individuality to serve community, even in resistance to it. In Transforming Faith, Joshua Daniel offers a fresh reading of H. Richard Niebuhr's theological ethics that provides an account of individuality and individual creativity as both the fruits and reformers of community. What is theologically at stake in Daniel's reconstructive interpretation is the human's existentially resonant relation with God and the christological revitalization of our symbolic and virtuous activity.
"Having faith in the Lord is not something that involves solely our intelligence, the area of intellectual knowledge; rather, it is a change that involves our life, our whole self: feelings, heart, intelligence, will, corporeity, emotions, and human relationships. With faith everything truly changes." So Pope Benedict XVI introduced his catecheses for the Year of Faith, a series of sixteen talks given at his weekly audience from October 2012 to the end of his papacy in February 2013. These talks explore how and why faith is relevant in the contemporary world. How can we come to certainty about things that cannot be calculated or scientifically confirmed? What does God's revelation mean for our daily lives? How can the hunger of the human heart be fulfilled? Offering the guidance of biblical exegesis, pastoral exhortation, and brotherly encouragement, Pope Benedict seeks to answer these questions and many others.
Because of the more aggressive and confrontational tactics we hear about, evangelism has developed a bad connotation. Doors are shut hurriedly, phone calls end abruptly, and e-mails left unanswered. After all, isn't this a task better handled by the pastor? Perhaps it's time to reexamine John Wesley's model of evangelism as a full, natural circle—where it's a communal beginning point rather than a solitary end. The central motive of authentic evangelism is: Having received a message that's made all the difference in our lives, we desire to share that message with others in the hope that it will transform their lives as well. Wesley models an evangelism that reaches out and welcomes, invites, and nurtures, and speaks to both head and heart. "Evangelism is about relationship," the authors write. "How we are in relationship to God, who is able to transform us into new beings. How we are in relationship to our neighbor, whom we must love like ourselves." As one reviewer says, "Knight and Powe have given us a relational book. They describe the deep connection between John Wesley's thoughts, Charles Wesley's hymns, scholarly thinking about evangelism and biblical understandings of the gospel—all in relation to the needs, concerns, and hopes of everyday people." Learn on your own or as a congregational group from this practical study on living an evangelistic life that demonstrates the transforming power of loving God and neighbor.
The Golden Rule of "do unto others" has often been called the essence of religion. But Fred Howard's own spiritual journey takes a decidedly less traveled path when he faces a situation where the Golden Rule simply isn't adequate. Embarking on a deep spiritual quest away from literal Christianity and into the New Thought movements of the 1980s and 1990s, Howard eventually comes full circle to reclaim his Christian identity. Armed with a fresh perspective on his old life, he now sees the doctrines and tenets with new eyes. In Transforming Faith: Stories of Change from a Lifelong Spiritual Seeker, Howard explores this fresh insight through the five areas of imagination, faith, compassion, God, and Christianity. Using the time-tested tradition of conveying wisdom through story, Howard encourages you to develop a transforming faith-one that not only leads to changes in your life, but also one that grows into new understandings of the reality of God's presence. Following in the footsteps of M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled, this book offers a fresh and sometimes unconventional guide to understanding your spirituality.
Over the last decade, there has been an increasing number of middle and upper-class urban Pakistani women actively turning toward Islam via Al-Huda, an Islamic school for women aiming to transform the women who absorb its message into “pious” subjects. Established in the early 1990s, Al-Huda is unique in its ability to attract a following among these women, a feat other religious groups have been unsuccessful in accomplishing. In Transforming Faith, Sadaf Ahmad deftly explores how Al-Huda is fostering a new generation of educated, urban, middle-class women to become veiled conservatives. She offers an engrossing and sensitive account of how the school’s aggressive recruiting methods through informal religious study groups and a one-year degree program combined with the school’s techniques of persuasive teaching methods have turned Al-Huda into a social movement. As a woman of Pakistani origin, Ahmad offers an in-depth look at the students and members of Al-Huda in ways that a cultural outsider would be excluded from doing. She reveals that although Pakistani women are better educated than ever before they still face social barriers that limit them from working or pursuing further education. Ahmad’s groundbreaking work demonstrates Al-Huda’s ever-widening teachings and influence in Pakistan and in its recent global extensions. More broadly, this book illuminates how Al-Huda uses the trappings of modernity to engage educated women in a kind of religious study that transforms their ideology, behavior, and lifestyle within a particular Islamic framework. Because of Al-Huda’s teachings, Pakistani society is changing, as is the rest of the Muslim world.
Transforming Faith Communities draws upon a model for the church that combines congregationalism with a constructive approach to church-state relationships within a vision for a renewed Christendom, commended as a viable option for Christian missionin the twenty-first-century world. Michael Ian Bochenski uses two movements to make his case: sixteenth-century Anabaptism and late twentieth-century Latin American liberation theology. Each movement is held up as a mirror to the other in a vision for the transformation of church and society that resonates powerfully with contemporary culture. Outlining the development of radical religious communities, Bochenski examines some of the factors that create world-affirming Christian faith communities, and explores many examples of effective and constructive engagement with church and society across the centuries.
The first collection to focus the lens of postcolonial theory on pre-twentieth-century America
God's power in you life. Not only will it build your faith, it will give you a foundation that will enable you to stand in the face of all assaults. It will open the eyes of your faith to all God has in store for you.
“A new role model.”— The New York Times In The Universe Has Your Back, New York Times best-selling author Gabrielle Bernstein teaches readers how to transform their fear into faith in order to live a divinely guided life. Each story and lesson in the book guides readers to release the blocks to what they most long for: happiness, security and clear direction. The lessons help readers relinquish the need to control so they can relax into a sense of certainty and freedom. Readers will learn to stop chasing life and truly live. Making the shift from fear to faith will give readers a sense of power in a world that all too often makes them feel utterly powerless. When the tragedies of the world seem overwhelming, this book will help guide them back to their true power. Gabrielle says, “My commitment with this book is to wake up as many people as possible to their connection to faith and joy. In that connection, we can be guided to our true purpose: to be love and spread love. These words can no longer be cute buzz phrases that we merely post on social media. Rather, these words must be our mission. The happiness, safety, and security we long for lies in our commitment to love. ” When readers follow this path, they ’ll begin to feel a swell of energy move through them. They will find strength when they are down, synchronicity and support when they ’re lost, safety in the face of uncertainty, and joy when they are otherwise in pain. Follow the secrets revealed in this book to unleash the presence of your power and know always that The Universe Has Your Back.
In 2014, Time magazine announced that America had reached the transgender tipping point, suggesting that transgender issues would become the next civil rights frontier. Years later, many peopleeven many LGBTQ alliesstill lack understanding of gender identity and the transgender experience. Into this void, Austen Hartke offers a biblically based, educational, and affirming resource to shed light and wisdom on this modern gender landscape. Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians provides access into an underrepresented and misunderstood community and will change the way readers think about transgender people, faith, and the future of Christianity. By introducing transgender issues and language and providing stories of both biblical characters and real-life narratives from transgender Christians living today, Hartke helps readers visualize a more inclusive Christianity, equipping them with the confidence and tools to change both the church and the world.