- Table View
- List View
Being Conformed to Christ in Community: A Study of Maturity, Maturation and the Local Church in the Undisputed Pauline Epistles (The Library of New Testament Studies #320)
by James G. SamraThis work explores Paul's conception of maturity, paying special attention to the maturation process and the role of the local church in facilitating this process. Although central to Paul's theology, maturity is often overlooked in Pauline studies. An exegetical-theological study of the seven generally accepted epistles, this work makes heuristic use of three studies for the purpose of illuminating Paul's thoughts regarding maturity: a survey of modern psychology, and analyses of the communities of Qumran and of the Therapeutae. Samra argues that Paul understood his apostolic commission to involve delivering mature believers on the day of Christ. Samra suggests that the central motif of Pauline maturity is conformity of believers to the image of Christ and that believers' attitudes and actions become aligned with those exhibited by Christ, who provides the defining standard of maturity for Paul.For Paul there are five means used by the Spirit to conform believers to the image of Christ, which Samra presents and analyzes as components of the maturation process, namely: identifying with Christ, enduring suffering, experiencing the presence of God, receiving and living out wisdom from God, and imitating a godly example. Samra concludes by arguing that Paul expected the local church to facilitate maturation so that believers' participation in a local assembly would result in their being conformed to Christ. The church does this by facilitating the five components of the maturation process.
Being Faithful: Christian Commitment In Modern Society (Ecclesiological Investigations)
by Judith A. MerkleThis book explores how the Christian life is lived in a pluralistic situation where different contexts of belonging give rise to different moral challenges. While it is characteristic of modern life to exist in a postmodern situation where there is an erosion of comprehensive systems of meaning, we still live today in contexts of belonging. We still seek to gather out of the fragments of modern life the sustenance of a network of belonging, belief and practice which comprise a faithful life. The construction of such a life, not only for us, but for others, serves as the framework for our moral commitments. Furthermore, sustaining and transforming social frameworks which shape various aspects of human life form the life task of adult Christians.
Being Feminist, Being Christian: Essays from Academia
by A. Jule B. PedersenCan a person be Christian and Feminist at the same time? In these extended essays, authors explore the various intersections of feminism, feminist theory and practice, and Christian tradition as it is lived out in the lives of Christian academics.
Being German, Becoming Muslim: Race, Religion, and Conversion in the New Europe
by Esra ÖzyürekEvery year more and more Europeans, including Germans, are embracing Islam. It is estimated that there are now up to one hundred thousand German converts—a number similar to that in France and the United Kingdom. What stands out about recent conversions is that they take place at a time when Islam is increasingly seen as contrary to European values. Being German, Becoming Muslim explores how Germans come to Islam within this antagonistic climate, how they manage to balance their love for Islam with their society's fear of it, how they relate to immigrant Muslims, and how they shape debates about race, religion, and belonging in today’s Europe.Esra Özyürek looks at how mainstream society marginalizes converts and questions their national loyalties. In turn, converts try to disassociate themselves from migrants of Muslim-majority countries and promote a denationalized Islam untainted by Turkish or Arab traditions. Some German Muslims believe that once cleansed of these accretions, the Islam that surfaces fits in well with German values and lifestyle. Others even argue that being a German Muslim is wholly compatible with the older values of the German Enlightenment.Being German, Becoming Muslim provides a fresh window into the connections and tensions stemming from a growing religious phenomenon in Germany and beyond.
Being German, Becoming Muslim: Race, Religion, and Conversion in the New Europe (PDF)
by Esra ÖzyürekEvery year more and more Europeans, including Germans, are embracing Islam. It is estimated that there are now up to one hundred thousand German converts—a number similar to that in France and the United Kingdom. What stands out about recent conversions is that they take place at a time when Islam is increasingly seen as contrary to European values. Being German, Becoming Muslim explores how Germans come to Islam within this antagonistic climate, how they manage to balance their love for Islam with their society's fear of it, how they relate to immigrant Muslims, and how they shape debates about race, religion, and belonging in today’s Europe.Esra Özyürek looks at how mainstream society marginalizes converts and questions their national loyalties. In turn, converts try to disassociate themselves from migrants of Muslim-majority countries and promote a denationalized Islam untainted by Turkish or Arab traditions. Some German Muslims believe that once cleansed of these accretions, the Islam that surfaces fits in well with German values and lifestyle. Others even argue that being a German Muslim is wholly compatible with the older values of the German Enlightenment.Being German, Becoming Muslim provides a fresh window into the connections and tensions stemming from a growing religious phenomenon in Germany and beyond.
Being Godless: Ethnographies of Atheism and Non-Religion (Studies in Social Analysis #1)
by Roy Llera Blanes Galina Oustinova-StjepanovicDrawing on ethnographic inquiry and the anthropological literature on doubt and atheism, this volume explores people's reluctance to pursue religion. The contributors capture the experiences of godless people and examine their perspectives on the role of religion in their personal and public lives. In doing so, the volume contributes to a critical understanding of the processes of disengagement from religion and reveals the challenges and paradoxes that godless people face.
Being Godless: Ethnographies of Atheism and Non-Religion (Studies in Social Analysis #1)
by Ruy Llera Blanes and Galina Oustinova-StjepanovicDrawing on ethnographic inquiry and the anthropological literature on doubt and atheism, this volume explores people's reluctance to pursue religion. The contributors capture the experiences of godless people and examine their perspectives on the role of religion in their personal and public lives. In doing so, the volume contributes to a critical understanding of the processes of disengagement from religion and reveals the challenges and paradoxes that godless people face.
Being Human: How to become the person you were meant to be
by Steve Chalke'Your life is precious - a precious gift. It is sacred; every moment of it. The opportunity to live rather than sleepwalk through our days belongs to us. This book is a call to wake up. It is a call to each one of us; to wake up, to live before we die.'It's easy to sleepwalk through life without ever really considering what we're here for. But life presents us with continual opportunities to wake up - and to think about not just what we do with our lives, but who we become while living them. Ultimately it is the story that we believe about ourselves, our lives and the world around us that will shape us - for better or for worse. So where do we find a good story - a convincing narrative that makes sense of it all?Steve Chalke suggests that Jesus' good news about the kingdom of God - a practical, lived-out expression of God's plans for the world - is the best story for us to find ourselves in. Each one of us is called to be part of the drama of the coming kingdom, and it's in this that we find a practical spirituality that helps shape our lives into everything we were meant to be.
Being Human: A new lens for our cultural conversations
by Jo Frost Peter Lynas'Being Human masterfully reorientates us towards the only story that ultimately makes sense of who we are ... A remarkably timely book' Justin Brierley'Practical, prayerful and ambitious. A Gospel-infused, wide-angle lens on contemporary society.'Jill Duff, Anglican Bishop of Lancaster'A valuable toolkit for church leaders, to help them build confidence in their members, to share the story of Jesus and his kingdom.'Les Isaac OBE, President, Ascension Trust'A great book about one of the most important but confusing questions of our time.'Professor Iain Provan, author of Cuckoos in our Nest: Truth and Lies about Being HumanWho am I? Does my life matter? What will make me happy?In different ways and at different moments we all ask life's big questions about what it means to be human. But in our fast-paced, rapidly changing and often exhausting society, our cultural stories struggle to provide us with good answers. Whether on issues of gender identity or AI, climate change or racial injustice, our individual solutions to life's big challenges can often end in deep division and broken relationships. But there is another way. Being Human offers a new lens - a new way to engage with our cultural conversations using four key aspects of humanity: significance, connection, presence and participation. Digging into the foundations of our cultural stories, authors Jo Frost and Peter Lynas expose the cracks in our culture's understanding of what it means to be human. By contrasting our cultural narratives with the story of the Bible, we can see how cultural truths have been fractured and isolated from the fullness and richness of who God is and who God created us to be, and come to recognise that only in Jesus can we live truly fully human lives. Being Human is a refreshingly clear and engaging guide for everyone who wants to live out and share the good, true and beautiful biblical vision of what it is to be human. Peter and Jo co-lead the Being Human project, an initiative from the Evangelical Alliance, helping everyday Christians live out and share the biblical vision of what it means to be human.
Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth's Ethical Vision
by Paul T. NimmoThis book investigates the way in which the 'actualistic ontology' - i.e., the fact that God and human agents are beings-in-act in a covenant relationship - that underlies the Church Dogmatics of Karl Barth affects his conception of ethical agency. It analyses this effect along three paths of inquiry: knowing what is right (the noetic dimension), doing what is right (the ontic dimension), and achieving what is right (the telic dimension). The first section of the book explores the discipline of theological ethics as Barth construes it, both in its theoretical status and in its actual practice. In the second section, the ontological import of ethical agency for Barth is considered in relation to the divine action and the divine command. The final section of the book examines the teleological purpose envisaged in this theological ethics in terms of participation, witness, and glorification. Â At each stage of the book, the strong interconnectedness of theological ethics and actualistic ontology in the Church Dogmatics is drawn out. The resultant appreciation of the actualistic dimension which underlies the theological ethics of Karl Barth feeds into a fruitful engagement with a variety of critiques of Barth's conception of ethical agency. It is demonstrated that resources can be found within this actualistic ontology to answer some of the diverse criticisms, and that attempts to revise Barth's theological ethics at the margins would have catastrophic and irreversible consequences for his whole theological project.
Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth's Ethical Vision
by Paul T. NimmoThis book investigates the way in which the 'actualistic ontology' - i.e., the fact that God and human agents are beings-in-act in a covenant relationship - that underlies the Church Dogmatics of Karl Barth affects his conception of ethical agency. It analyses this effect along three paths of inquiry: knowing what is right (the noetic dimension), doing what is right (the ontic dimension), and achieving what is right (the telic dimension). The first section of the book explores the discipline of theological ethics as Barth construes it, both in its theoretical status and in its actual practice. In the second section, the ontological import of ethical agency for Barth is considered in relation to the divine action and the divine command. The final section of the book examines the teleological purpose envisaged in this theological ethics in terms of participation, witness, and glorification. At each stage of the book, the strong interconnectedness of theological ethics and actualistic ontology in the Church Dogmatics is drawn out. The resultant appreciation of the actualistic dimension which underlies the theological ethics of Karl Barth feeds into a fruitful engagement with a variety of critiques of Barth's conception of ethical agency. It is demonstrated that resources can be found within this actualistic ontology to answer some of the diverse criticisms, and that attempts to revise Barth's theological ethics at the margins would have catastrophic and irreversible consequences for his whole theological project.
Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth's Ethical Vision
by Paul T. NimmoThis book investigates the way in which the 'actualistic ontology' - i.e., the fact that God and human agents are beings-in-act in a covenant relationship - that underlies the Church Dogmatics of Karl Barth affects his conception of ethical agency. It analyses this effect along three paths of inquiry: knowing what is right (the noetic dimension), doing what is right (the ontic dimension), and achieving what is right (the telic dimension). The first section of the book explores the discipline of theological ethics as Barth construes it, both in its theoretical status and in its actual practice. In the second section, the ontological import of ethical agency for Barth is considered in relation to the divine action and the divine command. The final section of the book examines the teleological purpose envisaged in this theological ethics in terms of participation, witness, and glorification. At each stage of the book, the strong interconnectedness of theological ethics and actualistic ontology in the Church Dogmatics is drawn out. The resultant appreciation of the actualistic dimension which underlies the theological ethics of Karl Barth feeds into a fruitful engagement with a variety of critiques of Barth's conception of ethical agency. It is demonstrated that resources can be found within this actualistic ontology to answer some of the diverse criticisms, and that attempts to revise Barth's theological ethics at the margins would have catastrophic and irreversible consequences for his whole theological project.
Being Jewish Today: Confronting the Real Issues
by Tony BayfieldBeing Jewish Today gives an account of both the journey of a particular British Jew and the journey of millions of women and men through today's perplexing and difficult world. With honesty and integrity Rabbi Tony Bayfield breaks new ground in exploring the meaning of Jewish identity and its relationship to Jewish tradition and belief. He does so from the perspective of a person fully integrated into the modern Western world. The rigorous questions he asks of his Jewishness, Judaism and the Jewish God are therefore substantially the same as those asked by individuals of all faiths and none. Beginning with an account of the journey of Jewish people and thought from ancient times to the present day, Bayfield goes on to consider Jewish identity, Israel as land and the scourge of anti-Semitism. He then turns to the twin concerns of Torah: Halakhah – practice, and Aggadah – ethics, along with the matter of belief in a world faced with global extinction. Finally, in addressing the manifest injustice of life, Rabbi Bayfield confronts the widely evaded questions of universal suffering and divine inaction. Drawing on key religious and secular thinkers who contribute to the force of his argument, Bayfield's masterful, challenging and urgent book will appeal to all Jews, whether religious or cultural, and to anyone curious about the nature of Judaism and religion today.
Being Jewish Today: Confronting the Real Issues
by Tony BayfieldBeing Jewish Today gives an account of both the journey of a particular British Jew and the journey of millions of women and men through today's perplexing and difficult world. With honesty and integrity Rabbi Tony Bayfield breaks new ground in exploring the meaning of Jewish identity and its relationship to Jewish tradition and belief. He does so from the perspective of a person fully integrated into the modern Western world. The rigorous questions he asks of his Jewishness, Judaism and the Jewish God are therefore substantially the same as those asked by individuals of all faiths and none. Beginning with an account of the journey of Jewish people and thought from ancient times to the present day, Bayfield goes on to consider Jewish identity, Israel as land and the scourge of anti-Semitism. He then turns to the twin concerns of Torah: Halakhah – practice, and Aggadah – ethics, along with the matter of belief in a world faced with global extinction. Finally, in addressing the manifest injustice of life, Rabbi Bayfield confronts the widely evaded questions of universal suffering and divine inaction. Drawing on key religious and secular thinkers who contribute to the force of his argument, Bayfield's masterful, challenging and urgent book will appeal to all Jews, whether religious or cultural, and to anyone curious about the nature of Judaism and religion today.
Being Peace: Classic teachings from the world's most revered meditation master
by Thich Nhat HanhIn this classic collection of lectures, Buddhist monk, scholar, poet and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh shows us that suffering is not enough; for in order to achieve peace, we must be peace. Quite simply, if we are not happy, if we are not peaceful, we cannot share peace and happiness with others. Therefore, Thich Nhat Hanh explains how, if we are to change the world, we must begin with ourselves and awaken the loving potential of our own Buddhist natures. We must learn to smile at the wonders that surround us every day, for if we cannot smile, the world will not have peace.
Being Protestant In Reformation Britain
by Alec RyrieThe Reformation was about ideas and power, but it was also about real human lives. Alec Ryrie provides the first comprehensive account of what it actually meant to live a Protestant life in England and Scotland between 1530 and 1640, drawing on a rich mixture of contemporary devotional works, sermons, diaries, biographies, and autobiographies to uncover the lived experience of early modern Protestantism. Beginning from the surprisingly urgent, multifaceted emotions of Protestantism, Ryrie explores practices of prayer, of family and public worship, and of reading and writing, tracking them through the life course from childhood through conversion and vocation to the deathbed. He examines what Protestant piety drew from its Catholic predecessors and contemporaries, and grounds that piety in material realities such as posture, food, and tears. This perspective shows us what it meant to be Protestant in the British Reformations: a meeting of intensity (a religion which sought authentic feeling above all, and which dreaded hypocrisy and hard-heartedness) with dynamism (a progressive religion, relentlessly pursuing sanctification and dreading idleness). That combination, for good or ill, gave the Protestant experience its particular quality of restless, creative zeal. The Protestant devotional experience also shows us that this was a broad-based religion: for all the differences across time, between two countries, between men and women, and between puritans and conformists, this was recognisably a unified culture, in which common experiences and practices cut across supposed divides. Alec Ryrie shows us Protestantism, not as the preachers on all sides imagined it, but as it was really lived.
Being Reasonable About Religion
by William CharltonWhen we start to discuss religion we run into controversial questions about history and anthropology, about the scope of scientific explanation, and about free will, good and evil. This book explains how to find our way through these disputes and shows how we can be freed from assumptions and prejudices which make progress impossible by deeper philosophical insight into the concepts involved. Books about religion usually concentrate on a few central Judaeo-Christian doctrines and either attack them or defend them with tenacious conservatism, yielding nothing. This book has a broader scope, and instead of trying to prove that religion, or any particular religion, is reasonable or unreasonable, it seeks to persuade people to be reasonable about religion.
Being Reasonable About Religion
by William CharltonWhen we start to discuss religion we run into controversial questions about history and anthropology, about the scope of scientific explanation, and about free will, good and evil. This book explains how to find our way through these disputes and shows how we can be freed from assumptions and prejudices which make progress impossible by deeper philosophical insight into the concepts involved. Books about religion usually concentrate on a few central Judaeo-Christian doctrines and either attack them or defend them with tenacious conservatism, yielding nothing. This book has a broader scope, and instead of trying to prove that religion, or any particular religion, is reasonable or unreasonable, it seeks to persuade people to be reasonable about religion.
Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (Routledge Radical Orthodoxy)
by John MilbankBeing Reconciled is a radical and entirely fresh theological treatment of the classic theory of the Gift in the context of divine reconciliation. It reconsiders notions of freedom and exchange in relation to a Christian doctrine which understands Creation, grace and incarnation as heavenly gifts, but the Fall, evil and violence as refusal of those gifts. In a sustained and rigorous response to the works of Derrida, Levinas, Marion, Zizek, Hauerwas and the 'Radical Evil' school, John Milbank posits the daring view that only transmission of the forgiveness offered by the Divine Humanity makes reconciliation possible on earth. Any philosophical understanding of forgiveness and redemption therefore requires theological completion.Both a critique of post-Kantian modernity, and a new theology that engages with issues of language, culture, time, politics and historicity, Being Reconciled insists on the dependency of all human production and understanding on a God who is infinite in both utterance and capacity. Intended as the first in a trilogy of books centred on the gift, this book is an original and vivid new application of a classic theory by a leading international theologian.
Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (Routledge Radical Orthodoxy)
by John MilbankBeing Reconciled is a radical and entirely fresh theological treatment of the classic theory of the Gift in the context of divine reconciliation. It reconsiders notions of freedom and exchange in relation to a Christian doctrine which understands Creation, grace and incarnation as heavenly gifts, but the Fall, evil and violence as refusal of those gifts. In a sustained and rigorous response to the works of Derrida, Levinas, Marion, Zizek, Hauerwas and the 'Radical Evil' school, John Milbank posits the daring view that only transmission of the forgiveness offered by the Divine Humanity makes reconciliation possible on earth. Any philosophical understanding of forgiveness and redemption therefore requires theological completion.Both a critique of post-Kantian modernity, and a new theology that engages with issues of language, culture, time, politics and historicity, Being Reconciled insists on the dependency of all human production and understanding on a God who is infinite in both utterance and capacity. Intended as the first in a trilogy of books centred on the gift, this book is an original and vivid new application of a classic theory by a leading international theologian.
Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective
by Christopher CarrThis book, in two volumes, breathes fresh air empirically, methodologically, and theoretically into understanding the rich ceremonial lives, the philosophical-religious knowledge, and the impressive material feats and labor organization that distinguish Hopewell Indians of central Ohio and neighboring regions during the first centuries CE. The first volume defines cross-culturally, for the first time, the “ritual drama” as a genre of social performance. It reconstructs and compares parts of 14 such dramas that Hopewellian and other Woodland-period peoples performed in their ceremonial centers to help the soul-like essences of their deceased make the journey to an afterlife. The second volume builds and critiques ten formal cross-cultural models of “personhood” and the “self” and infers the nature of Scioto Hopewell people’s ontology. Two facets of their ontology are found to have been instrumental in their creating the intercommunity alliances and cooperation and gathering the labor required to construct their huge, multicommunity ceremonial centers: a relational, collective concept of the self defined by the ethical quality of the relationships one has with other beings, and a concept of multiple soul-like essences that compose a human being and can be harnessed strategically to create familial-like ethical bonds of cooperation among individuals and communities. The archaeological reconstructions of Hopewellian ritual dramas and concepts of personhood and the self, and of Hopewell people’s strategic uses of these, are informed by three large surveys of historic Woodland and Plains Indians’ narratives, ideas, and rites about journeys to afterlives, the creatures who inhabit the cosmos, and the nature and functions of soul-like essences, coupled with rich contextual archaeological and bioarchaeological-taphonomic analyses. The bioarchaeological-taphonomic method of l’anthropologie de terrain, new to North American archaeology, is introduced and applied. In all, the research in this book vitalizes a vision of an anthropology committed to native logic and motivation and skeptical of the imposition of Western world views and categories onto native peoples.
Being Spiritual but Not Religious: Past, Present, Future(s) (Routledge Studies in Religion)
by William B. ParsonsIn its most general sense, the term "Spiritual but Not Religious" denotes those who, on the one hand, are disillusioned with traditional institutional religion and, on the other hand, feel that those same traditions contain deep wisdom about the human condition. This edited collection speaks to what national surveys agree is a growing social phenomenon referred to as the "Spiritual but Not Religious Movement" (SBNRM). Each essay of the volume engages the past, present and future(s) of the SBNRM. Their collective contribution is analytic, descriptive, and prescriptive, taking stock of not only the various analyses of the SBNRM to date but also the establishment of a new ground upon which the continued academic discussion can take place. This volume is a watershed in the growing academic and public interest in the SBNRM. As such, it will vital reading for any academic involved in Religious Studies, Spirituality and Sociology.
Being Spiritual but Not Religious: Past, Present, Future(s) (Routledge Studies in Religion)
by William B. ParsonsIn its most general sense, the term "Spiritual but Not Religious" denotes those who, on the one hand, are disillusioned with traditional institutional religion and, on the other hand, feel that those same traditions contain deep wisdom about the human condition. This edited collection speaks to what national surveys agree is a growing social phenomenon referred to as the "Spiritual but Not Religious Movement" (SBNRM). Each essay of the volume engages the past, present and future(s) of the SBNRM. Their collective contribution is analytic, descriptive, and prescriptive, taking stock of not only the various analyses of the SBNRM to date but also the establishment of a new ground upon which the continued academic discussion can take place. This volume is a watershed in the growing academic and public interest in the SBNRM. As such, it will vital reading for any academic involved in Religious Studies, Spirituality and Sociology.
Being the Body of Christ: Towards a Twenty-First Century Homosexual Theology for the Anglican Church (Gender, Theology and Spirituality)
by Chris MounseyThe book explores the preoccupation of key twentieth-century English writers with theology and sexuality and how the Anglican Church has responded and continues to respond to the issue of homosexuality. Analysing the work of Oscar Wilde, E. F. Benson, Edward Carpenter, Jeanette Winterson, and Alan Hollingshurst, the book explores the literary tradition of exasperation at the church's obduracy against homosexuality.
Being the Body of Christ: Towards a Twenty-First Century Homosexual Theology for the Anglican Church (Gender, Theology and Spirituality)
by Chris MounseyThe book explores the preoccupation of key twentieth-century English writers with theology and sexuality and how the Anglican Church has responded and continues to respond to the issue of homosexuality. Analysing the work of Oscar Wilde, E. F. Benson, Edward Carpenter, Jeanette Winterson, and Alan Hollingshurst, the book explores the literary tradition of exasperation at the church's obduracy against homosexuality.