Healing Ableism
Most people encounter disability at some point in their lives, either in their own bodies or through a friend or loved one. Faith leaders, sacred texts, and members of religious communities frequently offer religious teachings and metaphors as explanation for the presence of disability, but rarely do we hear the voices of people living with disabilities reflecting on their experiences of God, faith, or religious life. In Healing Ableism: Stories about Disability and Religious Life, Darla Schumm explores the extraordinary stories of people with disabilities who struggle with the ordinary human challenges of faith and doubt, exclusion and inclusion, and injustice and justice. Blending candid story-telling, cultural critique, and theory, Schumm invites readers to reflect on the experiences of people with disabilities in religious communities and organizations. Schumm argues that it's not disability that needs healing, it's ableism that needs healing. In the final chapter, Schumm offers accessible love as one avenue for healing ableism.
What's God Saying Here?
Preachers and teachers are expected in Scripture to teach the whole counsel of God. Yet, in the Bible, God says some rather odd things, and strange things seem to happen. The natural tendency for preachers and teachers alike is to skip over such troubling texts. We tend to cherry pick from passages that we like and conveniently stray from texts or verses that are confrontational or bizarre. Many teachers of the Bible will ask, "How do you teach that? Let's just move on to the next passage or the next verse."In What's God Saying Here? Eric J. Bargerhuff and Matthew D. Kim offer advice on how to handle and communicate 30 of the most confusing verses, passages, sayings, and stories in the Bible. With the authors' advice and encouragement and help from the Holy Spirit, preachers and teachers will be less fearful about teaching such confusing passages. Providing suggestions for exegeting, illustrating, and applying these difficult passages, this book offers guiding principles for teaching peculiar texts with greater precision and confidence.
Religion Is Not Done with You
A smart, irreverent, and accessible guide to thinking more deeply about how religion permeates and shapes the world around us -and why you need to understand the work it's doing Religion lurks in the floorboards of our daily lives, whether we want it to or not. A departure from more traditional approaches to "Religion 101," Religion Is Not Done with You gives thought-provoking context to the basics of religious studies by challenging readers to consider the origins of their assumptions about religion and broaden their perspectives on what religion is and does. Religion scholars and Keeping It 101 podcast duo Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst and Megan Goodwin offer their straightforward, plainspoken overviews of religious studies theory: that religion is what people do (not just beliefs or individual practices); that people are complicated and messy and constantly changing, which means religion is also complicated and messy and constantly changing; that religion shapes what choices you get to make. Choices like what you can learn in school; how your government works; what kind of options you have (or increasingly don't have) in caring for your own body. Sure, you have the choice to participate in religion or not. But how you make that choice builds on your entire personal history, your connection to communities and regions, and the systems that surround you. All of which have been shaped by religion. Religion is systems and structures and assumptions we didn't create or choose - and, to be honest, we might not even like or agree with. You can feel however you want to feel about religion, but religion is shaping your world whether you like it or not. And if you don't like how religion is shaping our world? This book might just be your first step in diagnosing the problems and agitating for positive change. Even if you are done with religion, religion is not done with you.
Lectionary Reflections
This book is one of three volumes that bring together Jane Williams's widely read and much enjoyed Church Times columns.Here, she offers reflections on the Sunday readings in the Revised Common Lectionary for Year B. Each section gives the lectionary references and provides a thought-provoking starting point for exploring the readings, drawing out points of connection between them.Intelligently written in an engaging and inspiring style, Lectionary Reflections will prove invaluable in preparation for Sunday worship or for regular Bible study throughout the year. It will be of use to individuals and groups for opening up the Bible and applying its rich teaching and stories.
For Such a Time as This
A devotional for ordinary Christians seeking to live faithfully in extraordinary times"This is not the first end of the world. Many worlds have ended."In an era of political polarization, eroding democratic norms, and rising authoritarianism, many Christians find themselves disoriented, wondering how their faith should inform myriad daily decisions. Drawing upon both scholarship and pastoral wisdom, theologian Hanna Reichel offers a timely resource for believers seeking spiritual grounding amid societal upheaval.For Such a Time as This provides a thoughtful framework for discernment rooted in scripture, historical wisdom, and the core commitments of Christian faith. Through meditations on scripture, reflections on historical precedents including the Confessing Church's resistance to Nazi Germany, and portraits of inspiring figures who maintained their integrity in the face of oppression, Reichel guides readers toward their own Christian response to the present moment.Written specifically for ordinary believers, this accessible volume acknowledges that while some are called to dramatic public witness, all must face the daily challenge of living faithfully as long-established institutions and systems reveal their fragility. Neither alarmist nor complacent, Reichel reminds readers that Christians throughout history have faced the collapse of worlds they once took for granted--and have discovered unexpected liberation in the process.For anyone troubled by current political trends and searching for ways to disentangle faith in God from misplaced trust in political systems, For Such a Time as This offers both challenge and comfort. Readers will come away with practical wisdom for navigating our uncertain times, a deeper understanding of Christianity's resources for resistance, and renewed energy for the urgent tasks that faithful discipleship demands today."None of this is unprecedented; what is unprecedented is that today it is we who have to do the hard work of seeing idols smashed, grieving and picking up the pieces, holding them into the sun, and seeing new refractions of light in their edges."
Blessed Weakness
Reflect on Cistercian abbot Dom Andr矇 Louf's insightful homilies. Blessed Weakness contains Dom Andr矇's homilies on the Gospel passages for year A of the church's three-year liturgical cycle. These homilies reflect Dom Andr矇's spiritual insights about the wisdom in the teachings of Christ. The title conveys a favorite theme of Dom Andr矇's: God's special love for humans in their weakness, manifested in Jesus' leaving behind his glory to become one of us in weakness, living among and ministering to the poor. Contemplative reflection on these Gospel passages and on Dom Andr矇's insights will provide a path for the reader and hearer to seek a deeper union with God.
Spirituality or Religion?
Here is a book that will stretch our minds and imaginations and also move our hearts so that we might better serve God and the world. Spirituality and religion have fallen out with each other long enough! Spirituality or Religion? shows not only that they need to wake up, but why and how. As religion has become progressively self absorbed and spirituality increasingly other worldly, they have failed a generation searching for a vision of a better way. From Buchenwald to Darfur, from inner city violence to the threat of environmental catastrophe the problems facing human kind are undoubtedly immense. With Jesus of Nazareth and his extraordinary band of messengers for guides, and enlisting Celtic myth, the poetry of the ages, the insights of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and the other great religions, the story that unfolds in Spirituality or Religion? is a defiantly positive and liberating one. It's less a matter of choice, more of seeing why and how those searching for God need both.
Old Gods, New Druids
The universe is filled with countless gods, goddesses and nature spirits. Many made themselves known to the Druids of ancient Northern Europe. How can modern day Druids make contact with these age-old Beings? 'Old Gods, New Druids' offers a series of twenty humorous and informative lessons that can be used for group or solitary study and is ideal for people interested in Druidry and the Pagan spirituality of ancient Britain and Ireland.
Weaving the Cosmos
Weaving the Cosmos traces humanity's journey from the mythical origins of religion, through the struggles to make sense of Christianity in the fourth century, and the strangely similar struggles to make sense of quantum theory in the twentieth century, to modern quantum cosmology. What we see, both in the human mind and in the cosmos which has given birth to that mind, is a dance between rational Form and intuitive Being. This present moment of ecological crisis opens to us a unique opportunity for bringing together these two strands of our existence, represented by religion and science. As the story unfolds, the historical account is interwoven with the author's own experiences of learning the principles through which we can bring about this integration in ourselves and in society.
