"The world is our parish and all her creatures our congregation." Based on talks given to ordinands in Wales, this book presents the ministry as responding to God's call to be priestly stewards of creation and to participate in the blossoming of the new creation. Clavier engages with Scripture and people such as Augustine, Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, Lancelot Andrewes, George Herbert, C. S. Lewis, N. T. Wright, and Rowan Williams to portray the whole minis...

Set in the final days of Roman Britain, this sweeping historical novel follows a family’s struggle to preserve their land, identity, and way of life as the empire collapses around them. For four generations, the Rusticelii have farmed their estate, weathering political shifts, invasions, and the slow erosion of Roman rule in the British countryside. Now, as the legions withdraw and raiders from across the sea descend upon the land, they must make impossible choices—clinging to the past or ...

Rescuing the Church... examines how people are initiated into a consumer culture during childhood and thus drawn into pursuing a vocation as consumers by means of various quasi-sacramental rites and practices.The upshot of this is that the church today is composed primarily of men and women whose lives are situated more within a consumer culture than within a distinctively Christian one.In order for the church to free itself, the author believes it must rec...

Winner of the 2022 Nautilus Book Award in Religion / Spirituality of Western Thought (#24B)Mark Clavier examines a series of paradoxes that lie at the heart of Christian faith: eternity and time, silence and words, and wonder and the commonplace. In an intellectual reflection on an overnight trek on Cadair Idris in Wales and other wilderness walks, he explores the oft-hidden connections between faith, society, and nature.Each reflection ranges widely throug...

The Reading Augustine series presents short, engaging books offering personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo's contributions to western philosophical, literary, and religious life.Mark Clavier's On Consumer Culture, Identity, The Church and the Rhetorics of Delight draws on Augustine of Hippo to provide a theological explanation for the success of marketing and consumer culture. Augustine's thought, rooted in rhetorical theory, presents a brilliant understanding of the...

Born of the chaos of the Dark Ages, the Dream of Eagles produced a king, a country and an everlasting legend—Camelot367 A.D. The empire is crumbling and the legions of Rome are in retreat. The green and peaceful lands of Britain have become a blood-soaked killing ground. It is a time that breeds treachery in some men and greatness in others. This is the story of Gaius Publius Varrus, a former Roman officer, now a maker of swords. As the empire tears itself apart, V...

Envisioning a future in which the Christian church plays a viable and transformative role in shaping society, Gretta Vosper argues that if the church is to survive at all, the heart of faith must undergo a radical change. Vosper, founder of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity and a minister in Toronto, believes that what will save the church is an emphasis on just and compassionate living -- a new and wholly humanistic approach to religion. Without this reform, the church as w...

In the first volume of the brilliant Sarantine Mosaic, master storyteller Guy Gavriel Kay crafts a mesmerizing story of an awe-inspiring city and the people drawn into its spell.After losing his wife and daughters to the plague, a grieving artisan, Crispin, receives a summons from the emperor and reluctantly embarks on the long journey toward the imperial city of Sarantium—the golden heart of an empire. Despite its perils, the allure of Sarantium's glory draws trav...

Whatever else one might say about Emergence Christianity, says Phyllis Tickle, one must agree it is shifting and re-configuring itself in such a prodigious way as to defy any final assessments or absolute pronouncements. Yet the insightful and well-read Tickle offers us a dispatch from the field to keep us informed of where Emergence Christianity now stands, where it may be going, and how it is aligning itself with other parts of God's church. Through her careful study and culture-watching...

Having finally achieved his journey to fabled Sarantium, Crispin the mosaicist wants nothing more than to confront the challenges of his art high on the scaffolding of destiny-but in Sarantium no man may easily withdraw from the turmoil of court and city, or forget that the presence of the half-world is always close by.

Christianity Today Award of MeritReaders' Choice Awards Honorable MentionBest Books About the Church from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Bookstore"When . . . faith communities begin connecting together, in and for the neighborhood, they learn to depend on God for strength to love, forgive and show grace like never before. . . . The gospel becomes so much more tangible and compelling when the local church is...

Born of the chaos of the Dark Ages, the Dream of Eagles produced a king, a country and an everlasting legend—CamelotIt is 395 A.D., and as the Roman armies withdraw from Britain, anarchy threatens the colony that will one day be known as Camelot. Creating their own army and joining with the Celtic people of King Ullic Pendragon, the colonists emerge as a new breed of Britons, ready to forge the government that will be the Round Table and its Knights and to prepare ...