Sabbaticals are becoming increasingly common practice in congregations, and while there are many books on helping pastors prepare for their time away, there are no texts that approach the experience with the congregation in mind, from start to finish. This guide for congregations and their pastors draws on nearly two decades of wisdom from the Lily Endowment Clergy Renewal Program and helps draw the conversation away from a pastor-centric model and towards a holistic congregational framewo...

What is the relationship of the church to theology? How does the church relate to the work of creative theological authorship, particularly when authors propose novel claims? Even more, how do ecclesial models, particularly of ecclesial authority, underwrite or authorize how theology is done? Saler takes up these challenging and provocative questions and argues for a fresh ecclesiology of the church as event, specifically as a diffusively spatialized event.Establishing this claim t...

Anthropologically explores the entanglement of theology and politics among contemporary Orthodox ChristiansMuch of the anthropological literature on Christianity tends to concentrate on Protestants and Catholics in the Global South. The contemporary scholarly interest in such communities descends from histories of missionization and colonization of these regions, as well as a sense of their theological kinship with the secularized visions of Western political and s...

Robert Saler examines the small but influential Death to the World movement in US Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Presenting a case study in theological aesthetics, Saler demonstrates how a relatively small consumer phenomenon within US Eastern Orthodoxy sits at the centre of a variety of larger questions, including:- The relationship between formal ecclesial and para-church structures- The role of the Internet in modern religiosity- Consumer structure...

Radiohead is simultaneously one of the most experimental and most successful rock bands on the planet. While their lyrics rarely reference religion, in this book Robert Saler argues that the discipline of Christian theology has a great deal to learn from the band when it comes to unflinching engagement with the world's brokenness and its longing for redemption. Market dynamics, the influence of capitalism on art, ecological theology, aesthetics, and Christology all come together as Saler a...

Recovery of Paul and Luther's theology of the cross has been an enduring legacy of twentieth-century theology, and in our own day the topic has continued to expand as more and more global voices join the conversation. The array of literature produced on the cross and its theological significance can be overwhelming. In this readable and concise introduction, Robert Saler provides an overview of the key motifs present in theologians seeking to understand how the cross of Jesus Christ inform...

Scholarly writing on the music of Arvo Pärt is situated primarily in the fields of musicology, cultural and media studies, and, more recently, in terms of theology/spirituality. Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred focuses on the representational dimensions of Pärt’s music (including the trope of silence), writing and listening past the fact that its storied effects and affects are carried first and foremost as vibrations through air, impressing themselves on the human body. In...

Eberhard Jüngel (1934-2021) belongs to the most creative, wide-ranging, rigorous, and demanding voices in twentieth-century Protestant theology. Over a long and distinguished career, Jüngel grappled with topics such as revelation, responsible talk about God, God's triunity, Christology, the nature of theological language, analogy, divine and human freedom, love, atheism, and theological approaches to the state. In all this, he had followed, perceptively yet critically, in the footsteps not...

Religion is increasingly seen as a dangerous source of violence in the world, breeding a fear of faith in a very vocal group of critics. Most Christians are blissfully unaware of the litany of allegations being brought against religion, including that it is the cause of intolerance, imperialism, irrationality, bigotry, and war, to name a few. But ignorance is not the answer.In Why People Don't Believe, Paul Chamberlain strives to represent the concerns and challenges raise...

The idea that all human beings were created in God’s image was core to the creation of the modern WestIn God’s Image examines the central role that the idea that all people were created in the image of God played in the development of Western civilization. Focusing on five themes—selfhood, freedom, conscience, equality, and meaning—the book guides the reader through a cultural history of the West, from ancient times through modernity. It explains how each ...

"These essays advance the understanding of Eastern Orthodox spiritual practices from a religious studies perspective."— Reading ReligionHow do people experience spirituality through what they see, hear, touch, and smell? In this book, Sonja Luehrmann and an international group of scholars assess how sensory experience shapes prayer and ritual practice among Eastern Orthodox Christians.Prayer, even when performed privately, is considered as a shared ...

What is faith? Is it a thing one has or a human activity? What is revelation? Is it a deposit of truths in the past or God's action in the present?These questions are addressed by renowned religious educator Gabriel Moran, who draws upon biblical and theological traditions set within today's interreligious dialogue. A church of moral and liturgical activity in relation to a revealing God is the needed response to both a dismissal of religion and apocalyptic violence in its name. Th...