Catalyst
New From Episcopal Books and Resources
The Becoming of G-d
Publisher: YTC Press
Details: 152 pages, paperback, c. 2008, $18.06
Description: Continuing on from his first book on "Emerging & Fresh Expressions of Church", Ian explores the nature of Trinitarianism and what it has to say about the nature of church and faith. Drawing on the understandings of the Cappadocian theologians who instigated the thinking behind the Nicene Creed, (and others) Ian explores how the ancient church balanced a path of faith between a God that was knowable but not fully knowable. Some theologians including Volf, Barth and Gunton ackowledge that Western theological thinking has always had a weakened understanding of the Trinity which has impoverished the Western Churches understanding of God and the nature of Church.
Ian argues that a full understanding of the Trinity is essential to understand faith, mission and being church in a postmodern and post-Christendom context. With an understanding of how God 'becomes' we have a hope of our own journey of transformation or human 'becoming'.
Further, Church as a spiritual community becomes a place for people to find their identity in being a full person through the love of God and human community. Without this, the Church has little to say to people of the twenty first century driven by spiritual tourism with an interest in spirituality rather than religion.
Ian contends that the great wealth of Trinitarian inspired Christian spirituality is then made accessible to those seeking authentic, fresh and deep expressions of Church, and approaches to mission as 'human becoming'.
This book is a must for all those seeking to explore Emerging & Fresh Expressions of Church and mission in our highly consumptive and technological culture.
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Spiritual Sightseeing: Observations of Oxford
Publisher: Areopagite Press
Details: 208 pages, paperback, c. 2007, $9.95
Description: See the historical sights of Oxford from a unique spiritual perspective as the author takes you on a journey through England's most famous University city.
Dennis B.A. Berk was born in 1965 and grew up in rural Pennsylvania. After completing a bachelor's degree in psychology at Wheaton College, in Illinois, he moved to Ontario, Canada. There he pursued theological studies at Trinity College, in the University of Toronto from whence he received a Master of Divinity. In 1990 he was ordained in the Anglican Church of Canada, and he served first as a Curate and then later as a Rector in parishes in eastern Ontario. He returned to Pennsylvania to study at Lancaster Theological Seminary. After sucessfully defending his dissertation, subsequently published in revised form as the book Embracing Inclusion, he received a Doctor of Ministry degree in 1998. Following three years of missionary service in tropical Africa, he was invited to Oxford as a Visiting Lecturer for one semester. His African experiences were published as a book entitled Zambian Journal. Having returned to the United States in 2006, currently he is a parish priest within his home state of Pennsylvania.
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The Anglican Communion and Homosexuality: A Resource to Enable Listening and Dialogue
Publisher: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
Details: 332 pages, paperback, c. 2008, $26
Description: Anglicans believe that the Bible, the tradition of the Church and human reason are the channels through which we can hear God speaking to us.
This volume offers clear and accurate resources intended to help bishops, clergy and lay people in the Anglican Communion to listen to God and to one another on the subject of human sexuality, taking into account in particular Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, which encourages a readiness 'to listen to the experience of homosexual persons'. This book is a contribution to the Anglican Communion's Listening Process.
The contributors to this book are women and men who reflect the geographical and theological diversity of the Communion. They include Bishops, clergy and laity with a wide range of experience and expertise.
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To Be A Pilgrim: The Anglican Ethos in History
Publisher: Crossroad Publishing Company
Details: 306 pages, hardcover, c. 2001, $24.95
Description: To Be A Pilgrim is about the Anglican ethos from a historical perspective. Neither a denominational nor a confessional treatment, it traces the evolution of spirituality in the English tradition from Bede and Cranmer to C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, and Dorothy Sayers.
By describing the Anglican ethos in historical context, with its emphasis on reason, moderation, liturgy and culture, readers can more easily see the grounding from which this faith tradition emerges.
There are readings at the end of each chapter and excerpts throughout from key writers. Poetry, mystery, literacy, music, art, plus social justice and spirituality are all characteristic of the Anglican tradition.
''The study of a religious ethos does not hang on fixed dates as much as does conventional political history with the death of a monarch or the loss of a battle as a defining event. It is more like tracing the strands of a tapestry through time. The spirituality of Julian of Norwich, seemingly a product of the English Middle Ages, reappears in the twentieth century. Lancelot Andrews, who sprung to life during the English Reformation, becomes a pivotal figure in the Oxford Movement three centuries later. Such strands do not exist in isolation, but are interwoven with others as anyone will conclude who has tried to work their way through the multiple prayer book studies tracing the origins of new liturgical rites.... The understanding of the evolution of a religious ethos is more than a study of white hats versus black hats in any age, more like tracing the interacting parts of a Bach fugue.'' - From the introduction
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Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Details: 332 pages, hardcover, c. 2008, $24.95
Description: For years Christians have been asking, "If you died tonight, do you know where you would go?" It turns out that many believers have been giving the wrong answer. It is not heaven.
Award-winning author N. T. Wright outlines the present confusion about a Christian's future hope and shows how it is deeply intertwined with how we live today. Wright, who is one of today's premier Bible scholars, asserts that Christianity's most distinctive idea is bodily resurrection. He provides a magisterial defense for a literal resurrection of Jesus and shows how this became the cornerstone for the Christian community's hope in the bodily resurrection of all people at the end of the age. Wright then explores our expectation of "new heavens and a new earth," revealing what happens to the dead until then and what will happen with the "second coming" of Jesus. For many, including many Christians, all this will come as a great surprise.
Wright convincingly argues that what we believe about life after death directly affects what we believe about life before death. For if God intends to renew the whole creation—and if this has already begun in Jesus's resurrection—the church cannot stop at "saving souls" but must anticipate the eventual renewal by working for God's kingdom in the wider world, bringing healing and hope in the present life.
Lively and accessible, this book will surprise and excite all who are interested in the meaning of life, not only after death but before it.
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