John Buchanan, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, challenges the church to have an impact on the community at large. Drawing from his experience at Fourth Presbyterian, he explores the specific ways the church intersects the life of the community. He vigorously affirms the Reformed tradition's unique strengths and heritage, as well as its ongoing relevance in today's world. To Buchanan, mainline churches have an obligation to be in the world, and their effectiveness requires that they not abandon their traditions. Churches need to steer a course that allows them both the ability to maintain a singular way in the world and a creative response to questions of meaning, hope, vocation, and values.

The Irish temperament--individualistic, poetic, and deeply loyal to family--produced great and learned saints and a unique monastic literature before the Norman Invasion. The isolation of the island allowed the development of traditions different from those of either Britain or the continent. These graceful translations of Irish monastic rules and spiritual maxims, along with samples of Irish litanies and poetry from the early Celtic monastic world, convey the spirituality of the Isle of Saints from the sixth to eighth centuries. This book will be warmly welcomed not only by academics and monastics but also by those many lay people who are increasingly looking to Celtic Christianity to deepen their own faith and prayer. It makes accessible a whole range of important material from monastic rules to short poetic quatrains nd those magnificent litanies which still have the power to move us deeply. This is a book which will touch a wide readership at many different levels.

The Tales and Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum) are a key source of evidence for the practice and theory respectively of eremitic monasticism, a significant phenomenon within the early history of Christianity. The publication of this book finally ensures the availability of all three major collections which constitute the work, edited and translated into English. Richer in Tales than the 'Alphabetic' collection to which this is an appendix (both to be dated c.AD 500), the 'Anonymous' collection presented in this volume furnishes almost as much material for the study of the late antique world from which the monk sought to escape as it does for the monastic endeavour itself. More material continued to be added well into the seventh century and so the spread and gradual evolution of monasticism are illustrated here over a period of about two and a half centuries.

Writing shortly after Aelred of Rievaulx died on 12 January 1167, Walter Daniel, his secretary and fellow monk, has created the picture of Aelred which endures to this day. We come to know a man of 'charity and astonishing sanctity', an ailing abbot whose monks sat chatting around his bed. Only in passing do we glimpse the ambitious young steward at the court of King David of Scotland, the ecclesiastical diplomat and political counselor who moved easily in royal and episcopal circles, or the canny property manager who guided his monasteries to prosperity. From Walter's pen we have a gentle, loving, ascetic abbot who offered spiritual guidance to his monks through conversation and to a wider audience through the treatises he composed, and who died a holy death. The reaction the Life provoked suggest that some contemporaries outside Rievaulx entertained a different picture of the abbot of Rievaulx. Whether motivated by simple dislike, by envy, or by dissatisfaction at a hastily informal 'canonization', the critics stung the indignant Walter to response. Perhaps they, like Walter, viewed as irreconcilable and struggled to keep apart two worlds which Aelred himself integrated and brought together.

These essays by six scholars of international standing - David Ford, Colin Gunton, Daniel Hardy, Werner Jeanrond, Richard Roberts, and Christoph Schw

Between the deep valley which contains the Jordan river and the Dead Sea, and the hill country of Judea, in which Jerusalem and Bethlehem are situated, lies a narrow stretch of desert which evokes memories of great Biblical ascetics - Elijah and John the Baptist. The empty landscape and scriptural associations drew Christian ascetics in the third century. The new edition of this work by Cyril of Scythopolis provides perhaps our best source of information on the Palestinian monastic movement from AD 400-600. He gives a history not only of holy monks, but also of the Palestinian Church at the height of its power and prestige.

'I have plucked the finest flowers of the unmown meadow and worked them into a row which I now offer to you', wrote John Moschos as he began his tales of the holy men of seventh-century Palestine and Egypt. This translation offers readers contemporary insights into the spirituality of the desert.

In the half century since its first publication in English, this small book has become a classic of medieval theology. Directing his attention to 'perhaps the most neglected aspect' of Cistercian mysticism, the great French medievalist and philosopher Etienne Gilson directs attention to 'that part of [Bernard's] theology on which his mysticism rests', his 'systematics'.Cistercian Publications brings this important book back into print in celebration of the nine-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Saint Bernard, hoping that new generations of scholars will find it food for thought and further research.

Convent Autobiography reveals how English Catholic women wrote about themselves, their families, and their lives in a period where it was illegal to practice Catholicism in England. These nuns went into a two-fold kind of exile for their beliefs. They moved abroad and they "died to the world", trying to cut ties with family and friends. Yet their convents needed support from outsiders to thrive. The nuns studied here reveal how they navigated this through their letters, printed works, paintings, and prayers. Often times these women wrote anonymously, a common practice for nuns, monks, and devout people of many religious persuasions up until the twentieth century. But anonymity was not just a neutral way of signalling humility or deep religious belief; it could allow people to write about themselves a lot more than they would have while writing under their own name. Exploring how some nuns exploited this to shape their convent's chronicle around their own points of view, Convent Autobiography holds up a mirror to the think about the double-edged role of anonymity throughout history.

For some thirty years Eric Dean, as a layman, husband, parent, Presbyterian minister, Lafollette Professor of Humanities at Wabash College, and as an ecumenical oblate of a Benedictine abbey has reflected on and put into practice the Rule of St. Benedict. In Saint Benedict for the Laity he comments on how the Rule "has important things to say even to those of us who - because we are already committed to lives in the secular sphere - can never think of a monastic vocation. The rule can speak to us of values which, even apart from the daily structures of monastic life, are relevant to our own lives in 'the outside world.' "

C. Ellis Nelson has collaborated with and collected the works of ten leaders experienced in congregational affairs to design and produce a resource that helps ministers and lay leaders understand the dynamics of congregations. The result is an engaging collection that will help pastors and church leaders invigorate their congregations.

Three times longer than the Rule of Saint Benedict and in parts identical to it, the "Regula Magistri "encompasses the entire existence, material and spiritual, of the monastic community and its members. First English translation.

Traces the growth of the Hare Krishna movement in the U.S., describes the experiences of individual followers, and analyzes recruitment patterns, activities, and leadership of the movement.

'My thoughts on the spiritual exercises proper to cloistered monks'; the ninth prior of La Grande Chartreuse ( '1180) articulates the monastic contemplative tradition in distinctively western terms.

'...reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation. These make a ladder for monks by which they are lifted up from earth to heaven. It has few rungs, yet its length is immense and wonderful, for its lower end rests upon the earth, but its top pierces the clouds and seeks heavenly secrets.'

For fifteen centuries Benedictine monasticism has been governed by a Rule that is at once strong enough to instil order and yet flexible enough to have relevance fifteen hundred years later. This unabridged edition includes the Latin and English translation with commentary. The paperback version has facing page translation.

Written during the last decade of Merton's life, these articles reflect his mature thought on monastic life in community and in solitude. Appealing to the monastic dimension in al of us, his reflections have meaning for those living outside as well as inside monastery walls, fellow travellers on the same journey he took, aware of the fragility and imperfections, as well as the great potential for growth and love, within each human person.

Classic work of ecclesiastical history, exercising original and independent judgement. Volume II also available.

Has the art of accompaniment been lost in Western culture? Could non-judgemental accompaniment be the answer to rising levels of isolation and loneliness? Could spending time with others from different or marginalised backgrounds reduce feelings of 'otherness' and lead to a more open, trusting society? Exploring the themes above, this welcoming book offers models of relationships, interdependence, and community for individuals who are marginalised from society. It emphasises the importance of being with people and time spent in physical activity and in the natural world, without demands being put on expressing feelings or even speaking out loud. It draws on the author's own vast experience and work with those on the edge of society - including living in a Christian community which welcomes those in terms of crisis, living in a Palestinian village, working with adults with autism and as chaplain to Gypsies and Travellers - providing a varied, insightful and heart-warming view on the benefits of accompaniment.

Shenoute the Great (c.347-465) led one of the largest Christian monastic communities in late antique Egypt and was the greatest native writer of Coptic in history. For approximately eight decades, Shenoute led a federation of three monasteries and emerged as a Christian leader. His public sermons attracted crowds of clergy, monks, and lay people; he advised military and government officials; he worked to ensure that his followers would be faithful to orthodox Christian teaching; and he vigorously and violently opposed paganism and the oppressive treatment of the poor by the rich. This volume presents in translation a selection of his sermons and other orations. These works grant us access to the theology, rhetoric, moral teachings, spirituality, and social agenda of a powerful Christian leader during a period of great religious and social change in the later Roman Empire.

During the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther took the biblical maxim "be fruitful and multiply" and used it within the realm of marriage as the cornerstone of his new Christian community. By denying the spiritual superiority of celibacy and introducing new tenets regarding gender, marriage, chastity, and religious life, Luther challenged one of the key expressions of Catholicism--monastic life. Yet many religious living in cloistered communities, particularly women, refused to accept these new terms and successfully opposed the new Protestant culture.
Focusing primarily on a group of Dominican nuns in Strasbourg, Germany, Amy Leonard's "Nails in the Wall" outlines the century-long battle between these nuns and the Protestant city council. Using their charm, wealth, and political and social connections, the nuns were able to sustain their Catholic practices. Leonard's in-depth archival research uncovers letters about and records of the nuns' struggle to maintain their religious beliefs and way of life in the face of Protestant reforms. She tells the story of how they worked privately to keep Catholicism alive--continuing to pray in Latin, smuggling in priests to celebrate Mass, and secretly professing scores of novices to ensure the survival of their convents. This fascinating and heartening study shows that, far from passively allowing the Protestants to dismantle their belief system, the women of the Strasbourg convents were active participants in the battle over their vocation and independence.

Although an ascetic ideal of leadership had both classical and biblical roots, it found particularly fertile soil in the monastic fervor of the fourth through sixth centuries. Church officials were increasingly recruited from monastic communities, and the monk-bishop became the dominant model of ecclesiastical leadership in the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium. In an interesting paradox, Andrea Sterk explains that "from the world-rejecting monasteries and desert hermitages of the east came many of the most powerful leaders in the church and civil society as a whole."

Sterk explores the social, political, intellectual, and theological grounding for this development. Focusing on four foundational figures--Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom--she traces the emergence of a new ideal of ecclesiastical leadership: the merging of ascetic and episcopal authority embodied in the monk-bishop. She also studies church histories, legislation, and popular ascetic and hagiographical literature to show how the ideal spread and why it eventually triumphed. The image of a monastic bishop became the convention in the Christian east.

"Renouncing the World Yet Leading the Church" brings new understanding of asceticism, leadership, and the church in late antiquity.

A French historian and curator of the manuscript department at the Bibliotheque Nationale, Benjamin Guerard (1797-1854) made a considerable contribution to the study of medieval French cathedrals and monasteries. Having studied at Dijon, Guerard became a banker in Paris, before studying at the Ecole royales des chartes where he trained as an archivist. He was a founding member of the Societe de l'histoire de France, and this publication was part of the society's first series of documents inedits. Guerard was elected to the Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres and became the director of the Ecole des chartes in 1848. This collection of the medieval charters of the Abbey of Saint-Pere at Chartres was published in Paris in 1840. Volume 1 contains the Prolegomena describing the founding of the abbey, the size of its demesne, its feudal rights, and official structure.