Christianity Today Award of Merit In the midst of our hectic, overscheduled lives, caring for the soul is imperative. Now, more than ever, we need to pause-intentionally-and encounter the Divine. Soul care director Barbara Peacock illustrates a journey of prayer, spiritual direction, and soul care from an African American perspective. She reflects on how these disciplines are woven into the African American culture and lived out in the rich heritage of its faith community. Using examples of ten significant men and women-Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Darrell Griffin, Renita Weems, Harold Carter, Jessica Ingram, Coretta Scott King, James Washington, and Howard Thurman-Barbara offers us the opportunity to engage in practices of soul care as we learn from these spiritual leaders. If you've yearned for a more culturally authentic experience of spiritual transformation in your life and community, this book will help you grow in new yet timeless ways. Come to the river to draw deeply for your soul's refreshment.

A classic book on prayer, written out of the author's own deep spiritual life. It includes an interview with Metropolitan Anthony, who reveals details of hos life - his traumatic childhood, his career as a physician, his experience in the French Resistance, as well as his conversion and call to the ordained ministry. He provides help and inspiration for all of us who struggle with our faith.

Written as the First World War was finally drawing to a close, A. Clutton-Brock's reflections on the Kingdom of Heaven examine this challenging theological concept in light of the great religious, political and moral uncertainties thrown up by the conflict. In particular, Clutton-Brock contends that historically Christian orthodoxy has not sufficiently emphasised the role of the Kingdom in salvation, given its importance in the ministry and teaching of Christ. To preserve a religious vision capable of interacting with the modern, industrial world, Christian orthodoxy must carefully consider the scope and importance of political practice, the role of the individual in the realisation of the Kingdom, and the profound implications of reconciling the facts of the universe with the most sincerely held beliefs.

By Water and the Spirit contains the official 1996 General Conference paper on baptism as a six-week study. Felton describes the United Methodist understanding of baptism. Practical and user-friendly.

The Anastenaria are Orthodox Christians in Northern Greece who observe a unique annual ritual cycle focused on two festivals, dedicated to Saint Constantine and Saint Helen. The festivals involve processions, music, dancing, animal sacrifices, and culminate in an electrifying fire-walking ritual. Carrying the sacred icons of the saints, participants dance over hot coals as the saint moves them. 'The Burning Saints' presents an analysis of these rituals and the psychology behind them. Based on long-term fieldwork, 'The Burning Saints' traces the historical development and sociocultural context of the Greek fire-walking rituals. As a cognitive ethnography, the book aims to identify the social, psychological and neurobiological factors which may be involved and to explore the role of emotional and physiological arousal in the performance of such ritual. A study of participation, experience and meaning, 'The Burning Saints' presents a highly original analysis of how mental processes can shape social and religious behaviour.

In Exclusion and Judgment in Fellowship Meals, Lanuwabang Jamir seeks to demonstrate that the tradition of fellowship meals in the ancient world form the background against which the Lord's Supper must be understood. Similarly, the basis of Paul's response to the situation in Corinth and his theology of the Lord's Supper is to be found in these traditions. The role of the fellowship meal in Greco-Roman and Jewish culture indicate that it was an important institution that played a pivotal role in the functioning of society. Judgment was an integral part of the fellowship meal traditions and it made such meal practices all the more significant in ancient cultures. For example, Jamir reveals that social-economic factors were only part of the problem in Corinth, where differences in ideology were the underlying cause of divisions in the church. Paul's response to the problem shows that he upheld the fellowship meal traditions, linking sickness and death with the abuse of the Lord's Supper. The concept of judgment in the Lord's Supper, while based on the fellowship meal traditions, has been redefined in the light of the Gospel tradition.

If you were to join us in either of our homes at the end of almost any evening, or if you were to attend one of our retreats, we would invite you to do with us the process described in these pages. This book is about asking ourselves two questions: For what am I most grateful? For what am I least grateful? These questions help us identify moments of consolation and desolation. We call this process the examen. "We have given retreats in over forty countries,and we find that regardless of culture or age group, this simple process is the most helpful way for people to hear the voice of God guiding them from within. For example, should people bring us many questions ranging from, 'Should I change my job?' to What can help me with my depression?' We usually suggest they spend the next month focusing each day on the examen questions. Such people often return a month later having discovered from their own experience of consolation and desolation exactly what they should do more of and less of in order to resolve their problem. "For centuries, prayerful people have found direction for their days and for their lives by identifying these moments. Since even small children can do this, we have tried here to present the examen in a format that families, friends and communities can share and that will be easily accessible to anyone. We hope the examen will enrich your lives and your relationships as much as it has ours."

Comparative studies of medieval chant traditions in western Europe, Byzantium and the Slavic nations illuminate music, literacy and culture. Gregorian chant was the dominant liturgical music of the medieval period, from the time it was adopted by Charlemagne's court in the eighth century; but for centuries afterwards it competed with other musical traditions, local repertories from the great centres of Rome, Milan, Ravenna, Benevento, Toledo, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Kievan Rus, and comparative study of these chant traditions can tell us much about music, liturgy, literacy and culture a thousand years ago. This is the first book-length work to look at the issues in a global, comprehensive way, in the manner of the work of Kenneth Levy, the leading exponent of comparative chant studies. It covers the four most fruitful approaches for investigators: the creation and transmission of chant texts, based on the psalms and other sources, and their assemblage into liturgical books; the analysis and comparison of musical modes and scales; the usesof neumatic notation for writing down melodies, and the differences wrought by developmental changes and notational reforms over the centuries; and the use of case studies, in which the many variations in a specific text or melodyare traced over time and geographical distance. The book is therefore of profound importance for historians of medieval music or religion - Western, Byzantine, or Slavonic - and for anyone interested in issues of orality and writing in the transmission of culture. PETER JEFFERY is Professor of Music History, Princeton University. Contributors: JAMES W. McKINNON, MARGOT FASSLER, MICHEL HUGLO, NICOLAS SCHIDLOVSKY, KEITH FALCONER, PETER JEFFERY, DAVID G.HUGHES, SYSSE GUDRUN ENGBERG, CHARLES M. ATKINSON, MILOS VELIMIROVIC, JORGEN RAASTED+, RUTH STEINER, DIMITRIJE STEFANOVIC, ALEJANDRO PLANCHART.

A few selected cases of visions and apparitions are detected and analyzed, including personal interviews with some of the witnesses. Of special interest is the final third of the book: the transposition of medieval and early modern representations of the relations between humans and the divine into the modern art of photography. Christian presents a pictorial examination of the phenomenon, commenting a large number of images, including commercial postcards and family photographs from the first half of past century Europe.

What does it mean to inhabit the life of liturgy? What does it mean to be inhabited by Christ? This book offers a way to rethink what we do when we pray, so that we do not so much call on God for help but join in a conversation. Readers will learn how to think about God through certain habits and practices: how posture effects our perceptions of God and Christ, how feasting on Christ in the Eucharist shapes our understanding of the body-both our individual bodies and the body of the Church. The author also offers tools for forming a deliberate rule of life to ground readers in the transcendent life of liturgy. Readers will recognize the inseparability of the tables of their homes and the Eucharistic Table, relating daily life with Eucharistic life. Dr. Daniel connects the language of the Book of Common Prayer with the everyday realities of ordinary life, compelling the worshiper to discern how daily practices correspond with or fight against her participation in the Eucharistic economy.

* Experiential activities for celebrating the saints * For use in churches, schools, camps, and home settings Many of our experiences in life happen when several generations are together - at church, at home, in our communities. Often we only celebrate the saints on All Saints Sunday or when a particular saint is commemorated in a secular way. This volume in the Faithful Celebration series focuses on some well-known and some not-so-well-known saints, many who are not all officially "sainted" but certainly having lived a life of faith under difficult circumstances. Each event recalling a particular saint includes key ideas, a cluster of activities to experience the key ideas, materials needed, full instructions for implementation, background history and information, music, art, recipes, and prayer resources to use in a small, intimate or large multi-generational group. For children, youth, adults, or any combination of ages any of these activities can take place in any setting. Faithful Celebrations: Making Time for God with the Saints - Patrick of Ireland - Nicholas of Myra - Joan of Arc - Sebastian of Gaul - Absalom Jones of Philadelphia - Julian of Norwich - Emmegahbowh of White Earth

A practical, exercise-filled companion to A Hunger for Healing that puts into practice the Christian principles of healing and growth

For many thousands of people, the Twelve Steps have become the spiritual discipline for a new decade, a way to turn to God and begin a pilgrimage toward wholeness as well as a journey out of addiction. Relating each of the Steps to biblical teaching, J. Keith Miller takes the reader inside the Steps, actually working through each one.

Each section of A Hunger for Healing Workbook begins with one of the Twelve Steps, followed by a biblical quote that touches upon the theme, a suggested reading in A Hunger for Healing, and a concise explanation of the Step and how it relates to spiritual growth. Built on solid biblical principles, the exercises and inventories provided will promote introspection, reflection, and action -- a clear pathway out of compulsion and pain into a world of serenity and healthy interaction with God and others.

Step by Step, this life-transforming program helps readers to

• Acknowledge their need for God's healing power


• Surrender to God's care


• Let God remove character defects


• Reconcile themselves with God and others


• Use prayer to enrich the life of the spirit


• Heal broken lives and relationships

This is the first comprehensive and up-to-date account of the internal arrangement of church buildings in Western Europe between 1500 and 2000, showing how these arrangements have met the liturgical needs of their respective denominations, Catholic and Protestant, over this period. In addition to a chapter looking at the general impact of the Reformation on church buildings, there are separate chapters on the churches of the Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions between the mid-sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, and on the ecclesiological movement of the nineteenth century and the liturgical movement of the twentieth century, both of which have impacted on all the churches of Western Europe over the past 150 years. The book is extensively illustrated with figures in the text and a series of plates and also contains comprehensive guides to both further reading and buildings to visit throughout Western Europe.

Will the Christian church live or die? What is the way ahead? Answering these questions, this book challenges all people of God to seek unity in and beyond the norms of dogma and hierarchy.

Beautifully illustrated in color for young elementary school readers, King of the Shattered Glass is a gentle parable about asking for forgiveness and receiving God's mercy!

Sacrifice dominated the religious landscape of the ancient Mediterranean world for millennia, but its role and meaning changed dramatically in the fourth and fifth centuries with the rise of Christianity. Daniel Ullucci offers a new explanation of this remarkable transformation, in the process demonstrating the complexity of the concept of sacrifice in Roman, Greek, and Jewish religion.
The Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice challenges the predominant scholarly model, which posits a connection between so-called critiques of sacrifice in non-Christian Greek, Latin, and Hebrew texts and the Christian rejection of animal sacrifice. According to this model, pre-Christian authors attacked the propriety of animal sacrifice as a religious practice, and Christians responded by replacing animal sacrifice with a pure, ''spiritual'' 'worship. This historical construction influences prevailing views of animal sacrifice even today, casting it as barbaric, backward, and primitive despite the fact that it is still practiced in such contemporary religions as Islam and Santeria.
Rather than interpret the entire history of animal sacrifice through the lens of the Christian master narrative, Ullucci shows that the ancient texts must be seen not simply as critiques but as part of an ongoing competition between elite cultural producers to define the meaning and purpose of sacrifice. He reveals that Christian authors were not merely purveyors of pure spiritual religion, but a cultural elite vying for legitimacy and influence in societies that long predated them. The Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice is a crucial reinterpretation of the history of one of humanity's oldest and most fascinating rituals.

""Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world "" (John 1:29)
No work of modern literature can usher you so powerfully and intimately into the Savior's heart like "The Day I Was Crucified."
Master storyteller, Gene Edwards (author of Divine Romance) recounts the harrowing scene of Calvary as if the crucifixion narrative was being told by Jesus Himself.
In this book, you will... Encounter the depths of God's unfathomable love as you walk side by side with Jesus during His final moments on Earth. Live in new levels of thankfulness as you come face to face with the full measure of what Jesus carried to the Cross on your behalf. Take an unforgettable journey, where the heartache of the Cross and victory of the Resurrection have never been more real to you. Step into history's most powerful and defining moment as you gaze upon the Lamb of God with new eyes.

In Seven Words of Christmas, bestselling author and pastor Robert Morris explains each word of prophecy: an inspired utterance of a prophet, the words of God through man. He illustrates the story of Jesus surrounding the word, and applies the prophecy to our modern lives.

Find the words of:

• Salvation through Zacharias,
• Favor through Mary,
• Blessing through Elizabeth,
• Guidance through Joseph,
• Joy through the Shepherds,
• Redemption through Anna, and
• Peace through Simeon.

How can children 'develop' spiritually and how do their teachers know when 'development' has occurred? This volume traces the roots and growth of school worship and spiritual development from Victorian times and earlier through the 1960s and beyond in order to see how we have reached the present situation. The subject is examined in various contexts: its historical and cultural background; politics and legislation; philosophy and values; curriculum development. The book addresses the problem of how to define spiritual development and the contentious issue of compulsory school worship. It offers new insights and a thesis for the way forward.