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Books > Christianity > Protestantism & Protestant Churches
Explores the role of race and consumer culture in attracting urban
congregants to an evangelical church The Urban Church Imagined
illuminates the dynamics surrounding white urban evangelical
congregations' approaches to organizational vitality and
diversifying membership. Many evangelical churches are moving to
urban, downtown areas to build their congregations and attract
younger, millennial members. The urban environment fosters two
expectations. First, a deep familiarity and reverence for popular
consumer culture, and second, the presence of racial diversity.
Church leaders use these ideas when they imagine what a "city
church" should look like, but they must balance that with what it
actually takes to make this happen. In part, racial diversity is
seen as key to urban churches presenting themselves as "in touch"
and "authentic." Yet, in an effort to seduce religious consumers,
church leaders often and inadvertently end up reproducing racial
and economic inequality, an unexpected contradiction to their goal
of inclusivity. Drawing on several years of research, Jessica M.
Barron and Rhys H. Williams explore the cultural contours of one
such church in downtown Chicago. They show that church leaders and
congregants' understandings of the connections between race,
consumer culture, and the city is a motivating factor for many
members who value interracial interactions as a part of their
worship experience. But these explorations often unintentionally
exclude members along racial and classed lines. Indeed, religious
organizations' efforts to engage urban environments and foster
integrated congregations produce complex and dynamic relationships
between their racially diverse memberships and the cultivation of a
safe haven in which white, middle-class leaders can feel as though
they are being a positive force in the fight for religious vitality
and racial diversity. The book adds to the growing constellation of
studies on urban religious organizations, as well as emerging
scholarship on intersectionality and congregational characteristics
in American religious life. In so doing, it offers important
insights into racially diverse congregations in urban areas, a
growing trend among evangelical churches. This work is an important
case study on the challenges faced by modern churches and urban
institutions in general.
Among all groups in Christendom, the Pentecostal/Charismatic
movement is second in size only to the Roman Catholic Church, with
growth that shows no signs of abatement. Its adherents declare the
Pentecostal Movement, which began at Azusa Street in 1906, to be
unprecedented in Christian history since the first century of the
Church in its embrace of manifestations of the Holy Spirit such as
divine healing, miracles, and speaking in tongues. Yet although it
may be unprecedented in size and rate of growth, Stanley M. Burgess
argues that is hardly unprecedented in concept. In "Christian
Peoples of the Spirit," Burgess collects documentary evidence for
two thousand years of individuals and groups who have evidenced
Pentecostal/charismatic-like spiritual giftings, worship, and
experience.
The documents in this collection, bolstered by concise editorial
introductions, offer the original writings of a wide variety of
"peoples of the spirit," from Tertullian and Antony of the Desert
to the Shakers and Sunder Singh, as well as of their enemies or
detractors. Though virtually all of the parties in this volume
considered themselves Spirit-gifted, or given special qualities by
God, they are in many ways as different from one another as the
cultures from which they have emerged. In providing such an
impressive array of voices, Burgess convincingly demonstrates that
there have indeed been Spirit-filled worship and charismatic saints
in all periods of church history.
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Northern Lights
(Hardcover)
Jason Byassee; Foreword by Samuel Wells
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R1,070
R904
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From the 1920s on, Karl Barth's thought was received with great
interest not only by Protestants but also by Catholic theologians,
who analyzed it in detail. This study outlines how and why this
happened, especially in the period leading up to Vatican II. Dahlke
shows how the preoccupation with Barth's 'Epistle to the Romans'
and the Church Dogmatics' triggered a theological renewal among
Catholic theologians. In addition to Hans Urs von Balthasar's
critical appropriation of Barth's thought the the controversy about
the issue of analogia entis with Erich Przywara is also dealt with.
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