At a recent conference entitled Ancient Wisdom-Anglican Futures, theologians from across the denominational spectrum considered the question, "What does it mean to inhabit the 'Great Tradition' authentically?" As an expression of what C. S. Lewis called "Deep Church," Anglicanism offers a test case of Tradition with a capital "T" in late modernity. Of particular interest is the highly dynamic transmission that has preserved a recognizable "Anglican Way" over the centuries. The process has been enlivened through constant negotiation and exchange with surprising convergences that have brought new life and direction. The contributors to this volume show how "profitable and commodious" (as Richard Hooker has said) the Great Tradition can be in nurturing the worship, communal life, and mission of the Church. But it often demonstrates how hard it is to uphold the varied integrities of historic faith in the contemporary marketplace of religion and, especially, among evangelicals who continue to follow the Canterbury Trail.

Fresh Expressions of Church are one of the most important developments within the contemporary church. There has been - and continues to be - much learning about how to plant Fresh Expressions of church in contemporary culture and about theological resources to support this. Church for Every Context is the first textbook that reflects this learning. Church for Every Context addresses the theology and methodology of Fresh Expressions/church planting. Topics include ecclesiology, Fresh Expressions in the New Testament, social forces behind Fresh Expressions today, theologies to underpin fresh expressions, how fresh expressions develop, the missional dynamics involved, discipleship, worship and how Fresh Expressions can be sustained and supported.

Description: At a recent conference entitled Ancient Wisdom--Anglican Futures, theologians from across the denominational spectrum considered the question, "What does it mean to inhabit the 'Great Tradition' authentically?" As an expression of what C. S. Lewis called "Deep Church," Anglicanism offers a test case of Tradition with a capital "T" in late modernity. Of particular interest is the highly dynamic transmission that has preserved a recognizable "Anglican Way" over the centuries. The process has been enlivened through constant negotiation and exchange with surprising convergences that have brought new life and direction. The contributors to this volume show how "profitable and commodious" (as Richard Hooker has said) the Great Tradition can be in nurturing the worship, communal life, and mission of the Church. But it often demonstrates how hard it is to uphold the varied integrities of historic faith in the contemporary marketplace of religion and, especially, among evangelicals who continue to follow the Canterbury Trail. Contributors: Simon Chan, Tony Clark, Dominic Erdozain, Edith Humphrey, D. Stephen Long, George Sumner, and D. H. Williams. Endorsements: "Evangelicals have too long suffered from a willful amnesia. In their passion for the immediacy of God's voice in the pages of Scripture, they have implicitly stopped their ears to the many and various ways God spoke to our fathers (and mothers). The essays in this volume will help us tune our ears to God's voice in the church's history, even as we listen carefully for his voice in our future." --David Neff, Editor in Chief & Vice President Christianity Today Media Group "Recently there has been an exciting 'ancient-future' resourcement of the larger church. This work explores the contours and nature of that movement, through a veritable cornucopia of essays, from evangelical, to pentecostal and emerging. This intricate mapping announces that the archives of the church are now open to all, whilst at the same time providing a much needed guide to the use of those resources for Christian formation." --Jason Clark Emergent U.K. Coordinator Pastor, Putney Vineyard Church, London, UK "Much more than just presenting a call for allegiance to the Great Tradition, this collection of essays actually engages the tough question what such allegiance might look like on the ground. We find here a common recognition that this effort inevitably involves what T. S. Eliot called a 'great labour.' Happily, this book itself forms an important contribution of this great labour." --Hans Boersma J. I. Packer Professor of Theology Regent College About the Contributor(s): D. H. Williams is Professor of Religion in Patristics and Historical Theology at Baylor University, Waco, Texas. William's recent books include Tradition, Scripture and Interpretation (Baker, 2006). Philip Harrold is Associate Professor of Church History, Trinity School for Ministry, Ambridge, Pennsylvania. Harrold's most recent book is 'A Place Somewhat Apart: The Private Worlds of a Late Nineteenth-Century Public University (Wipf & Stock, 2006).

Description: The story of secularization and religious disestablishment in American higher education is told from the standpoint of a lively community of professors, students, and administrators at the University of Michigan in the late nineteenth century. This campus culture--one of the most closely watched of its day--sheds new light on the personal and cultural meanings of these momentous changes in American intellectual and public life. Here we see how religion was not so much displaced or marginalized in the heyday of university reform as translated into new arenas of public service and scholarly pursuit. The main characters in this story--professors Calvin Thomas and Henry Carter Adams--underwent profound religious crises of faith accompanied by major adjustments in their interpersonal relationships. Together, with students and administrators, their lives constituted a communal biography of religious deconversion. A close examination of these private and public worlds provides a more complete understanding of the dynamics behind new academic policies and intellectual innovations in a leading public university. The non-cognitive, intersubjective, gendered, quasi-religious shadings of academic modernism and early pragmatist philosophy, in particular, come to light in vivid ways. As John Dewey later observed, Michigan became an experimental laboratory for ""new meanings to unfold, new acts to propose."" Endorsements: ""By focusing on two individuals of note--neither of them so noted that we have them typed in advance--he provides a picture of the striving and struggling that went on among students whose crises cannot be written off as merely adolescent. This he follows with a story of how they worked through their struggles and how sensitive they had to be to people they feared they would hurt, or who they were sure would not understand. And Harrold serves well also by providing that close-up of a struggle at a single place, not an insignificant one: the University of Michigan was the largest university in the United States in the period in which these dramas took place. Michigan was much observed as a scene of experiment, and this book shows what the experimenting looked like. . . . I want to invite readers to enjoy, be informed by, and to reflect after reading this previously untold story."" --Martin E. Marty from the Foreword About the Contributor(s): Philip Harrold is Associate Professor of Church History at Winebrenner Theological Seminary. He completed his PhD in the History of Christianity from the University of Chicago Divinity School.