Can you imagine going to an all you can eat seafood smorgasbord and only choosing salad, soup, and rolls? Of course not! However, we do the same thing with God's smorgasbord of blessings""we pick and choose. In this small but mighty book you will see how your choices can hurt you and, more importantly, hurt God. With an open heart and mind, The Smorgasbord Faith will walk you down a path of awareness regarding the choices in your everyday life that rob you of all of God's best.
Contemporary Christian critique often talks about postmodernism apocalyptically, in terms of cultural crisis and decline; instead, the contributors to this volume believe that there is a new place for Christian entrÃ(c)es on the academic Smorgasbord of postmodernity, and they see the postmodern turn as an opportunity for fresh perspectives on the spiritual dimensions of reading literature. These twenty scholars are an eclectic group, differing in theological and theoretical commitments, but all identifying as Christian. In this collection they enter into dialogue with a wide range of contemporary literary theorists and theoretical perspectives, and offer new readings of primary texts informed by both these theoretical constructs and their Christian faith. The manuscript strikes out in important new directions in its sympathetic reading of postmodern theory from a Christian perspective, and, even more significantly, in its careful and measured dialogic approach to the relationship of Christian thought and contemporary literary theory. Daniel Coleman, Canada Research Chair in Critical Ethnicity and Race Studies, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University Too often Christian literary critics and theologians have preemptively dismissed postmodern theory, even as secular critics have been equally dismissive about the contributions that the Christian faith tradition makes to the study of literature. This volume successfully brings these two worlds together in innovative, at times challenging, and always rich ways. I do not know of a similar volume in existence, a work that gathers in one convenient publication a wide-ranging set of discussions of contemporary literary theory by Christian scholars. The editor has gathered an impressive and important set of papers here, and I believe the volume will raise much interest and provoke a good deal of constructive debate. Susan VanZanten Gallagher, Professor of English, Director, Center for Scholarship and Faculty Development, Seattle Pacific University
Neighbors says it's like fingernails on the chalkboard when someone makes the scriptures say whatever they want them to say when God meant something completely different. So many people take the scriptures out of context to fit their beliefs instead of the other way around. We can't pick and choose which scriptures we like and leave the rest. If God didn't want us to know certain things, He wouldn't have put them in the Bible. Deuteronomy 29:29 says, "The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law." Neighbors has found the scriptures being twisted just a bit in every church he's attended and even visited. For instance, most churches teach the misconception that the Ten Commandments are still alive and active. The scriptures tell a very different story. Galatians 3:13 says, "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law." Galatians 2:21 says, "I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." The full story is mapped out in chapter 1. This book is intended to help you correct many misconceptions about so many scriptures that are taken out of context.
Recounts the author's experiences founding a faith-based community garden in rural North Carolina, and emphasizes how growing one's own food can help readers reconnect with the land and divine faith.
An updated edition of the classic introduction to the history and beliefs of Unitarian Universalism—from a senior minister of the Unitarian Church For those contemplating religious choices, Unitarian Universalism offers an appealing alternative to religious denominations that stress theological creeds over individual conviction and belief. Featuring two new chapters, a revealing and entertaining foreword by best-selling author Robert Fulghum, and a new preface by UU moderator Denise Davidoff, this updated edition of the classic introductory text on Unitarian Universalism explores the many sources of the living tradition of this ‘chosen faith’.
"Those who fail to learn from history may not get a chance to repeat it. Some economists have said the years of robust economic growth and expanding opportunity are gone for good. But are they reading the right text? Godonomics explores the core biblical teachings that provide the only practical, dependable solution to economic uncertainty. By following Scripture's guidelines we can ensure the financial well-being of our families--no matter what might happen on the national or global stage. New to this edition: a guide to help parents mentor their children from grade school to young adulthood; equipping them with the vision and tools they need to lay the foundation for financial success. Let Godonomics show you why a strong work ethic, saving over borrowing, generous giving, and the reduction of entitlements combine to form the only path to economic stability and financial health"--Page 4 of cover
In the twenty-first century, mass media corporations are often seen as profit-hungry money machines. It was a different world in the early days of mass communication in America. Faith in Reading tells the remarkable story of the noncommercial religious origins of our modern media culture. In the early nineteenth century, a few visionary entrepreneurs decided the time was right to reach everyone in America through the medium of print. Though they were modern businessmen, their publishing enterprises were not commercial businesses but nonprofit societies committed to the publication of traditional religious texts. Drawing on organizational reports and archival sources, David Paul Nord shows how the managers of Bible and religious tract societies made themselves into large-scale manufacturers and distributors of print. These organizations believed it was possible to place the same printed message into the hands of every man, woman, and child in America. Employing modern printing technologies and business methods, they were remarkably successful, churning out millions of Bibles, tracts, religious books, and periodicals. They mounted massive campaigns to make books cheap and plentiful by turning them into modern, mass-produced consumer goods. Nord demonstrates how religious publishers learned to work against the flow of ordinary commerce. They believed that reading was too important to be left to the "market revolution," so they turned the market on its head, seeking to deliver their product to everyone, regardless of ability or even desire to buy. Wedding modern technology and national organization to a traditional faith in reading, these publishing societies imagined and then invented mass media in America.
From the pages of America’s most influential magazine come eight decades of holiday cheer—plus the occasional comical coal in the stocking—in one incomparable collection. Sublime and ridiculous, sentimental and searing, Christmas at The New Yorker is a gift of great writing and drawing by literary legends and laugh-out-loud cartoonists. Here are seasonal stories, poems, memoirs, and more, including such classics as John Cheever’s 1949 story “Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor,” about an elevator operator in a Park Avenue apartment building who experiences the fickle power of charity; John Updike’s “The Carol Sing,” in which a group of small-town carolers remember an exceptionally enthusiastic fellow singer (“How he would jubilate, how he would God-rest those merry gentlemen, how he would boom out when the male voices became King Wenceslas”); and Richard Ford’s acerbic and elegiac 1998 story “Crèche,” in which an unmarried Hollywood lawyer spends an unsettling holiday with her sister’ s estranged husband and kids. Here, too, are S. J. Perelman’s 1936 “Waiting for Santy,” a playlet in the style of Clifford Odets labor drama (the setting: “The sweatshop of Santa Claus, North Pole”), and Vladimir Nabokov’s heartbreaking 1975 story “Christ-mas,” in which a father grieving for his lost son in a world “ghastly with sadness” sees a tiny miracle on Christmas Eve. And it wouldn’t be Christmas—or The New Yorker—without dozens of covers and cartoons by Addams, Arno, Chast, and others, or the mischievous verse of Roger Angell, Calvin Trillin, and Ogden Nash (“Do you know Mrs. Millard Fillmore Revere?/On her calendar, Christmas comes three hundred and sixty-five times a year”). From Jazz Age to New Age, E. B. White to Garrison Keillor, these works represent eighty years of wonderful keepsakes for Christmas, from The New Yorker to you.
Christian ministry is deeply concerned with proclaiming the transforming power of God??'s gift of faith in the daily lives of disciples. How is it, then, that so often Christian faith fails to orient our lives? Christian Scharen offers the compelling argument that such a way of life needs communities and leaders that build and communicate faith as foundation. Pastors will be able to impart this vision of faith, he cautions, only if they themselves are compelled by it and if their parishioners find that the model helps them make sense of life as a whole. Faith as a Way of Life is one response to this call for reflection on Christian faith as an orienting force impacting every aspect of daily life. Scharen examines the powerful languages that can replace faith language? emotion-driven therapeutic and results-driven managerial models? and shows how their domination leads to faith becoming a weak sibling. He directly engages the problems these languages often lead to with the hope of fostering pastoral leadership grounded in a vision of faith as a way of life. Faith as a Way of Life is an engaging and encouraging examination of how pastoral leaders can model and mediate faith as the beating heart pumping life-blood through every sphere of life
