Featuring the latest library titles to hit our shelves this month
EDITED BY MALCOLM JOHNSON AND JOANNA WALKER
Spiritual Dimensions of Aging
A special mention for the chapter by Elizabeth Mackinlay Aging and Spirituality across Faiths and Cultures
This item was also donated by Elizabeth.
Our understandings of both ageing and spirituality are changing rapidly in the twenty-first century, and grasping the significance of later life spirituality is now crucial in the context of extended longevity. Spiritual Dimensions of Ageing will inform and engage those who study or practise in all fields that relate to the lives of older people, especially in social, psychological and health-related domains, but also wherever the maintenance and development of spiritual meaning and purpose are recognised as important for human flourishing. Bringing together an international group of leading scholars across the fields of psychology, theology, history, philosophy, sociology and gerontology, the volume distils the latest advances in research on spirituality and ageing, and engages in vigorous discussion about how we can interpret this learning for the benefit of older people and those who seek to serve and support them.
WILLIAM J GRIMM
In Season and Out, homilies for Year A
The Catholic liturgical calendar is replete with feasts and celebrations that may or may not fall on Sundays. In this volume, Fr William Grimm complements his homilies for the annual cycles (A, B and C) with homilies for feasts that occur each year. For us in the 21st Century, it is not enough simply to understand what the readings mean as those who composed them intended us to grasp. Our challenge and opportunity is to find out what they mean in our time and contexts two millennia later. Speaking the Word in our time and for our places is the challenge of preaching and, in this volume, Fr Grimm offers his considered reflections on what that task requires. Source
MICHAEL F. BIRD
An Anomalous Jew: Paul among Jews, Greeks, and Romans
Though Paul is often lauded as the first great Christian theologian and a champion for Gentile inclusion in the church, in his own time he was universally regarded as a strange and controversial person. In this book Pauline scholar Michael Bird explains why.
An Anomalous Jew presents the figure of Paul in all his complexity with his blend of common and controversial Jewish beliefs and a faith in Christ that brought him into conflict with the socio-religious scene around him. Bird elucidates how the apostle Paul was variously perceived — as a religious deviant by Jews, as a divisive figure by Jewish Christians, as a purveyor of dubious philosophy by Greeks, and as a dangerous troublemaker by the Romans. Source
LISA J. DEBOER
Visual Arts in the Worshiping Church
Although numerous studies have examined biblical and theological rationales for using the visual arts in worship, this book by Lisa J. DeBoer fills in a piece of the picture missing so far — the social dimensions of both our churches and the various art worlds represented in our congregations.
The first part of the book looks at Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism in turn — including case studies of specific congregations — showing how each tradition’s use of the visual arts reveals an underlying ecclesiology. DeBoer then focuses on six themes that emerge when Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant uses of the visual arts are examined together — the arts as expressions of the church’s local and universal character, the meanings attributed to particular styles of art for the church, the role of the arts in enculturating the gospel, and more.
DeBoer’s Visual Arts in the Worshiping Church will focus and deepen the thinking of pastors, worship leaders, artists, students, and laypeople regarding what the arts might do in the midst of their congregations. Source
