Imagining Jesus In His Own Culture

Author : Jerome H. Neyrey
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1532618174
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Imagining Jesus in His Own Culture written by Jerome H. Neyrey and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-08-09 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every disciple imagines Jesus; reading the Gospels we form images of him and of his surroundings. This has been constant practice for those who desire to know him more clearly. We, however, borrow stuff—from stained glass windows, book illustrations, and the like—which is always familiar to us, but which reflects our, not his, culture. This book invites readers to construct different scenarios about Jesus and his world from the study of his ancient culture. We do this with accuracy because of the advance of cultural studies of his and our worlds. Jesus should look different (wear different clothing, experience different grooming), in settings foreign to us (in houses and boats from his own world). Jesus should speak differently so that the meaning of his words can only be known in his culture. In this book readers travel through the Gospels with specific suggestions about what to see, namely, Jesus in his cultural world. Imagining Jesus also suggests how to listen to him in his cultural language. Did Jesus laugh? How did he pray? This is what the incarnation means: imagining Jesus socialized in a particular culture, at a time foreign to us and in a language strange to us.

Author : Anne Rice
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1448184606
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christ the Lord The Road to Cana written by Anne Rice and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-03-15 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: '[W]hen I found Rice's work I absolutely loved how she took that genre and (...) made [it] feel so contemporary and relevant' Sarah Pinborough, bestselling author of Behind Her Eyes '[Rice wrote] in the great tradition of the gothic' Ramsey Campbell, bestselling author of The Hungry Moon Herod Antipas rules Galilee, Pontius Pilate is the new Roman governor of Judea, and the Roman Empire rules the world. These are turbulent times for Israel, a troubled land of turmoil and insurrection. Now in his thirtieth year, Jesus and his tight-knit family endure a long, dusty winter of disruption and chaos. Whispers of his virgin birth still persist, and while he struggles with the demands of his family and the weight of his great destiny, those around him wait for some sign of the path he will take. But this quiet man of Nazareth is instead called upon to found a ministry which will utterly transform an unsuspecting world ...

Author : T.M. Luhrmann
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691211981
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How God Becomes Real written by T.M. Luhrmann and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hard work required to make God real, how it changes the people who do it, and why it helps explain the enduring power of faith How do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people—as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cognitive science of religion has shown. But it isn’t easy to maintain a sense that there are invisible spirits who care about you. In How God Becomes Real, acclaimed anthropologist and scholar of religion T. M. Luhrmann argues that people must work incredibly hard to make gods real and that this effort—by changing the people who do it and giving them the benefits they seek from invisible others—helps to explain the enduring power of faith. Drawing on ethnographic studies of evangelical Christians, pagans, magicians, Zoroastrians, Black Catholics, Santeria initiates, and newly orthodox Jews, Luhrmann notes that none of these people behave as if gods and spirits are simply there. Rather, these worshippers make strenuous efforts to create a world in which invisible others matter and can become intensely present and real. The faithful accomplish this through detailed stories, absorption, the cultivation of inner senses, belief in a porous mind, strong sensory experiences, prayer, and other practices. Along the way, Luhrmann shows why faith is harder than belief, why prayer is a metacognitive activity like therapy, why becoming religious is like getting engrossed in a book, and much more. A fascinating account of why religious practices are more powerful than religious beliefs, How God Becomes Real suggests that faith is resilient not because it provides intuitions about gods and spirits—but because it changes the faithful in profound ways.

Author : Jonathan Merritt
Publisher : FaithWords
ISBN 13 : 1455519278
Total Pages : 148 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Faith of Our Own written by Jonathan Merritt and published by FaithWords. This book was released on 2012-05-08 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every day, major headlines tell the story of how Christianity is attempting to influence American culture and politics. But statistics show that young Americans are disenchanted with a faith that has become culturally antagonistic and too closely aligned with partisan politics. In this personal yet practical work, Jonathan Merritt uncovers the changing face of American Christianity by uniquely examining the coming of age of a new generation of Christians. Jonathan Merritt illuminates the spiritual ethos of this new generation of believers who engage the world with Christ-centered faith but an un-polarized political perspective. Through personal stories and biblically rooted commentary this scion of a leading evangelical family takes a close, thoughtful look at the changing religious and political environment, addressing such divisive issues as abortion, gay marriage, environmental use and care, race, war, poverty, and the imbalance of world wealth. Through Scripture, the examples of Jesus, and personal defining faith experiences, he distills the essential truths at the core of a Christian faith that is now just coming of age.

Author : Willie James Jennings
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300163088
Total Pages : 582 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Christian Imagination written by Willie James Jennings and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-25 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has Christianity, a religion premised upon neighborly love, failed in its attempts to heal social divisions? In this ambitious and wide-ranging work, Willie James Jennings delves deep into the late medieval soil in which the modern Christian imagination grew, to reveal how Christianity's highly refined process of socialization has inadvertently created and maintained segregated societies. A probing study of the cultural fragmentation-social, spatial, and racial-that took root in the Western mind, this book shows how Christianity has consistently forged Christian nations rather than encouraging genuine communion between disparate groups and individuals. Weaving together the stories of Zurara, the royal chronicler of Prince Henry, the Jesuit theologian Jose de Acosta, the famed Anglican Bishop John William Colenso, and the former slave writer Olaudah Equiano, Jennings narrates a tale of loss, forgetfulness, and missed opportunities for the transformation of Christian communities. Touching on issues of slavery, geography, Native American history, Jewish-Christian relations, literacy, and translation, he brilliantly exposes how the loss of land and the supersessionist ideas behind the Christian missionary movement are both deeply implicated in the invention of race. Using his bold, creative, and courageous critique to imagine a truly cosmopolitan citizenship that transcends geopolitical, nationalist, ethnic, and racial boundaries, Jennings charts, with great vision, new ways of imagining ourselves, our communities, and the landscapes we inhabit.

Author : J. Matthew Ashley
Publisher : University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN 13 : 0268203164
Total Pages : 582 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Renewing Theology written by J. Matthew Ashley and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2022-07-15 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive study investigates the role that Ignatian spirituality has played in the renewal of academic theology using three prominent Jesuits as case studies. Over several centuries, spirituality has come to define a field of concerns and themes increasingly treated separately from those of academic theology, as if the latter had little relation to the former. This raises the question for us today: How is spirituality related to the practice of theology? In Renewing Theology, J. Matthew Ashley provides an answer by turning to Ignatian spirituality and three prominent twentieth-century theologians who embraced its spiritual resources: Karl Rahner, Ignacio Ellacuría, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio—that is, Pope Francis. Ashley begins his investigation by considering the historical origins of the widening separation between spirituality and academic theology in the Christian West. He provides an initial overview of Ignatian spirituality, focusing on the openness and multidimensionality of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, presented here as a text in which the conditions of modernity that defined its author’s world are present, at least incipiently. Ashley then offers three case studies in order to show how each Jesuit—Rahner, Ellacuría, and Pope Francis—responded to the challenges of modernity in a way that is uniquely nourished and illuminated by themes constitutive of Ignatian spirituality. Their theologies, Ashley suggests, evince a particular clarity and force when the Ignatian spirituality that animates them is foregrounded. Providing new and productive avenues into understanding the theologies of these three individuals, this sophisticated and enlightening book will interest scholars and students of systematic theology, as well as readers who are interested in the future of theology and spirituality in a fragmented age.

Author : Paul M. Gould
Publisher : Zondervan Academic
ISBN 13 : 0310530504
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cultural Apologetics written by Paul M. Gould and published by Zondervan Academic. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renewing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination so that we can become compelling witnesses of the Gospel in today's culture. Christianity has an image problem. While the culture we inhabit presents us with an increasingly anti-Christian and disenchanted position, the church in the West has not helped its case by becoming anti-intellectual, fragmented, and out of touch with the relevancy of Jesus to all aspects of contemporary life. The muting of the Christian voice, its imagination, and its collective conscience have diminished the prospect of having a genuine missionary encounter with others today. Cultural apologetics attempts to demonstrate not only the truth of the Gospel but also its desirability by reestablishing Christianity as the answer that satisfies our three universal human longings—truth, goodness, and beauty. In Cultural Apologetics, philosopher and professor Paul Gould sets forth a fresh and uplifting model for cultural engagement—rooted in the biblical account of Paul's speech in Athens—which details practical steps for establishing Christianity as both true and beautiful, reasonable and satisfying. You'll be introduced to: The idea of cultural apologetics as distinct from traditional apologetics. The path from disenchantment with how we understand reality to re-enchantment with the reality of the spiritual nature of things. The practical tools of good cultural engagement: conscience, reason, and imagination. Equip yourself to see, and help others see, the world as it is through the lens of the Spirit—deeply beautiful, mysterious, and sacred. With creative insights, Cultural Apologetics prepares readers to share a vision of the Christian faith that is both plausible and desirable, offering clarity for those who have become disoriented in the haze of modern Western culture.

Author : Gregory C. Jenks
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1666752495
Total Pages : 195 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cultural Afterlives of Jesus written by Gregory C. Jenks and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-06-20 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays explores the impact of Jesus within and beyond Christianity, including his many afterlives in literature and the arts, social just and world religions during the past two thousand years and especially in the present global context. This third volume focuses on the diverse afterlives of Jesus within contemporary culture and the arts. Moving beyond the explicitly religious afterlives traced in the first two volumes, this set of essay traces selected afterlives of Jesus within Indigenous cultures around the Pacific, as well as in the arts and in the contested fields of gender and sexuality. The contributors include religion scholars from diverse cultural contexts, as well as faith practitioners reflecting on Jesus within their own particular context. While the essays are all grounded in critical scholarship, reflective practice, or both, they are expressed in nontechnical language that is accessible to interested nonspecialists.

Author : John Pfordresher
Publisher : Paulist Press
ISBN 13 : 9780809144532
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jesus and the Emergence of a Catholic Imagination written by John Pfordresher and published by Paulist Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Authentic hope is the gift Rebecca Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci offer readers of EcoJustice Education.... We learn what it means to recover the ancient arts and skills of cultivating commons, common sense, and community collaborations in our hard times." Madhu Suri Prakash, Pennsylvania State University "EcoJustice Education should become a core part of teacher education programs across the country as it provides both the theory and examples of classroom practices essential for making the transition to a sustainable future." C. A. Bowers, author, international speaker, and retired professor Designed for introductory social foundations or multicultural education courses, this text offers a powerful model for cultural ecological analysis and pedagogy of responsibility, providing teachers and teacher educators with the information and classroom practices they need to help develop citizens who are prepared to support and achieve diverse, democratic, and sustainable societies in an increasingly globalized world. The Companion Website for this book (www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415872515) offers a wealth of resources linked to each chapter.

Author : Charles Edward Jefferson
Publisher : Barry Gray Mattox
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 183 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Character of Jesus: A Paraphrase for Twenty-First-Century Readers written by Charles Edward Jefferson and published by Barry Gray Mattox. This book was released on 2024-04-17 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people have fallen in love with the original 1908 edition of The Character of Jesus as a resource that creates and reinforces their love and awe for the person Jesus Christ. Numerous Christians prize Dr. Jefferson’s work as one of their favorite books and as a source for reinvigorating their faith. This paraphrased edition of the book makes this great work more available to today’s readers (including younger readers) who might find early 20th-century language and events harder to comprehend. This edition is very useful for personal character studies that not only show the perfection of Jesus Christ, but create personal convictions in the reader to aspire to those same 26 characters traits. With the aid of an AI tool and some additional editing, we have been able to “re-write” the book to a 9th-grade reading level “paraphrase.” (By comparison, the NIV Bible is written in a 7th -grade reading level.) We have endeavored to maintain the spirit of the book, while updating some of the content in order to make the work consistent with modern wording and references. This book is recommended to anyone wishing to know Jesus better and so to aspire to have Jesus’ heart and character.