This edited volume explores the richness and diversity of Christian musical traditions in the Americas. The essays present a cross-section of current scholarship on Christian sacred music and the approaches to studying them in context.
Delves into the ancient debate regarding the nature and purpose of the seven sacraments What are the sacraments? For centuries, this question has elicited a lively discussion and among theologians, and a variety of answers that do anything but outline a unified belief concerning these fundamental ritual structures. In this extremely ......
Delves into the ancient debate regarding the nature and purpose of the seven sacraments What are the sacraments? For centuries, this question has elicited a lively discussion and among theologians, and a variety of answers that do anything but outline a unified belief concerning these fundamental ritual structures. In this extremely ......
This textbook not only lays out the religious studies framework of a contemporary understanding of worship, it also offers a full history of Christian worship in each historical period, including the American experience.
John Chrysostom and Domestic Rituals in Fourth-Century Antioch
What did it mean for ordinary believers to live a Christian life in late antiquity? In Christians at Home, Blake Leyerle explores this question through the writings, teachings, and reception of John Chrysostom-a priest of Antioch who went on to become the bishop of Constantinople in 397 AD. Through elaborate spatial and ritual recommendations, ......
Scripture readings and brief meditations serve as the backdrop for poetry, new seasonal blessings, mealtime prayers, songs and activities that prepare the home for the celebration of the Savior's birth. Simple blessings enable children to participate in prayer at the Advent wreath, around the Christmas tree, and by the manger. Seasonal customs ......
The Hymn Texts and Translations of F. Samuel Janzow
The career of F. Samuel Janzow (1913-2001) was marked by roles as pastor, professor, and scholar. In all of these he served with great humility, from shepherding a small congregation in London during the blitz, to teaching countless college students, to his many editorial contributions to Lutheran Worship (1982). An ordained Lutheran pastor with a ......
Meditations for the Weekdays of Advent, Lent and Easter
In his accompanying volume to Brightest and Best: A Companion to the Lesser Feasts and Fasts, Sam Portaro offers meditations for each of the weekdays for the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, and Easter.
Edwards discusses spiritual gifts from a biblical perspective, and guides us in the discovery of our particular spiritual gifts through step-by-step exercises and challenging self-evaluation.
"Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace." And with that sharp warning to his own church, which was engaged in bitter conflict with the official nazified state church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer began his book Discipleship (formerly entitled The Cost of Discipleship). Originally published in 1937, it soon ......
Embodying Confidence and Grace by Callista Isabelle will guide those who serve as presiding ministers for the assembly's worship. It includes reflection on the essentials of presiding and practical guidance for how to prepare and lead the assembly with confidence and grace.
Thornton's classic text surveying the English pastoral tradition answers basic questions: How does an Anglican spiritual guide go about the job? and What body of knowledge is required for competent guidance and how should it be applied? Thornton's survey moves from the New Testament to St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the English tradition's ......
The Protestant Interpretation Problem and an Embodied Hermeneutic
This book delineates the individualist "interpretation problem" that has long beset Protestant biblical interpretation, and engages theological resources that could serve to move beyond it. Lauren Smelser White argues that readers of Scripture-specifically those who long to submit their lives to God's transforming Word, which they believe the ......
Explore a rich, ancient, multifaceted, deeply Christian baptismal practice and theology. This book invites us to ask important questions about the central mystery of Holy Baptism and the fullness of the baptized life. The Worship Matters Studies Series examines key worship issues through studies by pastors, musicians, and lay people from ......
Religion and Society in New York's Early Republic Congregations
Tells the diverse story of four congregations in New York City as they navigated the social and political changes of the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. In the fifty years after the Constitution was signed in 1787, New York City grew from a port town of 30,000 to a metropolis of over half a million residents. This rapid ......
Religion and Society in New York's Early Republic Congregations
Examines the histories of four famous church congregations in early Republic New York City to uncover the lived experience of these historical subjects, and just how religious experience and social change connected in the dynamic setting of early Republic New York.
The captivating biography of Alma Christina Lind Swensson will inspire every reader. Her work at Bethany College and Bethany Lutheran Church in Lindsborg, Kansas, demonstrated that women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provided leadership in the church, both locally and nationally. Born in Broddarp, Sweden, Alma Christina Lind ......