Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0787903361 ISBN 13: 9780787903367

Publisher: Jossey-Bass Inc Pub, 1997

Synopsis

A sourcebook for Christians seeking meaningful ways to keep faith alive explores the occurrences of everyday life, placing ordinary activities in both a biblical and historical context and helping readers rediscover God's presence in their lives. 15,000 first printing. Tour.

About this title

About the Author

DOROTHY C. BASS is a noted church historian and director of the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith.

From the Back Cover

A sourcebook for Christians who search out meaningful ways to ?keep the faith? in their everyday lives.In recent years a wave of thoughtful Christians have looked to Eastern traditions and New Age ideas to find spiritual nourishment, unaware of the riches within their own faith. For these seekers, a weekly visit to their local church is simply not enough. They search for ways to bring their faith into daily life.Dorothy Bass and the other contributors to this multi-denominational collection show these Christians how they can shape a faithful way of life during our challenging times at work, at home, and in our communities. Bass and her co-writers explore the stuff of everyday life, placing ordinary activities in a biblical and historical context and discovering in them opportunities to realize God's active presence in life. Readers from many denominations, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, will find inspiring essays on hospitality, keeping Sabbath, community governance, dying well, and forgiveness.

From the Inside Flap

Many Christians are looking for ways to deepen their relationship with God by practicing their faith in everyday life. Some go on retreats but are often disappointed to find that the integrated life they experienced in a place apart is difficult to recreate in their day-to-day world. Many thoughtful, educated Christians search for spiritual guidance in Eastern religious traditions, unaware of the great riches within their own heritage. To all these seekers, Practicing Our Faith offers help that is rooted in Christian faith and tradition. Refusing to leave our beliefs in the realm of theory, this book explores twelve central Christian practices shared activities that address fundamental human needs and that, woven together, form a way of life. The contributors explore in depth each practice such as keeping Sabbath, honoring the body, and forgiving one another by placing it in its historical and biblical context, reexamining its relevance to our times, and showing how it gives depth and meaning to daily life. Shaped by the Christian community over the centuries yet richly grounded in the experiences of living communities today, these practices show us how Christian spiritual disciplines can become an integral part of how we live each day. The book's thirteen contributors, who come from diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds, draw on their rich shared experience as believers, theologians, ethicists, and educators. Informed by the wisdom of the Christian tradition yet alert to the needs of our time, they illustrate how we can conduct our daily lives in concert with all creation and in communion with God. The Practices:

• Honoring the body
• Hospitality
• Household economics
• Saying yes and saying no
• Keeping Sabbath
• Testimony
• Discernment
• Shaping communities
• Forgiveness
• Healing
• Dying well
• Singing our lives

Reviews

Editor Bass, a United Church minister and historian of American religion, and Craig Dykstra, a Presbyterian minister and president of religion at Lilly Endowment, Inc., helped facilitate a dialog among 13 theologians and educators from a variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds. Their responses, represented here, explore vital ways to apply Christian tradition and practice to everyday life in a world that demands continuous personal change and discernment. A thoughtful discussion of possibilities for responding to the challenges of faith through the shared dimensions of spiritual life.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass Inc Pub
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0787903361
• ISBN 13: 9780787903367
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232
• Editor: Bass Dorothy C.