The Values Debate: A Voice from the Pupils presents findings from a survey conducted among 30,000 13-15-year-olds throughout England and Wales, giving particular attention to social, personal and moral issues. The analysis begins with an overview of what teenagers really think. What are their views on sex, family, AIDS and homosexuality? What stand do they take on tobacco, alcohol and drugs? What values do they hold on pollution, poverty and responsibility for the developing world? What value to they place on themselves and on their future lives?

The Values Debate: A Voice from the Pupils presents findings from a survey conducted among 30,000 13-15-year-olds throughout England and Wales, giving particular attention to social, personal and moral issues. The analysis begins with an overview of what teenagers really think. What are their views on sex, family, AIDS and homosexuality? What stand do they take on tobacco, alcohol and drugs? What values do they hold on pollution, poverty and responsibility for the developing world? What value to they place on themselves and on their future lives?

Every Sunday all over the world people rise up and claim to speak in the name of God. It is an astonishing thing to do and an astonishing claim to make. It is small wonder that the sermon has been the focus of debate, discussion and investigation. It has been dismissed as irrelevant in today's culture and has become the butt of numerous jokes and caricatures. Yet the claim persists that these human words in some way can become God's message to these hearers. This collection of twenty-nine articles by international experts in the area of homiletics coincides with the revival of interest in...

This book reflects on the idea that religion represents a force in the public realms of society. The empirical evidence reveals a regained relevance for and commitment to religion re-emerging in secularized countries, but also that it does so in a new form: unexpected, foreign, and maybe even dangerous. If religion regains public significance in social debates, what are its characteristics in terms of topics and interests, actors and parties? How is this experienced and evaluated by different groups in society? What are the motives of religious groups and churches to re-enter the public...

Jung's theory of psychological type distinguishes between the four functions of sensing, intuition, thinking and feeling. This book uses type theory to explore 26 passages from Matthew's Gospel as they appear in the Revised Common Lectionary. The insights gained provide an invaluable resource for teachers and leaders, as well as a key tool for personal meditation. The Theory has profound implications for Christian leaders, who need to nurture all four psychological types in their congregations, and also for how individual Christians meditate on scripture to nourish their whole selves. The...

This is a practical book about preaching, written for preachers by two theologians who themselves preach each Sunday. This useful guide is grounded in an innovative and highly original theory about the nature of preaching known as the SIFT method (sensing, intuition, thinking and feeling), which draws together the best of contemporary scholarship about hermeneutics with compelling insights from modern research concerning psychological type. Leslie Francis and Andrew Village provide concrete examples of the SIFT method of biblical hermeneutics and liturgical preaching. This approach releases...

Sharing Friendship represents a post-liberal approach to ecclesiology and theology generated out of the history, practices and traditions of the Anglican Church. Drawing on the theological ethics of Stanley Hauerwas, this book explores the way friendship for the stranger emerges from contextually grounded reflection and conversations with contemporary Anglican theologians within the English tradition, including John Milbank, Oliver Oa Donovan, Rowan Williams, Daniel Hardy and Anthony Thiselton. Avoiding abstract definitions of character, mission or friendship, John Thomson explores how the...

Despite many churches claiming that the Bible is highly significant for their doctrine and practice, questions about how we read the Bible are rarely made explicit. Based on ethnographic research in English churches, Congregational Hermeneutics explores this dissonance and moves beyond descriptions to propose ways of enriching hermeneutical practices in congregations. Characterised as hermeneutical apprenticeship, this is not just a matter of learning certain skills, but of cultivating hermeneutical virtues such as faithfulness, community, humility, confidence and courage. These virtues are...

Despite many churches claiming that the Bible is highly significant for their doctrine and practice, questions about how we read the Bible are rarely made explicit. Based on ethnographic research in English churches, Congregational Hermeneutics explores this dissonance and moves beyond descriptions to propose ways of enriching hermeneutical practices in congregations. Characterised as hermeneutical apprenticeship, this is not just a matter of learning certain skills, but of cultivating hermeneutical virtues such as faithfulness, community, humility, confidence and courage. These virtues are...