Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Christianity - Presbyterian

Fourteen Presbyterian scholars enter into conversations with the confessions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and examine the major theological themes that make the confessions such foundational commitments of faith. This collection of insightful essays provides readers with a clear understanding of the confessions from different periods of the church's life. These conversations with the confessions found in the PC(USA)'s Book of Confessions include some illuminating commentary on why they were written and demonstrate how they can be used to address major theological issues. This...

From start to finish, the Bible indicates that there is an immediate connection between God's long-term vision and our immediate calling. Using Ephesians 4:1-6 as a base, award-winning Bible study writer and educator Janice Catron skillfully uses Old and New Testament passages to explore six aspects of our calling as Christians (relationship, choice, new identity, way of life, competence, and ministry) and how this calling relates to God's vision. Ideal for individual as well as group study, God's Vision, Our Calling includes reflection questions at the end of each chapter and the...

Histories of missions to American Indian communities usually tell a sad and predictable story about the destructive impact of missionary work on Native culture and religion. Many historians conclude that American Indian tribes who have maintained a cultural identity have done so only because missionaries were unable to destroy it. In Creating Christian Indians, Bonnie Sue Lewis relates how the Nez Perce and the Dakota Indians became Presbyterians yet incorporated Native culture and tradition into their new Christian identities.

Lewis focuses on the rise of Native clergy and their forging...

In an exciting reinterpretation of the early nineteenth century, Leo Hirrel demonstrates the importance of religious ideas by exploring the relationship between religion and reform efforts during a crucial period in American history. The result is a work that moves the history of antebellum reform to a higher level of sophistication.

Hirrel focuses upon New School Congregationalists and Presbyterians who served at the forefront of reform efforts and provided critical leadership to anti-Catholic, temperance, antislavery, and missionary movements. Their religion was an attempt to...

In this volume, Luther Ivory reflects on how to live the call to discipleship as an individual and as a community. He describes the significance of active listening in the invitational rhythm of call and response and clarifies the biblical mandate for individuals and the church to respond to the call to join God in the struggle against evil and to establish righteousness in the world. Ultimately, he demonstrates for readers how to live a "life of engaged piety," which links reverence for God to the act of confronting injustice.

The Foundations of Christian Faith series enables...

From its founding in 1837 the board sent over 450 missionaries to at least nineteen diverse and widely separated Indian tribes, with a goal of uplifting them into the Protestant...

With this new lectionary commentary series, Westminster John Knox offers the most extensive resource for preaching on the market today. When complete, the twelve volumes of the series will cover all the Sundays in the three-year lectionary cycle, along with movable occasions, such as Christmas Day, Epiphany, Holy Week, and All Saints' Day.

For each lectionary text, preachers will find four brief essays--one each on the theological, pastoral, exegetical, and homiletical challenges of the text. This gives preachers sixteen different approaches to the proclaimation of the Word on any...

Rowboat churches depend largely on human effort. When church budgets shrink and membership declines, rowboat churches frantically row harder against a current, often frustrated and disappointed at their efforts. Sailboat churches, on the other hand, take up the oars, hoist sails, and rely on the Holy Spirit to guide them.

Arguing that churches should be "sailboats," Joan S. Gray encourages readers to shift concern from the many daily, practical concerns of their local church to fresh ideas that can be found using the guidance of...

This timely new leadership guide for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is written for church officers who are looking for a deepened relationship with God. Joan Gray challenges elders and deacons to see themselves as spiritual leaders and equips them to lead alongside their pastors.

Gray lays out a variety of leadership styles and helps leaders understand when each is appropriate. She also provides resources for dealing with relationships in the church and identifies ways churches can be supportive of the spiritual leadership of elders and deacons.

Bewilderment often follows when one learns that Mark Twain s best friend of forty years was a minister. That Joseph Hopkins Twichell (1838-1918) was also a New Englander with Puritan roots only entrenches the odd couple image of Twain and Twichell. This biography adds new dimensions to our understanding of the Twichell-Twain relationship; more important, it takes Twichell on his own terms, revealing an elite Everyman--a genial, energetic advocate of social justice in an era of stark contrasts between America s haves and have-nots.

After Twichell s education at Yale and his Civil War...