The Very Best Recent Books Introducing Christian Faith

I am always on the look-out for brief resources I can suggest to those interested in digging deeper into the basics of Christianity, or those wishing for an introduction (perhaps for the first time).

A recent spate of new titles now fit the bill nicely, so I suggest them here.

Top of the list is Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and his Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer. Among its many merits, it is brief, winsome, well-written, and focused. It is wholesome, in a good way.

Next up is Peter Enns and his The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It. Often when people are looking for an introduction to Christianity, what they really mean is they want an introduction to reading Scripture. This fits the bill nicely.

Some inquirers are looking for direct instruction in the practice of faith, especially prayer. My favorite book is still Robert Benson's In Constant Prayer (Ancient Practices). It focuses on the practice of praying the daily prayer offices.



If people are wondering what life could look like in 21st century congregational life, my new favorite book is a team written volume, The New Parish: How Neighborhood Churches Are Transforming Mission, Discipleship and Community. It focuses on how congregations fit into the ecology of life in local communities.

For similar reasons, I also love Sara Miles' book, City of God: Faith in the Streets

Now, if readers are looking for a challenge relative to social justice, calling out the church for its failures but paving a way forward for re-conceptualizing Christian faith in contemporary North America, I truly think the best place to start is James Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Christians in our nation need to look race and faith head on, and this work does so.

Similarly, for faith in the face of empire, faith in the Middle East, I can't suggest strongly enough Mitri Raheb's wonderful Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible through Palestinian Eyes.

If readers are interested in class issues and faith, Tex Sample has done a lot on working class spirituality, and I love his Earthy Mysticism: Spirituality for Unspiritual People

For secular folks returning to Christian faith, or skeptics looking for fellow skeptics on the journey, I recommend Christian Wiman's My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer

However, if readers are interested in the rise of secularity and its impact on faith, James K.A. Smith's brief introduction to the work of Charles Taylor may be an even better place to start, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor.

Finally, for wider and global perspectives on Christianity, I recommend three books. Pope Francis's The Church of Mercy

Second, Philip Jenkin's The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Future of Christianity Trilogy)

And third, T.M. Luhrmann's When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (Vintage).

All of these have the merits of being eminently readable, brief, and strong as introductions to their topics. Consider this a contemporary resource for exploring Christian faith (again) as if for the first time. Which reminds me, sometimes the elephant in the room for an awakening desire to connect or re-connect with Christian faith, is the topic of same-gender marriage. As an advocate for the LGBTQ community and their full inclusion and rights in the life of the church, I know of no better book than Justin Lee's Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate

This is a NY Times photo, and includes some of my
favorite books of all time, including Alex Ross, Denis Johnson,
Little Heathens, Roberto Bolano, and Out Stealing Horses

Let's be a safe haven for those fleeing persecution

Last week, members of Congress passed a temporary funding measure before heading home to their districts for the next 7 weeks leading up to the November election. The stopgap measure, which funds the government from the start of Fiscal Year 2015 on October 1 through December 11, includesno new funding for immigration and refugee agencies within the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Health and Human Services (HHS) or Justice (DOJ) that care for vulnerable refugees, children and families seeking safety in the United States.  Funding conversations in Congress are expected to resume after the elections.

The temporary funding measure does, however, allow DHS and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within HHS to spend funds “as necessary” to maintain services at Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 levels. Just last week, ORR was able to release $71.5 million in funds for social services that empower arriving refugees to become valuable members of their new communities. The funds had been withheld as ORR struggled to resettle refugees and care for children seeking refuge from Central America.

Without additional FY 2015 funding, ORR’s ability to serve vulnerable people under its care will be severely limited. The withholding of funds this summer had drastic impacts on LIRS’s resettlement partners throughout the country—including cuts to preventative health services, language training and school assistance for refugee children—because of uncertainty in their budget. We need your help urging Congress to fully fund services for vulnerable migrants.

As a nation of welcome, we must show vulnerable newcomers compassion and justice. LIRS continues to urge Congress to fund ORR at levels sufficient to welcome refugees, unaccompanied children, and other vulnerable migrants. We also call on Congress to fund immigration courts adequately so families and children have a fair chance to tell their stories before an immigration judge.

With Members of Congress in their home districts for the next 7 weeks, your voice is critical to ensure that vulnerable newcomers receive the welcome they deserve. Please take a moment to visit LIRS’s Action Center to tell your elected representatives that people of faith stand for funding measures that honor our nation’s proud history as a safe haven for those fleeing persecution. You can also visit LIRS’s Congressional Recess Advocacy Guide for helpful tips to meet with your Senators and Representative while they are home to discuss the importance of supporting refugees and protecting vulnerable children from Central America.

Thank you for standing for welcome.

In peace,

Brittney Nystrom
Director for Advocacy

Ebola: Action Update

Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,

In the past several months, the Ebola outbreak has claimed thousands of lives. The virus has spread rapidly, and with no approved vaccine and a high fatality rate, the World Health Organization is now calling it "one of the world’s most lethal diseases." Ebola has spread to multiple countries, the hardest hit being Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

In addition to health care, one of the most urgent needs is food. As people in affected areas are quarantined to their homes, towns are being shut down to limit the spread of the disease and people are not able to work, harvest crops or purchase food. The shipment of food has also stopped because people from other countries fear contracting the virus.

“We need food,” says the Rev. D. Jensen Seyenkulo, bishop of the Lutheran Church in Liberia. "There is a saying now: 'If we don’t die of Ebola, we will die of starvation.'" | Watch video

You can help. Your gifts to the Ebola Outbreak Response will be used, 100 percent, to assist those impacted by this crisis. Our partners and companion churches have requested our help in responding to the outbreak with food distributions, shipment of personal protective equipment, training health workers, outreach through education about prevention, and construction of an isolation unit at Phebe Hospital and School of Nursing in Liberia.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and its predecessor church have walked with the people of Liberia for more than 150 years. Our long-standing relationship with our companions in Liberia and Sierra Leone provides a strong foundation to respond holistically to the needs of those who are suffering and living with the threat of Ebola.

Thank you for your prayers, your partnership and your gifts.

Sincerely,

The Rev. Daniel Rift
Director, ELCA World Hunger and Disaster Appeal

P.S.  Use this bulletin insert in your congregation to pray for the people affected and support the Ebola Outbreak Response. 

On Being Lutheran In Spite of Ourselves

The thing about being Lutheran is, we never are. 

It's really odd, we're one of the few global Christian movements named after its founder. Except Luther isn't our founder, and he never wanted a movement named after him.

So we're Lutheran, but shouldn't be, or can't be. Yet we are. It's a paradox.

Well, at least on this point we're all good, because if Lutherans like anything, it's a good paradox.

"We are simultaneously saints and sinners." 

"A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all."

"We are Lutheran, and we aren't."

Here we are, these five centuries later, calling ourselves Lutheran, in spite of ourselves. In fact, we are gearing up to celebrate once again, at the end of October, Reformation Day. In 2017 we'll even celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the LutherJahre.

I find myself, as a "confessional" Lutheran, repeatedly in the awkward position of wanting to claim, for the sake of transparency, my perspective as a Lutheran, while also disclaiming it because this movement, whatever its origins and reasons, has introduced and widened the conflicts in Christian community of which we are all heirs.

I regret so very much the ways my own confessionalism has contributed to schism or lack of unity in the body of Christ. I desire so very much that the Christian community as a whole could lead with unity. 

Yet like the other paradox, of being Lutheran, so Christian unity is one. Much of what passes as unity is no such thing, it is a brutal unity. And sometimes those who divide the church do so for the sake of its unity.

Even those forms of church that attempt to transcend disunity--I am thinking here of non-denominational, post-denominational, or undenominational church--are themselves always, in another sense, also schismatic, typically because they are so very congregational, and also because they are almost always baptist (small b). 

Non-denominational Christianity is like an elephant wearing a sign that reads, "I'm not an elephant."

But lest I get all self-righteous as an ELCA style Lutheran whose denomination is in full communion with many other denominations, I have to remember that although we're in full communion with over half a dozen, there are dozens more with whom we have considerable tensions.

Peace in the Christian communion seems about as difficult as the camel threading of the eye of that needle. Impossible for us. Possible only for God.

I am thankful for some of the resources coming out of the Evangelische Kirche im Deutschland, and the joint work between the LWF and the Vatican. Each of them in their own way carefully includes confession of sin and lament as proper aspects of any observance that will truly honor reform.

In our own context, our conference of ELCA congregations here in Western Arkansas is gathering the Sunday prior to Reformation Day for a Reformation Festival. As we do so, I'm trying to keep Philip Pfatteicher's insights into Reformation Day at the center of our planning and remembrance.

[Reformation Day] is to be understood and observed not as a triumphalist celebration as though all error was purged from the church forever in 1517. Rather, it is a day of humble recollection of the revolutionary and cleansing word of God, which is continually reforming and renewing God's church. It is a day that reminds God's people of the provisional nature of all that is less than God, and of the sovereignty of God alone, who is always free to tear up and destroy in order to build and plant anew. Reform and renewal is not a once-for-all-event, nor even an occasional eruption, but rather a continuing condition of the church.

This is a theme Lutherans aren't always particularly good at remembering. Except when we do.