Augsburg Fortress

There Is No God and Mary Is His Mother: Rediscovering Religionless Christianity

In this personal, witty, and timely book, New York Times bestselling author Thomas Cathcart takes readers on a journey into belief and unbelief and leads them through to "religionless Christianity." He shows that, even absent traditional theological formulas and doctrines, Christianity can be credible, meaningful, and practical.

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Luke's Jesus: Between Incarnation and Crucifixion

In Luke's Jesus, Joseph Blenkinsopp provides a chronological reading of the Jesus of Luke's Gospel, beginning with Jesus's close relations with John the Baptist, turning upon Jesus's decision to leave Galilee and travel to Jerusalem, and extending to the narrative of Jesus's crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension. Blenkinsopp's study of Jesus focuses upon Jesus's humanity, his interaction with others, and his teaching on poverty and wealth. Blenkinsopp provides a fresh rendering of Luke's powerful and fascinating story, one that reveals a vivid portrait of Jesus.

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Neighbor Love through Fearful Days: Finding Purpose and Meaning in a Time of Crisis

Neighbor Love through Fearful Days is a reflection on the Covid-19 pandemic, the accompanying economic collapse, a summer of climate chaos, and the pandemic of white supremacy, as well as on the calling to "serve thy neighbor" and work toward the common good. Jason A. Mahn's real-time reflections take on the reality of life during these pandemics alongside perennial questions about purpose, faith, and vocation.

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Teaching Reformation: Essays in Honor of Timothy J. Wengert

Presented on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, this collection of essays honors the life and work of Dr. Timothy J. Wengert, a pastor and noted Reformation historian who brings to scholarship a deep sense of its practical dimensions in the life of the church.

In these essays, Wengert's students, colleagues, and peers follow in their honoree's footsteps by highlighting the implications of a rich tapestry of Reformation topics.

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A Widower's Lament: The Pious Meditations of Johann Christoph Oelhafen

This book deals with Christian lament in the late Reformation by exploring the efforts of a talented yet little-known layman to cope with the death of his beloved wife. It provides full access to the remarkable work of private devotion that he authored to express his lament.

A work of haunting candor and searching faith, The Pious Meditations furnishes insight into life in the past as well as resources for life in the present.

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Exploring Islam: Theology and Spiritual Practice in America

Exploring Islam is a comprehensive yet accessible introduction to the foundations of the Islamic faith, including its history, theology, and spiritual practice. The book also deals with issues such as jihad, the status of women, and the various sectarian divisions in Islam. Most distinctive about this work is its analysis of the lived experience of Muslims in modern American life. Sayilgan offers readers a perspective that is scholarly, judicious, and engaging.

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The Perfect Being: Selections from the Classic Islamic Text

Translated for the first time from the original Persian into English, these selected treatises from the thirteenth-century work The Perfect Being provide a fascinating glimpse into Sufism. With a helpful introduction and explanatory notes, The Perfect Being is a valuable introduction to classic Islamic texts for spiritual seekers and students.

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The Fragility of Language and the Encounter with God: On the Contingency and Legitimacy of Doctrine

The Fragility of Language and the Encounter with God offers a theological account of the contingency of language and perception and of how acknowledging that contingency transforms the question of the development of doctrine. Klug argues that statements of faith cannot overcome contingency. Instead, the Catholic notion of receptive tradition is an attempt to cope rationally with the fragility of perception and language in humanity's orientation toward God.

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The Forgotten Luther III: Reclaiming a Vision of Global Community

This book, the third in the Forgotten Luther series, invites congregations, with the help of five prominent church leaders and Luther scholars, to consider the shape of global mission in today's world. This study draws global implications from Luther's reforms and from the theology that shaped them. Accompanied by a discussion guide and videos of lectures and interviews, this book provides an excellent tool to help congregations engage the global mission of the church.

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Paul on Identity: Theology as Politics

One of the most important and controversial questions in biblical studies is how Paul's view of the fundamental Christ identity relates to other possible identities in the Greco-Roman world--like being a Jew or a non-Jew, a man or a woman, a master or a slave. Paul on Identity explores these issues and, in particular, how Paul's view informs his writing. Engberg-Pedersen keeps an eye on what we may or may not accept from Paul and concludes by showing Paul's direct relevance to identity politics.

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The End of College: Religion and the Transformation of Higher Education in the 20th Century

The End of College chronicles the transformation of religion's role in higher education in the US during the first half of the twentieth century. This period witnessed an end to the religious college and its decidedly religious ends. In its place, the American university ushered in religion departments and religious studies, which sought to make a more complete democracy.

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Toni Morrison's Spiritual Vision: Faith, Folktales, and Feminism in Her Life and Literature

Toni Morrison's Spiritual Vision unpacks an oft-ignored but essential element of her work--her religion--and in so doing gives readers a deeper, richer understanding of her life and her writing. Nadra Nittle's wide-ranging, deep exploration of Morrison's oeuvre reveals the role of religion and spirituality in her life and literature.

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Christian – Zen Dialogue: Sacred Stories as a Starting Point for Interfaith Dialogue

Christian - Zen Dialogue aims to inspire and help Christian and Zen adherents, especially laity, to enter into meaningful interfaith dialogue using their own sacred stories. The book focuses on narratives of faith in both Christianity and Zen. Can these sacred stories--gospel stories of Jesus and Chan/Zen stories (Kōans)--be a starting point for dialogue between Christianity and Zen?

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Black Lives Matter to Jesus: The Salvation of Black Life and All Life in Luke and Acts

Black-skinned people were and are included in the family of God, demonstrating that all colors in the family of God have dignity. This view bolsters a Christian anti-racist agenda. This work attempts to undermine Christian racism that has deemed Black skin inherently problematic, showing that the destruction of racism is at the heart of the gospel of Jesus.

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Journeys of Asian Diaspora: Mapping Originations and Destinations

This is a collection of essays by Asian-diaspora Christian scholars about their communities in different parts of the world. It paints a portrait of the widespread dispersion and establishment of distinctively Asian Christian communities in their places of settlement. The book makes a case about how migration of people has made Asian Christianity more global and how Asian-diaspora communities are playing a decisive role in transforming and advancing Christian faith in the twenty-first century.

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The Liberation of Method: The Ethics of Emancipatory Biblical Interpretation

The field of biblical studies has championed the historical-critical method as the only way to guarantee objective interpretation. But in recent decades, scholars have pursued hermeneutical approaches that provide interpretations useful for marginalized communities who see the Bible as a resource in their struggles against oppression. Such liberative strategies remain on the margins. The Liberation of Method argues that this marginality must end, and that liberative methods should become central to biblical studies.

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N: My Encounter with Racism and the Forbidden Word in an American Classic

This book is about a Black man's experience of reading Mark Twain's classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for the first time while in graduate school. It captures the author's emotional struggle with Twain's use of the racial epithet more than two hundred times in the text. In these pages, Harris challenges his instructor and classmates and inspires readers to redress the long history of American racism and white supremacy bound up with the N word.

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Just Traveling: God, Leaving Home, and a Spirituality for the Road

Just Traveling celebrates moving at the speed of being present to one's experiences, bridging distance and difference through acts of care. Following the scriptural witness of God as the Earthroamer, the book explores the liminal qualities of traveling through six movements: anticipating, leaving, surrendering, meeting, caring, and returning. Whether leaving home serves our wanderlust and curiosity or has personal or spiritual purposes, when we travel, we explore a beautiful, yet complex and troubled world.

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A New Climate for Christology: Kenosis, Climate Change, and Befriending Nature

For decades, Sallie McFague lent her voice and theological imagination to advocating for the most important issues of our time. In this final book, finished before her death in 2019, McFague summarizes the work of a lifetime with a clear call to live in "such a way that all might flourish." The way, she argues, is the "kenotic interpretation of Christianity: the odd arrangement whereby in order to gain your life, you must lose it."

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Athena to Barbie: Bodies, Archetypes, and Women's Search for Self

Athena to Barbie destabilizes a range of received social constructions of woman and expands the ways women conceive of themselves as female subjects. In the end, it inspires women's imagination about themselves, grounds that imagination in history by comparison, and empowers the lived lives of women. The book challenges the long-standing subordination of women and offers women fruitful, if still vexed, options to express female agency. It does all this in conversation with Christian tradition.

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