Concern for the Church in the World

Concern for the Church in the World PDF Author: Laura Schmidt Roberts
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725260921
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Amid the mid-twentieth-century post-war relief and rebuilding efforts, reconsideration of views on nonviolence and civic engagement was also underway for North American Mennonites. What peace theology was adequate to the task of recasting the church’s role in the world as it was emerging, including its economic and political systems? Essays in this volume explore these questions through intentional dialog across diverse viewpoints, including some in tension with the Mennonite hierarchy and broader Mennonite majority of the time. The writings—both their themes and their approach of intentional conversation across differences—provide a resource for Christians today wrestling anew with such issues amid the unprecedented upheaval marking the first two decades of the twenty-first century.

Concern for the Church in the World

Concern for the Church in the World PDF Author: Laura Schmidt Roberts
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725260921
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
Amid the mid-twentieth-century post-war relief and rebuilding efforts, reconsideration of views on nonviolence and civic engagement was also underway for North American Mennonites. What peace theology was adequate to the task of recasting the church’s role in the world as it was emerging, including its economic and political systems? Essays in this volume explore these questions through intentional dialog across diverse viewpoints, including some in tension with the Mennonite hierarchy and broader Mennonite majority of the time. The writings—both their themes and their approach of intentional conversation across differences—provide a resource for Christians today wrestling anew with such issues amid the unprecedented upheaval marking the first two decades of the twenty-first century.

Concern for Anabaptist Renewal

Concern for Anabaptist Renewal PDF Author: Virgil Vogt
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666736562
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
“What the Kingdom of God requires is a radical Christian movement in our own time which has a vigor and depth that equals that of those radicals who have gone before us.” These words introduce a Radical Reformation Reader, first published in 1971 by a group confident that the past could—and did—offer practical, theological guidance for following Jesus in the contemporary world. What forms of church are appropriate to the ecclesial heirs of such a radical tradition, especially in settings marked by individualism, escalating violence, and growing economic disparity? The essays republished here explore divergent contextual responses and invite readers to do the same.

The Anabaptist Vision

The Anabaptist Vision PDF Author: Harold S. Bender
Publisher: MennoMedia, Inc.
ISBN: 0836197224
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 29

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Book Description
The Anabaptist Vision, given as a presidential address before the American Society of Church History in 1943, has become a classic essay. In it, Harold S. Bender defines the spirit and purposes of the original Anabaptists. Three major points of emphasis are: the transformation of the entire way of life of the individual to the teachings and example of Christ, voluntary church membership based upon conversion and commitment to holy living, and Christian love and nonresistance applied to all human relationships.

Concern for Church Polity and Discipline

Concern for Church Polity and Discipline PDF Author: Laura Schmidt Roberts
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725261030
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
CONCERN: A Pamphlet Series for Questions of Christian Renewal was born in the 1950s of shared concerns over a gap between an Anabaptist vision and contemporary, North American Mennonite reality. The initial group views the increasingly hierarchical denominational structure, the emergence of centralized, professionalized, pastoral ministry, and the resultant changes in polity and practice as fundamentally incompatible with a Believers' Church ecclesiology. Essays here present that critique and discussion of the reconfiguration of pastoral and communal authority, as well as the assertion that reclamation of a disciplined priesthood of all believers is the path of Christian renewal. Today the question of what institutional forms best structure the leadership, authority, and shared life of congregations persists, marked by particular concern to attend to the exercise of power within actual communities of faith.

Concern for Church Mission and Spiritual Gifts

Concern for Church Mission and Spiritual Gifts PDF Author: Laura Schmidt Roberts
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725260972
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
In the 1950s, a conversation among a handful of American graduate students considering the place of Mennonites in the modern world blossomed into a published forum, CONCERN: A Pamphlet Series for Questions of Christian Renewal. The CONCERN writings here consider the global, missional, experiential, contextualized realities of such a "place," past and present. The writings explore the role of culture and context in the church's mission, lived faith, and theological articulation through various avenues of approach: the global church and the ecumenical movement, Christendom's legacy of colonialism and cultural accommodation, critique of rigid and outdated ecclesial structures and forms, the complexities of the unavoidably enculturated nature of faith as proclaimed and lived. Two contemporary responses offer postcolonial critique and development, demonstrating that such topics continue to be of critical concern in today's globally interconnected yet fragmented and divided world.

The Heterodox Yoder

The Heterodox Yoder PDF Author: Paul Martens
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1621891364
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
The Heterodox Yoder provides a critical rereading of Yoder's corpus through his own conviction that discipleship is, most basically, ethics. Tracing the development of Yoder's theological foundations through to their final role in redefining Jewish-Christian and ecumenical relations, this volume explains why the appropriation and use of the language of politics eventually constrains Yoder's ethical vision to the point that it reframes Christianity within the limits of social ethics alone. Because this vision self-consciously excludes or, at best, relativizes many of the claims of orthodox Christianity (including but not limited to the ecumenical creeds), Martens concludes that Yoder's Christian ethic is best described as heterodox.

Creation and the Environment

Creation and the Environment PDF Author: Calvin Redekop
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801876729
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Recent years have seen a shift in the belief that a religious world-view, specifically a Christian one, precludes a commitment to environmentalism. Whether as "stewards of God's creation" or champions of "environmental justice," church members have increasingly found that a strong pro-ecology stand on environmental issues is an integral component of their faith. But not all Christian denominations are latecomers to the issue of environmentalism. In Creation and the EnvironmentCalvin W. Redekop and his co-authors explain the unique environmental position of the Anabaptists, in particular the Mennonites. After a brief survey of the major forces contributing to the word's present ecological crisis, Creation and the Environment explores the uniquely Anabaptist view of our relationship to what they see as the created order. In rural Amish and Mennonite communities, they explain, the environment—especially the "land"—is considered part of the Kingdom God plans to establish on earth. In this view, the creation is part of the divine order, with the redemption of humankind inextricably linked to the redemption and restoration of the material world. The well-being a purpose of creation and human history are thus seen as completely interdependent. Contributors: Donovan Ackley III, Claremont Graduate School • Kenton Brubaker, Eastern Mennonite University • Thomas Finger, Claremont Graduate School • Karen Klassen Harder, Bethel College, Kansas • James Harder, Bethel College, Kansas • Lawrence Hart, Cheyenne Cultural Center, Clinton, Oklahoma • Theodore Hiebert, McCormick Theological Seminary • Karl Keener, Pennsylvania State University • Walter Klaassen, Conrad Grebel College • David Kline, Holmes County, Ohio • Calvin W. Redekop, Conrad Grebel College • Mel Schmidt • Dorothy Jean Weaver, Eastern Mennonite University • Michael Yoder, Northwestern College, Iowa.

Mennonite Piety Through the Centuries

Mennonite Piety Through the Centuries PDF Author: Robert Friedmann
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 157910214X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
This book consists of two studies: ÒAnabaptism and PietismÓ and ÒMennonite Devotional Literature 1600-1800Ó. The first study gives the general historical analysis, the second provides Friedmann's concrete proof of his thesis. The first treatise puts the question of the Holy Spirit into the center of the discussion, as Friedemann believes that this question is more decisive for the pattern of living Christianity than doctrinal issues. The second treatise attempts to depict the spiritual life in its variform expression showing how the Holy Spirit, or that which sometimes is taken for Him, operates.

Bodies of Peace

Bodies of Peace PDF Author: Myles Werntz
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1451489463
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Bodies of Peace argues that Christian nonviolence is both formed by and forms ecclesial life, creating an inextricable relationship between church commitment and resistance to war. In this volume, Myles Werntz examines the work of John Howard Yoder, Dorothy Day, William Stringfellow, and Robert McAfee Brown, demonstrating how each thinker's advocacy for nonviolent resistance depends deeply upon the ecclesiology out of which it comes. The volume argues that any account of an ecclesially-informed resistance to war must be open to a multitude of approaches, not as pragmatic concessions, but as a foretaste of ecumenical unity.

Constantine Revisited

Constantine Revisited PDF Author: John D. Roth
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1621897540
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
This collection of essays continues a long and venerable debate in the history of the Christian church regarding the legacy of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. For some, Constantine's conversion to Christianity early in the fourth century set in motion a process that made the church subservient to the civil authority of the state, brought a definitive end to pacifism as a central teaching of the early church, and redefined the character of Christian catechesis and missions. In 2010, Peter J. Leithart published a widely read polemic, Defending Constantine, that vigorously refuted this interpretation. In its place, Leithart offered a thoroughgoing rehabilitation of Constantine and his legacy, while directing a rhetorical fusillade against the pacifist theology and ethics of the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder. The essays gathered here in response to Leithart reflect the insights of eleven leading theologians, historians, and ethicists from a wide range of theological traditions. They engage one of the most contentious issues in Christian church history in irenic fashion and at the highest level of scholarship. In so doing, they help ensure that the "Constantinian Debate" will continue to be lively, substantive, and consequential.