One Priest S Wondering Beliefs

One Priest's Wondering Beliefs

This book is aimed at those Christians who have begun to question the conventional understandings of Jesus, and Christianity, and even of what we mean by "God," and have become discomforted by the dissonance between their own thinking and the church's stance. A critical thinker by inclination and education, Jack Bowers explored Celtic Christian spirituality for a decade. That taught him there are other ways to live out the Christian faith than what we have been told by Rome and Protestantism. Upon retirement in 1998, no longer professionally required to reflect conventional theology, his belief structure began to wander, seriously re-examining all he had taught and believed. Having heard whispered rumors in younger years of priests "losing their faith," instead he felt he was not losing his theology but growing it. This volume leads you through the evolution of his beliefs to what he can speak out with confidence right now, understanding that as he continues to grow and experience this world, and hopefully get a little wiser, his beliefs will evolve yet farther. He invites you into this challenging spiritual pilgrimage to discover what you can confidently believe in 2016 AD.

Wonder Beyond Belief

What happens when one of Germany’s most important writers, himself a Muslim, immerses himself in the world of Christian art? In this book, Navid Kermani is awestruck by a religion full of sacrifice and lamentation, love and wonder, the irrational and the unfathomable, the deeply human and the divine – a Christianity that today’s Christians rarely speak of so earnestly, boldly and enthusiastically. With the open-minded curiosity of a non-believer – or rather a believer in another faith – Kermani engages with Christian art in its great richness and diversity. The result is an enchanting reflection which reinvests in Christianity both its spectacular beauty and its terror. Kermani struggles with the cross, falls in love at the sight of Mary, experiences the Orthodox Mass and appreciates the greatness of St Francis. He teaches us to see the questions of our present-day lives in the pictures of old masters such as Botticelli, Caravaggio and Rembrandt – not with lectures on art history or theology, but with an intelligent eye for the essential details and the underlying relations to seemingly remote worlds, to literature and to mystical Islam. Kermani’s poetic school of seeing draws us in as we are carried along by his unique perspective on Christianity, rekindling our interest in great art at the same time. We are captivated by his unique and brilliant Islamic reading of the West.

“The” Works of Jonathan Swift ... Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published