In search of holistic Christian witness, we must cultivate new approaches for integrating the arts into mission praxis. Written by missiologists, art critics, ethnodoxologists, and theologians from around the world, these essays present historical and contemporary case studies while calling Christians to understand the power of art for expressing cultural and religious identity, opening spaces for transformative encounters, and resisting injustice.
Few writers in the twentieth century were as creative and productive as Dorothy L. Sayers, the English playwright, novelist, and poet. In this volume in the Hansen Lectureship Series, Christine Colón explores the role of community in Sayers's works. In particular, she considers how Sayers offers a vision of communities called to action, faith, and joy, and she reflects on how we also are called to live in community together.
Including unpublished material recorded from Henri Nouwen's lectures, this book comes at the request of the Henri Nouwen's literary estate from someone who knew him as a teacher and friend. Carol Berry brings her own experience in both ministry and art education to bear as she unpacks the much misunderstood spiritual context of Vincent van Gogh's work, and reinterprets van Gogh's art in light of Nouwen's lectures.
Engaging the writings of C. S. Lewis, Gary Selby contends that spiritual formation comes about not by retreating from the physical world but through deeper engagement with it. By considering themes such as our human embodiment, our sense of awareness in our everyday experiences, and the role of our human agency, Selby demonstrates that an earthy spirituality can be a robust spirituality.
In this Hansen Lectureship volume, Timothy Larsen considers the legacy of George MacDonald, the Victorian Scottish author and minister who is best known for his pioneering fantasy literature. Larsen explores how MacDonald sought to counteract skepticism, unbelief, naturalism, and materialism and to herald instead the reality of the miraculous, the supernatural, the wondrous, and the realm of the spirit.
Poet and theologian Malcolm Guite leads readers on a journey with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose own life paralleled the experience in his famous poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." On this theological voyage, Guite draws out the continuing relevance of this work and the ability of poetry to communicate the truths of humanity's fallenness, our need for grace, and the possibility of redemption.
What role does place play in the Christian life? In this STA volume, Jennifer Allen Craft gives a practical theology of the arts, contending that the arts place us in time, space, and community in ways that encourage us to be fully and imaginatively present in a variety of contexts: the natural world, our homes, our worshiping communities, and society.
Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love is truly an astounding work: an inspiring example of Christian mysticism, a unique contribution to Christian theology, the first book in English known to have been written by a woman. Veronica Mary Rolf guides us as we read, examining its fourteenth-century context and illuminating our understanding of this enduring work.
The good news of Jesus Christ is a subversive gospel, and following Jesus is a subversive act. Exploring the theological aesthetic of American author Flannery O'Connor, Michael Bruner argues that her fiction reveals what discipleship to Jesus Christ entails by subverting the traditional understandings of beauty, truth, and goodness.
In 1970, Hans Rookmaaker published Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, a groundbreaking work that considered the role of the Christian artist in society. This volume responds to his work by bringing together a practicing artist and a theologian who argue that modernist art is underwritten by deeply religious concerns.