Faith Beyond Fear
Sermons from Newman’s Pulpit
- Preaching & Worship
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Published: 2021
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Publisher's Description
John Henry Newman's pulpit at St Mary's, Oxford, was a powerhouse of religious innovation and reinvigoration in English religion through the 1830s and 1840s. This towering neogothic structure gave platform to preachers who conveyed a new imagination for the life of faith, and whose vision of belief provoked personal and societal awakenings. Today, we are in need once again of reimagining the challenges of our world, and the meaning of Christian faith, in ways that cut through the religious jumble, and speak to the fears and failings of our time. This volume collects sermons by one of that pulpit's most recent preachers. Anxiety, pain, hope, and judgement are key themes. There are liturgical themes and feasts taken in fresh directions, and always an insistence on deconstructing easy answers and pious lingo. These are exercises in reading Scripture, and reading our lives, in ways that speak beyond the borders of religious identity and certainty. These sermons draw us deeper into the reality of our own predicaments and fears, to discover a presence and power that might surprise and disrupt us, and help us to reimagine faith in the modern world.
Endorsements (6)
“Whether it's cryogenics, the pink tinge of the Red Sea's landscape, UFOs, or clickbait, Crockford's elegant yet unpretentious sermons bring us into the heart of the gospel in ways that reveal Scripture afresh. Elijah, John the Baptist, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Jesus in all his glory and humility are present to the reader with renewed luminosity, and that light, as the author is keenly aware, is needed more than ever.”
“James Crockford gives us an outstanding collection of exemplary sermons. His perceptive spiritual acuity and engagement with resonant life experiences take us into the depths of scriptural reality over and over again. James has a particular ability to speak into both heart and mind and does so with grace and humor. Good recent sermon collections are in short supply, so this more than fills the gap. I will be recommending it widely, both to preachers and to those seeking wise spiritual nourishment for our times.”
“These sermons are direct, honest, and arresting. They remind us that at the core of faith is the call to change our lives. Transformation is possible, and as James Crockford reminds us, it is also urgent.”
“There is something exemplary about the way James Crockford finds a single theme for each of these sermons. He is steeped in the Christian tradition, but there is nothing stifling about his learning: he feels no urge to tell us everything he knows. Taken together, these sermons show that the Christian faith bears upon every topic: not so as to conquer it, but rather to illuminate it, and seek to make it whole.”
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