Amy Laura Hall

Being the Body of Christ in the Age of Management

Church Leadership & Ministry

“This book is a gift. It is a gift for people who sing in churches, people who write about churches, people who stand up and speak about the Bible in churches, and anyone who loves someone who loves a church. Lyndon Shakespeare has engaged the various schemes for saving mainline-Christianity with patient lucidity. The book takes seriously ideas that have saturated my own denomination, helping anyone who has sat through a strategy or mission-marketing meeting to name their unease. Management-think is not an inevitable, natural evolution of human ingenuity. This way of describing and prescribing has a context and a history. Shakespeare's close reading of Thomas Aquinas is beautiful and clear: to divide up the body of Christ into niche markets is not only to make a category error, but to dismember ourselves. To paraphrase Karl Barth, mainline marketing strategies have taught us to trade our inheritance of infinite grace, flowing in abundance at Holy Communion, for a set of prepackaged granola bars. This book reminds Christians where we are when we worship God--held together mysteriously, unaccountably, and immeasurably the body.”

Borderline

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

Eugenics and Protestant Social Reform

History & Biography

“Durst begins by thanking archivists. Superman has Lois Lane digging through archives at The Daily Planet to uncover a supervillain. Durst documents a history with no mastermind, describing how theology and science 'became entangled' across Protestantism. He shows how eugenics became holy. An 'emphasis on the body' led progressives to regulate 'bodily activities'--to sterilization, institutionalization, incarceration. This book is essential for American Christianity, Ethics, Race Studies, and for anyone trying to live otherwise.”

Incorporating Children in Worship

Preaching & Worship

“Jesus is blunt in Matthew 18:3. Grown-up people, including fancy, scholarly grown-up people like me, are children of God. So, any book about children and worship is also about adults. Michelle and David follow Jesus's instruction, using childhood as the focal point to perceive the particulars of holiness. Their style is winsome enough to charm busy pastors and Sunday school teachers. But this book is also for scholars, at least for scholars who hope to sit next to Jesus and see the world truthfully.”

Kierkegaard

Philosophy

“I often meet young adults who call themselves 'recovering evangelicals,' or, similarly, who explain as quickly as they can up front that they have moved beyond their days in a nondenominational parachurch group. One such student gave me a refrigerator magnet that says: 'Yeah, like Jesus would live in a gated community and attend a mega-church.' Reading Kierkegaard with young Christians caught between the twinned perspectives of idealism and cynicism amplifies Kierkegaard's pastoral voice. Mark Tietjen's book describes, in the vernacular, how Kierkegaard quickens readers to receive the daily gift of a faith that has often been taught either as a cosmic culture battle or as a guide to good manners. This book is an inviting, loving introduction to the writings of a Christian intent on revivifying the faith of the faithful.”

Longing for Spring

Church Leadership & Ministry

“"Elaine and Scott are the best of guides for hungry Methodists. Their description of Wesleyan renewal is inviting. Their prescription for transformation is possible. I will be using this book in my class, our neighborhood and our congregation. What a blessing!”

On Moral Medicine

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“This will be the definitive teaching resource for Christian bioethics and related courses for the next decade. Lysaught and Kotva are two of the most pedagogically astute and pastorally aware scholars of their generation. They are as wise as they are smart. This volume is a gift to those of us who strive for clarity in a confounding field.”

The Sacredness of Human Life

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“This story of Christian witness will preach and reach. David Gushee is an uncommonly patient writer. He relates biblical testimonies to the sacredness of life with subtlety and clarity. . . . His summons to think hard and live well invites baffled undergraduates, weary pastors, curious laity, and careworn activists to reengage in small, intentional practices of prayer and study on abortion, torture, immigration, and women's rights. I can't wait to teach this book.”