Crystal L. Downing

Friendship

Christian Living

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

Seasoned Speech

“Beautifully written, this book explores the diverse rhetorical strategies of five influential Christians, arguing that their different communication styles celebrate and sustain the power of Pentecost. In the process of interpreting what makes their tongues burn with illuminating power, Beitler provides a lucid introduction to the history of rhetoric, calling Christians to participate in shared liturgical practices so that communal worship might ignite new ways to speak truth into culture.”

Seeing Is Believing

Arts & Literature

“Lucidly summarizing multiple ways theologians through the ages have understood God's revelation, Richard Vance Goodwin suggests that cinema can be a source of revelatory power for those with eyes to see. Seeing, in fact, is key to his approach as he discusses the way visual techniques in four classic films mediate divine content. Astutely arguing against the reduction of film to a vehicle for either Christian messages or transcendent experiences, Goodwin gives a refreshingly new and thoroughly Christian spin to reception studies and cognitivism in film theory.”

The Future of the Word

“Offering a scintillating synthesis of theology and literary criticism, this book demonstrates how the pleasures and perils of reading advance the kingdom of God. Combining astute research with personal anecdote, profound insight with delightful wordplay, Kriner practices what she preaches, reading not only scripture and scholarship but also poetry and prose with 'response-ability.' Much as medieval transcribers of Bible codices preserved God’s word with illuminations that changed the word's textual effect, Kriner illuminates the changing power of texts by painting us, as readers, onto the pages we read, such that our interpretations participate in hope for the word to come.”