Martha E. Stortz

And Grace Will Lead Me Home

Prayer & Spiritual Formation

“The difference between being a tourist and being a pilgrim is the difference between consuming an experience and attending to it. This book teaches pilgrims how to pay attention, specifically, how to weave the journey into a story that holds meaning, depth, and even direction for the way ahead. Pilgrims need this guide in their backpack--whether they travel or simply stay put.”

Churrasco

Theology

“These essays honoring Westhelle's work arrest, trouble, and delight. They also point a way forward in uncharted terrain. From around the world and across the disciplines, these authors converge to offer new ways of visioning divine things (theoria), new patterns for living in a world marked by the scandal of the cross (praxis), and new language for witnessing to the ecstatic reality in a world where 'my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways' (Isaiah 55:8).”

Coming Home to Earth

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“Just as the prodigal son repented of his arrogance and returned home, a prodigal species needs to repent of its environmental arrogance and return to its Earth home. In this passionate appeal for ecological humility, Brocker combines serious theological insight with sound practical wisdom to point the way back. Along the way he reminds human creatures of their need for beauty as well as bread.”

Ethics in the Community of Promise

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“James Childs has served in the trenches of the church's ethical debate. The experience both deepened his appreciation for the church as a community of moral deliberation and proved the durability of his own ethical method. Childs presents a dialogical ethics that is scripturally grounded, confessionally sound, and engaged with some of the most difficult ethical issues of the day. Ethics in the Community of Promise delivers theology for the church by one of its most committed members/theologians.”

Eucharist

Preaching & Worship

“Informed by his rich ecumenical experience, inflected by his Lutheran roots, and inspired by an embodied spirituality, Ola Tjørhom presents the Eucharist as a sacrament in and for the whole of creation. As they ‘become what they eat,’ Christians continue the work of Christ in a world that longs for his touch. This book will bring deep satisfaction to seasoned theologians and dedicated disciples alike. Take and read.”

Holy Faces

“Holy Faces works like an interactive portrait gallery where spectators not only view works but engage with them. Images accompany rich verbal portraits, and reflective questions invite viewers to look outside the canvas and see similar subjects in their own experience. With an artist’s eye, Julie Aageson attends to the holy light in faces, even the more tragic ones. So will her readers.”

Radical Lutherans/Lutheran Radicals

Theology

“Imagine Luther in lively conversation with theologians across the centuries and around the world. They both adopted and adapted, revised and even rejected elements of his theology to address their own urgent contexts. Kierkegaard is there, along with Bonhoeffer and Soelle. But so are the vibrant voices of this new generation of twenty-first-century Luther scholars, who attend to the personal, social, and structural dimensions of sin and grace, creation and calling. Only one voice is missing: yours. Join the conversation!”

Renunciation

Fiction

“The story moves the reader to consider renunciation as both a letting go--and a letting in. Like nature, religion abhors a vacuum, and the space renunciation hallows and hollows out easily fills with something else: despair, blind devotion, violence, and possibly even hope.”

The Long Goodbye

Counseling, Grief & Mental Health

“For the uncharted landscape of dementia, there is no wiser guide than Margaret Miles. It's costly wisdom, for the disease stole her husband by inches. Miles chronicles the raw pain of his gathering confusion, but she also finds surprising beauty in funny and holy moments along the way. Moving beyond mere memoir, Miles interrogates Christian understandings of the 'self' and diseases in the body politic, like poverty, discrimination, and injustice. This is theology at its edgy best.”

The Wendell Cocktail

Counseling, Grief & Mental Health

“The Wendell Cocktail considers the fierce landscape of mental illness and addiction. By opening her own journal alongside those of her brother, Miles speaks not about but from the experience. . . . If you've ever wanted to get inside the head of someone with this condition, this book points the path. And if you've ever needed language to express your own experience, Wendell's journals, graciously edited and shared, give an account from a fellow-traveler.”

With Courage and Humility

Theology

“Dietrich Bonhoeffer did not complete his book on ethics, leaving it to subsequent scholars to finish the job. The resulting ethics of formation and of responsibility skew moral agency toward the individual Christian and the congregation. Mark S. Brocker rightly locates moral agency in God, leaving Christians with a single question: How is God becoming human in this time and place? What emerges is an ethic of discernment that is ongoing and thoroughly incarnational. Christians proceed with humility, knowing that, like the disciples, they never fully recognize the risen Christ in their midst. They also proceed with courage, knowing that they lean on a God whose love does not depend on their moral perfection. At a time when Christian nationalists co-opt Bonhoeffer's life and theology for their own purposes, Brocker offers a powerful rebuttal.”