Take and read

Cunningham invites readers to take their own Holy Week pilgrimage through suffering and death to resurrection and the promise of new life. Companions on the way include Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, Janet Morley and Edward Albee.

This provocative book helps North American Christians rediscover the Bible by recounting a wide range of biblical interpretations coming from the new demographic center of Christianity, the churches of the global South.

Johnson, a theologian with legal training and experience, argues that same-gender unions should be consecrated within our religious communities, validated within our legal systems, and welcomed within the framework of our democratic polity. His comprehensive presentation of the issues will be helpful to persons on all sides of the debate.

In this winsomely written book, Meilaender invites us to “read with Augustine about questions that engaged him and engage us still.” Grief, sex, duty and politics are discussed, with reference to family card games and newspaper etiquette columns, as well as a host of current philosophers and theologians.

After a 2003 visit to Poland on a study tour sponsored by the Holocaust Educational Foundation, Sanders came away chastened and determined to examine anew the Catholic tradition’s appropriation and reinterpretation of the central scriptures and festivals of Judaism. In the liturgies, scripture passages, rituals and themes of the Lenten and Easter seasons, she hopes to find resources for a future in which another Holocaust would be unthinkable.

Leavened by references to contemporary movies and by church case studies, this accessible introduction to postmodernism points out the problems of modernity for the church’s life and health and invites Christians into the space that postmodernism opens for nurturing strong confessional identities.

This new volume in the Modern Spiritual Masters series begins with a short introduction to Thurman’s life. Well-chosen excerpts from his prayers, poetry and theological reflections capture the major themes of his prophetic spirituality.

Trelstad addresses central concerns about the meaning of the cross in contemporary theology: What role do interpretations of the cross play in racial and gender oppression? What does the cross show us about the relationship of God to a suffering world? How do readings of the cross help us resist imperialism and violence? An impressive group of contributors tackles these questions.