Summary"In all the discussion of women's roles in the Church, we've ignored a pressing question: Why don't men go to church anymore? Why are the most common traits of the modern Church doves and quilts and little old ladies? Dr. Leon Podles documents the current feminized state of the Western Church, the masculine traits that once charac…

Summary"This book explores Lutheranism and its various expressions throughout the world. This Protestant tradition has spread and developed far from its European and American heartlands to take on increasingly diverse forms. The global dispersion of Lutheranism and how it interacts with different cultures and worldviews has resulted in L…

Summary"Pastor, missionary, and former military chaplain helps readers navigate spiritual warfare with Christian maturity and wisdom in ordinary spiritual warfare, like personal temptation, and especially in "extraordinary" encounters, such as demonic oppression, possession, and exorcisms"-- Provided by publisher.

Summary"I felt life perish from within my body three times. I had children. I just never got to hold them or know them or kiss them. My life looked no different from the outside. But inside, I was heartbroken and confused. Losing a baby in the womb is common, but that doesn't make it any less painful. The grief of losing any child feels …

SummaryThroughout its history, the church thrived when it embraced diverse organizational and cultural forms. In this volume, Dwight Zscheile and Blair Pogue argue that as American culture shifts away from voluntary association and toward individual self-expression, most existing congregations are bound to inherited forms of church that …

Summary"Many studies of spiritual development exist under the heading of 'Christian Perfection.' However, John Gavin revisits such topics as asceticism, prayer, sacraments, virtues, and spiritual combat through scriptural and patristic texts that present the Christian life as one of growth from spiritual infancy to a particular fulfillme…

Summary"Bayer dates Luther's reformational breakthrough to the early spring of 1518, when he discovered the sacramentality of the word: that the word is not simply informative but performative, and constitutive of the sacraments. The preached word is prior to faith, creates faith, and is the only source of certainty in the Christian life…

Summary"In sixteenth-century Germany Martin Luther and his followers engaged in a thorough reform of beliefs and practices related to prayer, a reform rooted in Luther's theological insights. Rejecting medieval beliefs that saw prayer as a good work, Luther and his followers saw prayer as a human response to God's command to pray and pro…

Summary"In this collection of essays newly published in English, Volker Leppin restores a holistic understanding of Martin Luther's development amid a late-medieval context strongly influenced by mysticism. Far from marking a clean break from earlier ideas, Luther's emerging theology drew upon deep wells of both personal mystical experie…

Summary"Grindal weaves personal memoir and the history of Norwegian Lutheranism in the United States into a lively and insightful account of the Lutheran Free Church and its seminary. Readers will come away from What a Fellowship with a stronger understanding not only of American Lutheran history, but of ongoing conversations in the cont…