At the Redeemer, we know that asking deeper questions and exploring issues of faith helps us grow both as individuals and as a community.
Throughout the year, we offer a variety of speakers and learning series, providing opportunities to gather and learn together; details are provided here as well as through our eNews. A warm welcome awaits all who join – parishioners, friends and members of the wider community.
Summer Reading Groups
The book Learning@Redeemer has chosen for the summer reading groups this year is the newly released Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire; Demanding Justice, by long time friends of the Church of the Redeemer, Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat. Brian and Sylvia will join us on Thursday, June 20 at 6 PM to share with us why they wrote this book, and what we can expect from it. Books can be ordered at https://www.parasource.com/. A limited number of copies will be available at the launch on June 20.
A simple supper will be served before our discussion with Brian and Sylvia. Please register to help the kitchen crew know how much to prepare!
At this event we will also organize the groups that will meet over the summer. Each group sets its own meeting schedule. The groups are relaxed and informal, and it is understood that during the summer not everyone will be able to get to every meeting. In addition to the launch, there will be a closing event planned for early September. If you can’t participate in the groups themselves, but are interested in reading the book on your own, you may still want to take part in the launch and wrap-up events.
If you are not able to attend the launch but would like to be included in a reading group, please let us know and organizers will be in touch with you.
About the book:
Globalization. Homelessness. Ecological and economic crisis. Conflicts over sexuality. Violence. These crisis-level issues may seem unique to our times, but Paul’s Letter to the Romans has something to say to all of them. Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh unpack the meaning of Romans for its original context and for today. The authors demonstrate how Romans disarms the political, economic, and cultural power of the Roman Empire and how this ancient letter offers hope in today’s crisis-laden world.
Romans Disarmed helps readers enter the world of ancient Rome and see how Paul’s most radical letter transforms the lives of the marginalized then and now. Intentionally avoiding abstract debates about Paul’s theology, Keesmaat and Walsh move back and forth between the present and the past as they explore themes of home, economic justice, creation care, the violence of the state, sexuality, and Indigenous reconciliation. They show how Romans engages with the lived reality of those who suffer from injustice, both in the first century and in the midst of our own imperial realities.
