The Redeemer (lower level)

Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense.  By Frances Spufford   In Spufford’s book, through tone and vocabulary that are colloquial and chatty, the question addressed is not what happens to us when we die, but a more general setting out of the grounds of uncertainty within Christian belief. This seems like a good place to start the conversation.

The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity.  By Peter Brown.   Peter Brown, a revered historian of late antiquity, presents a fascinating picture of the changes in belief that occurred between 250 and 650 about what happened to the soul after death, and how human agency could help join heaven and earth by prayer and almsgiving. Money played an ever more decisive role in this agency, as wealthy Christians became concerned not just about how their money…

A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence. By Jeffrey Burton Russell. American historian, Jeffrey Russel, details the history of concepts about heaven from the first century to the time of Dante’s writing of the Paradiso (ca 1320). Its early chapters cover some of the same ground as Brown’s book, but in an entirely different way, being more factually and less argumentatively based.

My Bright Abyss.  By Christian Wiman. This book is a moving meditation on what a contemporary Christian faith might look like, especially in the face of death. Composed in the difficult years after Wiman faced a diagnosis of incurable blood cancer, it is joyful, sorrowful, and beautifully written and may well become a spiritual classic. This seems like a good book to ponder during Lent.

The Last Battle; volume 7 of The Chronicles of Narnia.  By C.S. Lewis. AND The Lion’s World: A Journey into the Heart of Narnia.  By Rowan Williams . In The Last Battle, Lewis writes of the events that led to the end of Narnia, a tale which stimulates thinking on what death, or perhaps the end of our world, might look like. Tom Wright says about Williams’ The Lion’s World “...Those who have loved Narnia since childhood will here discover…

Mansions of the Spirit: The Gospel in a Multi-Faith World, Michael Ingham,  (Anglican Book Centre, 1997). In his book, Ingham challenges us to learn from discussions with faiths other than Christianity.  By getting to know and respect other faith traditions, we come to understand that there are many ways to know and love God.

Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness, Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier.  (2nd Edition, IVP, 2018). Theologian Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche communities throughout the world, consider how society reacts to people with disabilities and how faith informs a positive, compassionate response.

Jesus: A Pilgrimage, James Martin.  (HarperOne, 2016). Jesuit priest James Martin describes his journey, both physical and spiritual, through the Holy Land. He connects places he visits to passages of scripture and reflects on how these stories of Jesus’ life have meaning for life in our time.

In this session we will discuss three books by Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury. Being Christian.  (SPCK, 2014). This book delves into four vital aspects of Christian life:  baptism, bible, eucharist, and prayer. Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life. (Eerdmans, 2016). We are all at different stages of our life’s faith journey.  In this book, Williams explores how we follow Jesus in our time as we grow in faith. God with Us: The Meaning of the Cross and…

Gilead, Marilynne Robinson.  (Harper Collins, 2006). This work of literary fiction tells the story of generations of a family in a rural Iowa town as seen through the eyes of the Reverend John Ames.  He recounts for his young son experiences of his father and grandfather as well as his own theological struggles.

The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, David Brooks. (Random House, 2019). In this book, David Brooks explores the four commitments that are usually taken to define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. It is a provocative social commentary about how our individualism has led us away from rooting ourselves in a neighbourhood and binding ourselves to other people in social…

Educated, Tara Westover. (Harper Collins, 2018). This is the remarkable autobiography of a young woman raised in Nevada by an unorthodox Mormon father whose strongly held and unshakeable paranoid beliefs caused terrible damage to his children. It is also the story of her escape, first to Brigham Young University and then to Cambridge, an escape that for her was imperative but whose high price was the lasting destruction of most of her family relationships. The story is told in vivid…

The Cloud of Unknowning, Anonymous. (Shambhalla, 2014). This is a fourteenth-century text is one of the great classics of English mysticism. It will enrich our own contemplative/mystical lives, and raise questions like: How important is contemplation to the spiritual life? Is mystical union with God possible? Is it for everyone? Is there Scriptural warrant for this? How does Christian mysticism differ from Buddhist mysticism? The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing our Humanity, Sally Kohn. (Chapel Hill: Algonquin…