Avenues Towards Christianity

Death opens the gates to resurrection. The pathways to faith are diverse, but all carry components of death and renewal. In Avenues of Faith: Conversations with Jonathan Guilbault, Charles Taylor takes readers through a handful of books that played a crucial role in shaping his posture as a believer, a process that involved leaving the old behind and embracing the new. In a dynamic interview-style structure, Taylor answers questions from Jonathan Guilbault about how each book has informed his thought. The five sections of Avenues of Faith briefly introduce authors and their principal works before delving into the associated discussion. Taylor and Guilbault engage Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, Friedrich Hölderlin's Poems, Charles Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, and Brother Émile's Faithful to the Future: Listening to Yves Congar. By exploring themes such as faith, the church, freedom, language, philosophy, and more, this book engages both literary enthusiasts and spiritual seekers. Scholars of Taylor will recognize the philosopher's continuation of his reflections on modernity as he expresses his faith. Avenues of Faith gives readers unprecedented access to a world-renowned philosopher's reflections on the literary masterpieces that have shaped his life and scholarship and that continue to stand the test of time. --Jean-Philippe Pierron "Étvdes"

Argues that the religious movement of Mormonism branched off from mainstream Calvinist Christianity in a slow and deliberate process.

In a richly illustrated, revelatory study of Philadelphia's Germantown Avenue, home to a diverse array of more than 90 Christian and Muslim congregations, Katie Day explores the formative and multifaceted role of religious congregations within an urban environment. Germantown Avenue cuts through Philadelphia for eight and a half miles, from the affluent neighborhood of Chestnut Hill through the high crime section known as "the Badlands." The congregations along this route range from the wealthiest to the poorest populations in Philadelphia. Some congregants are immigrants who find safety and support in close fellowship, while others are long-time residents whose congregations work actively to provide social services. Cities undergo constant change, and their congregations change with them. As Day observes, some congregations have sprung up in former commercial strips, harboring new arrivals and recreating a sense of home, and others form an anchor for a neighborhood across generations, providing a connection to the past and a hope of stability for the future. Drawing on years of research, in-depth interviews with religious leaders and congregants, and a wealth of demographic data, Day demonstrates the powerful influence cities exert on their congregations, and the surprising and important impact congregations have on their urban environments.

The first thorough study of organized mainline churches in a major southern American city during the early 20th century