Redeeming Men

Contributors to this book--historians, biblical specialists, theologians, ethicists, and scholars of comparative religions--examine the relationship between religious tradition and manhood. The essays cover a broad range of topics--from the dynamics of power in shaping masculine identity, to the role religion plays in shaping masculine identity, to the experience of myth, ritual, spiritual discipline, and community in the lives of men.

The powerful, dramatic story of how a successful Hollywood set designer whose identity was deeply rooted in his homosexuality came to be suddenly and utterly transformed by the power of the gospel. When Becket Cook moved from Dallas to Los Angeles after college, he discovered a socially progressive, liberal town that embraced not only his creative side but also his homosexuality. He devoted his time to growing his career as a successful set designer and to finding "the one" man who would fill his heart. As a gay man in the entertainment industry, Cook centered his life around celebrity-filled Hollywood parties and traveled to society hot-spots around the world--until a chance encounter with a pastor at an LA coffee shop one morning changed everything. In A Change of Affection, Becket Cook shares his testimony as someone who was transformed by the power of the gospel. Cook's dramatic conversion to Christianity and subsequent seminary training inform his views on homosexuality--personally, biblically, theologically, and culturally--and in his new book he educates Christians on how to better understand this complex and controversial issue while revealing how to lovingly engage with those who disagree. A Change of Affection is a timely and indispensable resource for anyone who desires to understand more fully one of the most common and difficult stumbling blocks to faithfully following Christ today.

During the struggle for the eight-hour workday and a shorter workweek, Chicago emerged as an important battleground for workers in "the entire civilized world" to redeem time from the workplace in order to devote it to education, civic duty, health, family, and leisure. William A. Mirola explores how the city's eight-hour movement intersected with a Protestant religious culture that supported long hours to keep workers from idleness, intemperance, and secular leisure activities. Analyzing how both workers and clergy rewove working-class religious cultures and ideologies into strategic and rhetorical frames, Mirola shows how every faith-based appeal contested whose religious meanings would define labor conditions and conflicts. As he notes, the ongoing worker-employer tension transformed both how clergy spoke about the eight-hour movement and what they were willing to do, until intensified worker protest and employer intransigence spurred Protestant clergy to support the eight-hour movement even as political and economic arguments eclipsed religious framing. A revealing study of an era and a movement, Redeeming Time illustrates the potential--and the limitations--of religious culture and religious leaders as forces in industrial reform.

There is a rich vein of writing within Anglican tradition that has helped to form the theology and spirituality of the contemporary church. For many readers, much of this material remains unfamiliar and is often difficult to access. Love's Redeeming Work draws together the works of major writers from the sixteenth century to the present day who have contributed to this development. Each selected writer is introduced with a brief biography, which gives background information about the author, and highlights the relationships that existed with others from the same period. This will enable the reader to set the writings in their proper context, enhancing understanding of the material. The selections then follow. In some instances these may be familiar, but other examples will introduce fresh ideas for every reader. Each writer's selection is concluded with a list of source texts, which can encourage readers to explore in more depth those areas which intrigue and excite them. Love's Redeeming Work traces a path that has enabled Anglicanism in particular, and the wider church as well, to develop an ever-deepening awareness of the need for a spiritual depth in the Christian life informed by a better knowledge of tradition. In exploring this material, it is the compilers' hope that readers will find new riches that will encourage and sustain their own quest for holiness.

The question "What is human nature?" is in vogue today. Like everything else, this concept is being deconstructed in the context of the reigning ideology of individualistic materialism. Is there a fixed human nature, or is this simply a manipulatable social construct with no objective reference? This book says: "Yes, there is: the imago Dei: man/woman created in the image of God." Hobson argues that this text from Genesis 1:26-28 is a God-given anthropological revelation that establishes the relational bond of human beings with their Creator and also with his creation, for which the imago equips us to be responsible stewards. Many of Hobson's essays were delivered as talks in parishes. They explore from multiple angles the import of the imago Dei for theological and sacramental reflection, apologetics, aesthetics, art, and, at a hands-on practical level, for pastoral counseling and inner healing. His texts, one of which opens with a discussion of genocide, contain incisive critiques of the dark side of modernity alongside wide-ranging demonstrations of the pertinence of the imago Dei to the current debates about human dignity and rights. His book is a ringing call to the church to take the measure of the value of this anthropological revelation for its proclamation of the gospel.

F. X. Durrwell’s In the Redeeming Christ is a gentle, forgotten masterpiece that reveals the relationship between personal holiness, sacramental life in the Church, and the salvation of the world. Now re-published with an introduction by Scott Hahn, it is a beautiful meditation on the Christian life. At the beginning of In the Redeeming Christ, priest and theologian F. X. Durrwell states: “The Christian’s salvation lies in his personal sanctification. There too lies the salvation of others.” Durrwell’s classic offers a hopeful and lucid vision of the Christian spiritual life to inspire and teach readers about the mystery of living in personal holiness—and becoming most truly themselves—by being “in Christ” as a member his body. Such contemporary theologians as Scott Hahn and Brant Pitre have begun to discover the importance of both the idea of personal holiness and what this highly original thinker had to say about it.