faithasawayoflife: Faith as a Way of Life: first book blurb from Robert Bellah!

I'm just delighted and honored that my former teacher, Robert N. Bellah, who is among the most well-known sociologists of religion and culture now writing, has read my forthcoming book and written an endorsement. Thanks, Bob! Out in May from Eerdmans. Preorder on Amazon today!

“Faith as a Way of Life sums up the understanding of religion in most human cultures. Only in the modern West has the idea arisen that religion is a purely private, personal matter with little relation to the rest of life. In the modern world where society is fragmented and individuals are isolated this understanding of religion makes sense, but at the cost of religious integrity and vitality. Christian Scharen has written a book that can help pastoral leaders and lay Christians alike recover the deep and pervasive meaning of Christian faith even under modern conditions. He has no easy answers but by addressing the difficulties so clearly he helps us begin to understand what the wholeness of faith as a way of life really is.”
— Robert N. Bellah
University of California at Berkeley
Coauthor of Habits of the Heart

Reading

Stephen J. Nichols: Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us about Suffering and Salvation
Well, in order to get closer to the theology of the blues, and that'd be theology in a minor key, that doesn't skip past Good Friday because it knows Sunday's coming, plan on checking out Nichols compelling new book Getting the Blues. Brazos sent it to me to read so that I can offer a pre-publication endorsement. So far, I like it a lot.
Robert Palmer: Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta
A rich rewarding journey into America's gift to the music of the world, and the root of so much of what I love musically speaking: jazz, gospels, rock and roll, and more. A great starting place even if he is not that interested in the question of theology of the blues, a question I'd very much like to explore
David F. Ford: Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine)
David Ford has become one of the most important theologians writing today, and he has been mulling this one for more than a decade. I heard him speak at Yale in 2003 in response to Miroslav and Dorothy Bass' book Practicing Theology and many of these themes regarding wisdom come up. Especially powerful engagement with scripture from which he draws the idea of "wisdom cries." A practical theologian at his best. Read!
Mary Oliver: Why I Wake Early: New Poems
Here I find a carnal theology, so deeply enmeshed in the glory of the ordinary. finitum capax infiniti. read her and you will not look at an ordinary day as ordinary again. Try, for starters, "This World," on page 27. It begins thus: "I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it nothing fancy./ But it seems impossible./ Whatever the subject, the morning sun glimmers it./"
Charles Taylor: A Secular Age
My teacher, the sociologist Robert Bellah, says: "This is one of the most important books written in my lifetime." Okay, enough. Rush out and get this book, just out, from one of the best living philosophers and certainly the most important for Christians.