Diana Bass
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Strength For The Journey (Revised)
$26.95Add to cart* Updated version of spiritual autobiography from an important voice in the church * Insights on how parishes have confronted issues of change As a standard in the field of spiritual autobiography, Diana Butler Bass’ Strength for the Journey has been a guide for thousands of Christians who have also found themselves “journeying” along a path toward a faith different from that discovered in childhood. This new edition will retain all that drew readers to its pages alongside the voice of those next generation Christians now walking that path for themselves. In Strength for the Journey, Diana Butler Bass illustrates the dynamic strength and persistence of mainline Protestantism. While many baby boomers left the church, only to come back later in life, Bass was a “stayer” who witnessed the struggles and changes and found much there that was meaningful. Offering thought-provoking portraits of eight parishes she attended over two decades, she explores the major issues that have confronted mainline denominations, congregations, and parishioners during those years-from debates over women clergy to conflicts about diversity and community to scrimmages between tradition and innovation.
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Embracing Spiritual Awakening (Student/Study Guide)
$15.95Add to cartQuick Guide To The Handbook
Beyond The “Quick Guide”
Pointers On Facilitation
Questions Of Awakening
Session 1: Waking Up
Session 2: Believing
Session 3: Behaving
Session 4: Belonging
Session 5: AwakeningAdditional Info
In this newest installment, Diana Butler Bass expands on the ideas she developed in her recent book, Christianity after Religion, exploring what Christianity may look like “beyond religion and beyond the church.” Segments include (1) Arriving, (2) Believing, (3) Behaving, (4) Belonging and (5) Awakening. -
Christianity After Religion
$16.99Add to cartDiana Butler Bass, one of contemporary Christianity’s leading trend-spotters, exposes how the failings of the church today are giving rise to a new “spiritual but not religious” movement. Using evidence from the latest national polls and from her own cutting-edge research, Bass, the visionary author of A People’s History of Christianity, continues the conversation began in books like Brian D. McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity and Harvey Cox’s The Future of Faith, examining the connections-and the divisions-between theology, practice, and community that Christians experience today. Bass’s clearly worded, powerful, and probing Christianity After Religion is required reading for anyone invested in the future of Christianity.
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Christianity For The Rest Of Us
$17.99Add to cartFor decades the accepted wisdom has been that America’s mainline Protestant churches are in decline, eclipsed by evangelical mega-churches. Church and religion expert Diana Butler Bass wondered if this was true, and this book is the result of her extensive, three-year study of centrist and progressive churches across the country. Her surprising findings reveal just the opposite-that many of the churches are flourishing, and they are doing so without resorting to mimicking the mega-church, evangelical style.
Christianity for the Rest of Us describes this phenomenon and offers a how-to approach for Protestants eager to remain faithful to their tradition while becoming a vital spiritual community. As Butler Bass delved into the rich spiritual life of various Episcopal, United Methodist, Disciples of Christ, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, and Lutheran churches, certain consistent practices-such as hospitality, contemplation, diversity, justice, discernment, and worship-emerged as core expressions of congregations seeking to rediscover authentic Christian faith and witness today.
This hopeful book, which includes a study guide for groups and individuals, reveals the practical steps that leaders and laypeople alike are taking to proclaim an alternative message about an emerging Christianity that strives for greater spiritual depth and proactively engages the needs of the world.
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Practicing Congregation : Imagining A New Old Church
$29.00Add to cartDiana Butler Bass’ groundbreaking project to explore encouraging signs of vitality among mainline Protestant churches is now gaining the momentum of a movement. The author’s cover story in Sojourners magazine offers a compelling overview of what characterizes these healthy, vital, and inspiring congregations. The Practicing Congregation is a central text on the road to envisioning a new way of being a church. From Nomads to Pilgrims, its follow-up companion book, contains reflections on practices by the pastors of some of the vibrant congregations that were studied in the writing of The Practicing Congregation.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The conventional wisdom about mainline Protestantism maintains that it is a dying tradition, irrelevant to a postmodern society, unresponsive to change, and increasingly disconnected from its core faith tenets. In her provocative new book, historian and researcher Diana Butler Bass argues that there are signs that mainline Protestant churches are indeed changing, finding a new vitality intentionally grounded in Christian practices and laying the groundwork for a new type of congregation.
The Practicing Congregation tracks these changes by looking at the overall history of American congregations, noting the cultural trends that have sparked change, and providing evidence of how mainline churches are reappropriating traditional Christian practices. The signs of life that Butler Bass identifies lead the reader beyond the crumbling “liberal vs. conservative” dualities to a more nuanced and fluid understanding of the shape of contemporary ecclesiology and faithfulness. In so doing, she helps readers understand tradition in new ways and creates an alternative path through the culture wars that today arrest the energies of most denominations.
Invigorated by stories from Bass’s own experience, The Practicing Congregation provides a hopeful and exciting vision of “the once and future church” that Alban founder Loren Mead first named over 10 years ago. The imaginative “retraditioning” the author identifies and celebrates will guide pastors and other leaders on this “pilgrimage of creating church,” and convincingly counter the naysayers that long ago gave up on the viability of the mainline church.