Synopses & Reviews
Very little in this world stays fresh and life-giving for 1,500 years. But when that happens we should ask ourselves why and what that had to do with us.
In this book, The Radical Christian Life: A Year with Saint Benedict, Joan Chittister encourages us to look at that question. In an introductory essay she examines how the insights and values of the sixth-century Visionary Saint Benedict can illuminate today's search for a meaningful life. Then she leads us through the year, reflecting on twelve stories from Benedict's life, anecdotes that give us glimpses into his soul. More than that, she draws from these stories daily thoughts for the development of our own spiritual lives in this day and age.
Joan Chittister, OSB, is a Benedictine sister and international lecturer who has been a leading voice in spirituality for more than thirty years. She has authored over forty books, most recently Uncommon Gratitude and The Monastery of the Heart, part of a program she is helping to develop to enable lay groups to live Benedictine spirituality in a contemporary way.
Review
[Early Christian Worship] is engagingly written. It would be a fine addition to the reading list of an undergraduate class or the first year of theological study, especially if it were accompanied by a good teacher who would be able to help focus the conversation about meanings that the book should stimulate.Gordon Lathrop, Worship
Synopsis
Early Christian Worship is a straightforward, readable introduction to worship in the first four centuries of the church's existence. How did early Christians see and understand their own worship? How did this interact with early Christian beliefs? The book has been brought up-to-date and revised, with some chapters rewritten and an updated bibliography.
Paul F. Bradshaw is professor of liturgy at the University of Notre Dame, and priest-vicar of Westminster Abbey and a member of the Church of England Liturgical Commission. He is the author or editor of several major books (The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, Eucharistic Origins, Reconstructing Early Christian Worship, The Study of Liturgy, A Companion to Common Worship, volumes 1 and 2).
About the Author
Paul F. Bradshaw is emeritus professor of liturgy at the University of Notre Dame, an honorary canon of the Diocese of Northern Indiana (Episcopal Church), and a priest-vicar of Westminster Abbey. He has written, cowritten, or edited more than twenty books on the subject of Christian worship, including Reconstructing Early Christian Worship; The Origins of Feasts, Fasts, and Seasons in Early Christianity; and The Eucharistic Liturgies (all from Liturgical Press). A former president of both the North American Academy of Liturgy and the international Societas Liturgica, he was also editor-in-chief of the journal Studia Liturgica from 1987 to 2005.