The Human Church (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781532642340)

The church doesn't need to be more spiritual. It needs to become more human. Since God decided becoming human was right, so must the church. Jesus' language was consistently understood by nonreligious people. Elitist in-house church language may never reach the growing number of Americans without a religious background who have given up on God. This book views the church as a unique people-group and the reader as an anthropologist. Employing basic ethnographic methods, the reader looks at the church again for the first time without a religious lens. Based upon the premise that all good theology emerges from good anthropology, the book first considers the rituals celebrated around the symbols of a manger, cross, bread, wine, and tomb. Such symbols then become the basis for theological interpretation. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the reader's conversation partner to help make the theological journey from human community to church, manger to incarnation, cross to redemption, and tomb to resurrection. The church will flourish in the twenty-first century to the degree that it proclaims the Gospel using nonreligious language with a human accent.

Author: Paul O. Bischoff
ISBN-10: 1532642342
ISBN-13: 9781532642340
Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers
Language: English
Published: 05/29/2018
Pages: 130
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.66lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.38d