Beyond Worship started as a digital zine published Fort Washington Collegiate Church’s website with only a few contributors. Under the direction of Minister James Admans (they/them) and funded by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, the zine Beyond Worship sought to collect any written material by LGBTQIA+ authors that could be shared in a worship space. The goal was to not only demonstrate that LGBTQIA+ members of the church are accepted, but part of the community and have something to contribute. When Publisher Lori Perkins, a member of Fort Washington, read the zine, she was immediately inspired to expand upon the idea of belonging in a community not just to LGBTQIA+ members of Fort Washington, but any LGBTQIA+ person struggling to find a sense of belonging in a community that they can call home and wanting, but struggling, to find their relationship with a higher purpose. Beyond Worship seeks to show LGBTQIA+ people that they are divine, here for a reason, and have so much to contribute to their communities. Whether a poem, a short story, a psalm, a meditative guide, or an academic paper, each LGBTQIA+ author in this anthology explores what it means to find community and love in a society that tells them they are undeserving of both. From all over the world and from a variety of faith traditions, each author’s piece shows readers different ways of being in a world worth experiencing.

Almost every congregation is experiencing tension over worship. Many congregations have been participating in a renaissance of worship known as the "liturgical movement" and have reclaimed worship forms that have served the church for centuries. Yet because the church today is operating in a radically changed cultural environment, many people in our society do not understand liturgical worship and thus we must find language, music, themes, and images that speak to the unchurched, spiritually seeking person. In Beyond the Worship Wars, Thomas G. Long discusses the nine characteristics of vital and faithful worship practiced by a wide range of "third-way" congregations—all characteristics that make for vital and faithful worshi

I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies While mosques are the central house of worship for a majority of Muslims around the world, many of Islam's communities have developed their own distinctive religious spaces. These complementary spaces serve the different cultures, geographies and interpretations of Islam that continue to enrich the Muslim tradition. In this book, Rizwan Mawani encounters diverse communities and their sites of worship, from the mosque and husayniya to the khanaqah and jamatkhana. Readers are introduced to a variety of Muslim spaces, modest and elaborate – their distinct structures and the rituals practised within them, as well as the purposes they serve as community centres and markers of identity. Beyond the Mosque reveals architectural responses to evolving community needs and local environments, from Senegal and China to Iran and India. This illuminating survey celebrates the significant pluralism that characterises the living Muslim tradition today.

Katie discovers that the valley behind her grandmother's garden is more mysterious than it seems. After tumbling into tenth-century England and encountering Saint Edith of Wilton along with her wild animal menagerie, she is helped home, wondering whether her adventure was truly real. But after Katie, her cousins, and a neighborhood friend are drawn back in time once again, she realizes her grandmother's garden gate is a portal into faraway worlds, where patron saints are real people making real-life decisions.Join Katie and her cousins as they mingle with Rachel and Jacob, meet Saint Mary Magdalene up close, trek across the sand with the matriarchs Naomi and Ruth, and have a nail-biting adventure with the heroic Saint Katherine of Alexandria. In seeing the richness of the family of God, they glimpse how very much they are a part of it all.A chapter book for ages 9 to 15

Religion is an important social force, both for good and evil, in the modern world. In the final volume of his comparative theology, Keith Ward considers the main ways in which religion and society interact, and the ways in which the major world religions need to adapt themselves in the modern world. These religions are examined as forms of social life, ranging from communities which seek to renounce the world, to those which seek to embody the laws of God in society, those which see religions in critical dialogue with social structures, and those which see religion as a primarily individual matter. The ideas of eretz Yisrael, the umma of Islam, the Buddhist sangha, the Christian church, and the Hindu sampradaya are critically analysed. Ward also considers the doctrine of the church in Aquinas, Calvin, Schleiermacher, and Tillich, and develops a view of the church in a global perspective by means of both a historical and thematic approach. He proposes a radical vision of the church as a person-affirming, world-transforming society in the emerging global community of many faiths and cultures. The relation of religious belief and morality, and the ambiguous role of religion in society, is investigated, and the need for a new religious paradigm is defended, expressing a global perspective without insistence on uniformity.