For over forty years, Leland Ryken has championed and modeled a Christian liberal arts education. His scholarship and commitment to integrating faith with learning in the classroom have influenced thousands of students who have sat under his winsome teaching. Published in honor of Professor Ryken and presented on the occasion of his retirement from Wheaton College, this compilation carries on his legacy of applying a Christian liberal arts education to all areas of life. Five sections explore the background of a Christian liberal arts education, its theological basis, habits and virtues, differing approaches, and ultimate aims. Contributors including Philip Ryken, Jeffry Davis, Duane Litfin, John Walford, Alan Jacobs, and Jim Wilhoit analyze liberal arts as they relate to the disciplines, the Christian faith, and the world. Also included are a transcript of a well-known 1984 chapel talk delivered by Leland Ryken on the student's calling and practical chapters on how to read, write, and speak well. Comprehensive in scope, this substantial volume will be a helpful guide to anyone involved in higher education, as well as to students, pastors, and leaders looking for resources on the importance of faith in learning.

What does art have to do with faith? For many Christians, paintings, films, music, and other forms of art are simply used for wall decoration, entertaining distraction, or worshipful devotion. But what if the arts played a more prominent role in the Christian life? In Discovering God through the Arts, discover how the arts can be tools for faith-building, life-changing spiritual formation for all Christians. Terry Glaspey, author of 75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know, examines: How the arts assist us in prayer and contemplation How the arts help us rediscover a sense of wonder How the arts help us deal with emotions How the arts aid theological reflection and so much more. Let your faith be enriched, and discover how beauty and creativity can draw you nearer to the ultimate Creator.

We're all going to die. Yet in our medically advanced, technological age, many of us see death as a distant reality--something that happens only at the end of a long life or to other people. In The End of the Christian Life, Todd Billings urges Christians to resist that view. Instead, he calls us to embrace our mortality in our daily life and faith. This is the journey of genuine discipleship, Billings says: following the crucified and resurrected Lord in a world of distraction and false hopes. Drawing on his experience as a professor and father living with incurable cancer, Billings offers a personal yet deeply theological account of the gospel's expansive hope for small, mortal creatures. Artfully weaving rich theology with powerful narrative, Billings writes for church leaders and laypeople alike. Whether we are young or old, reeling from loss or clinging to our own prosperity, this book challenges us to walk a strange but wondrous path: in the midst of joy and lament, to receive mortal limits as a gift, an opportunity to give ourselves over to the Lord of life.

From a world-renowned painter, an exploration of creativity’s quintessential—and often overlooked—role in the spiritual life “Makoto Fujimura’s art and writings have been a true inspiration to me. In this luminous book, he addresses the question of art and faith and their reconciliation with a quiet and moving eloquence.”—Martin Scorsese “[An] elegant treatise . . . Fujimura’s sensitive, evocative theology will appeal to believers interested in the role religion can play in the creation of art.”—Publishers Weekly Conceived over thirty years of painting and creating in his studio, this book is Makoto Fujimura’s broad and deep exploration of creativity and the spiritual aspects of “making.” What he does in the studio is theological work as much as it is aesthetic work. In between pouring precious, pulverized minerals onto handmade paper to create the prismatic, refractive surfaces of his art, he comes into the quiet space in the studio, in a discipline of awareness, waiting, prayer, and praise. Ranging from the Bible to T. S. Eliot, and from Mark Rothko to Japanese Kintsugi technique, he shows how unless we are making something, we cannot know the depth of God’s being and God’s grace permeating our lives. This poignant and beautiful book offers the perspective of, in Christian Wiman’s words, “an accidental theologian,” one who comes to spiritual questions always through the prism of art.

Dr. Clyde Kilby was known to many as an early, long and effective champion of C. S. Lewis, and the founder of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, IL, for the study of the works of Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and other members of the Inklings. Less known is that Dr. Kilby was also an apologist in his time for arts, aesthetics and beauty, particularly among Evangelicals. This collection offers a sampler of the work of Dr. Clyde Kilby on these themes. He writes reflections under four headings: "Christianity, Art, and Aesthetics"; "The Vocation of the Artist"; "Faith and the Role of the Imagination"; and "Poetry, Literature and the Imagination." With a unique voice, Kilby writes from a specific literary and philosophical context that relates art and aesthetics with beauty, and all that is embodied in the classics. His work is particularly relevant today as these topics are being embraced by Protestants, Evangelicals, and indeed people of faith from many different traditions. A deeply engaging book for readers who want to look more closely at themes of art, aesthetics, beauty and literature in the context of faith. "What a great gift to read the collected writings of this gentle, brilliant visionary, teacher and friend! I can say, like so many others, it was Clyde Kilby who set my course in life. Like the dandelions he tended all winter, we flourished under his wisdom and care. Now his remarkable words on the page act as a kind of resurrection. We can hear his voice again and bless his memory." —Luci Shaw, Poet, Writer in Residence, Regent College Author of Thumbprint in the Clay "The Arts and the Christian Imagination is a landmark book. Its scope is breathtaking, bringing together in one place well-known "signature" essays by Clyde Kilby and unknown but equally excellent ones. The essays in this book, masterfully edited, sum up what a whole era wanted to say about literature and art in themselves and in relation to the Christian Faith." —Leland Ryken, Professor Emeritus English, Wheaton College, Author of The Christian Imagination "It was my great privilege to take several classes with Clyde Kilby when I was a student at Wheaton. Now a new generation, and readers far from the Chicago suburbs, have the chance to experience the sparkle, wit, aesthetic insight, and deep Christian commitment that made Kilby such an unusually captivating teacher. Even without his hobbit-like presence, his words remain a true inspiration." —Mark A. Noll, Author of Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, University of Notre Dame "Thousands owe to this giant of Wheaton their ability to hear literary voices with Gospel-tuned ears. This sampler of his hugely influential writing will make the reader profoundly grateful for a man whose legacy is beyond measure." —Jeremy Begbie, Thomas A. Langford Research Professor of Theology — Duke Divinity School, Director of Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts "Samuel Johnson said people need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed. Dr. Kilby reminds us of what it means to be made in the image of God and how art, in our creation and reception of it, illuminates, articulates and glorifies that original great mimesis. With wisdom and relevance, this collection provides a touchstone for the spiritual thinker in its reconciliation of art's true and beautiful purpose with the unspeakable, inimitable mystery of God." —Dr. Carolyn Weber, Professor and speaker, Award-winning author of Surprised by Oxford; Holy is the Day "To read the reflections of C.S. Kilby on art and the Christian imagination is to engage one of the most pertinently constructive interior critiques of American evangelical culture in the 1960's. His biblically formed imagination saw good and truth in what seemed to many of his generation astonishing places—French Catholic philosophers, agnostic novelists, psychic experimentalists, off-beat artists, mathematicians, mentally disturbed poets--and he asked fellow evangelicals, comfortably certain of the categories of their own perception, to examine whether or not some alien accounts did not square better with a biblical view of the human person than their own rigidities. To read these essays is to hear again his distinctively gentle voice in the classroom, and once again to gather many pearls of wisdom." —David Lyle Jeffrey, Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities Honors Program, Senior Fellow, Baylor Institute for Studies in Religion, Baylor University "As I read Dr. Kilby's words in this book, "Love, not duty, sends the artist forth," I recalled my class with him fifty years ago. I can still almost hear his voice as he read from Wordsworth: "what we have loved others will love, and we will show them how." That line perfectly describes Clyde Kilby's life and work. As his student, I love what my dear Professor of English literature loved. I treasure this collection of his essays on Arts and Christian Imagination." —G. Walter Hansen, Professor Emeritus Fuller Seminary, Co-author of Through Your Eyes: Dialogues on the Paintings of Bruce Herman

Many find their engagement with works of art raises questions concerning where value is found and how meaning and import are understood and experienced. For persons of Christian faith, a parallel question arises concerning the significance such experience holds for the Christian life and the spiritual journey. This collection of essays pursues questions that address how we perceive value in our experience of the arts, how this experience leads to a greater measure of human fullness, and what significance engagement with the arts holds for the Christian life. The author argues that human experience and the quality of our personhood are enriched in and through the imaginative life and that our spiritual lives are profoundly impacted by our aesthetic engagements. An underlying assumption is that all great art, all that is beautiful, is inherently religious: that is, it embodies qualities that reflect the glory of God and is therefore valuable to the Christian life and one’s spiritual experience. Indeed, insofar as the noetic privileges language and reason, the arts and the domain of the aesthetic provide an alternate pathway by which we are able to encounter the Divine.

First United Methodist Church in Augusta, Georgia, gives concerts to raise money for local service organizations. Trinity Lutheran Church in Mission, Kansas, has been sponsoring a religious art show for more than twenty-five years. Fellowship Lutheran Church runs a Christian arts camp for young people every summer. These are just three of the eighteen case studies of practicing arts ministries in this book, in which Michael Bauer encourages the nurture and support of all the creative gifts of God's people. Bauer lays a solid foundation for arts ministry, grounding it in the historic Christian tradition and urging churches to expand their engagement with the creative arts -- "to live and worship in full color," as he puts it. A concluding chapter clearly lays out how to develop an arts ministry, helping readers to take these ideas from theory to practice, to embrace and celebrate the continuing creative activity of God in the church.