2021 Catholic Media Association Award second place award in liturgy 2021 Catholic Media Association Award honorable mention award in gender issues - inclusion in the church For years, religious leaders and communities around the world have turned to the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER) for feminist liturgies for justice. Now—in celebration of the organization’s thirty-fifth anniversary—Stirring Waters gathers fifty-two of these beautiful liturgies, ready-made to help your community venerate powerful women of faith, develop a richer and deeper spirituality, and take real action for justice. Use the liturgies in this book as a resource to nourish the souls and focus the passions of the people you serve. Help them reflect on great women like the prophetess Miriam and Julian of Norwich; provoke and disturb them on occasions like Earth Day and World Water Day; energize them on International Women’s Day and Black History Month; and rejuvenate drooping spirits with liturgies of healing and gratitude. Never again will you scramble or struggle to provide community prayer that is worthwhile, nourishing, and even electrifying.

In Stirring Waters, Brenner and Purintun tackle a host of questions surrounding the traditional understandings of Christian beliefs and present a variety of perspectives on the key topics of Bible, God, Yeshua, spirit, and more. They go beyond the “why” to asking, “so what.” Through questions and discussion starters, Stirring Waters offers a fresh way of making sense of faith and church. It wrestles with the ambiguities, uncertainties, and risks of this age and discusses the possibilities the authors have discovered for making sense of life and death. It delves into a conversation about faith and understanding of those mysteries Christians often associate with God and the religious life. I can’t tell you what kind of book this is—theology, spiritual autobiography, memoir, practical guide. It is all of these and none of these. Probably, it is a category that has not been invented until this moment. I can tell you that this book did for me today what Marcus Borg and Dom Crosson did for me at the end of the last century.” [From the Preface by Dr. David R. Sawyer]

In this “captivating” (Harper’s Bazaar) and lyrical debut novel—perfect for fans of The Water Dancer and the Legacy of Orïsha series—the Yoruba deity of the sea, Yemaya, is brought to vivid life as she discovers the power of Black resilience, love, and feminine strength in antebellum America. Shallow Waters imagines Yemaya, an Orïsha—a deity in the religion of Africa’s Yoruba people—cast into mid-1800s America. We meet Yemaya as a young woman, still in the care of her mother and not yet fully aware of the spectacular power she possesses to protect herself and those she holds dear. The journey laid out in Shallow Waters sees Yemaya confront the greatest evils of this era; transcend time and place in search of Obatala, a man who sacrifices his own freedom for the chance at hers; and grow into the powerful woman she was destined to become. We travel alongside Yemaya from her native Africa and on to the “New World,” with vivid pictures of life for those left on the outskirts of power in the nascent Americas. Yemaya realizes the fighter within, travels the Underground Railroad in search of the mysterious stranger Obatala, and crosses paths with icons of our history on the road to freedom. Shallow Waters is a “riveting and heartbreaking” (Publishers Weekly) work of ritual storytelling from promising debut author Anita Kopacz.

"A collection of fifty-two feminist liturgies for justice from the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER), ready-made to help communities venerate powerful women of faith, develop a richer and deeper spirituality, and take real action for justice"--

Concentrate on the biblical author's message as it unfolds. Designed to assist the pastor and Bible teacher in conveying the significance of God's Word, the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament series treats the literary context and structure of every passage of the New Testament book in the original Greek. With a unique layout designed to help you comprehend the form and flow of each passage, the ZECNT unpacks: The key message. The author's original translation. An exegetical outline. Verse-by-verse commentary. Theology in application. While primarily designed for those with a basic knowledge of biblical Greek, all who strive to understand and teach the New Testament will benefit from the depth, format, and scholarship of these volumes.

What was Galilee actually like in the first century? Whether one was a peasant or a wealthy landowner, a member of the Herodian ruling class or Roman aristocracy, Galilee was known to be inhabited by dangerous, malevolent phantasms, demons and evil spirits. The evidence, drawn from an exhaustive review of contemporary sources and literature, is overwhelming—a world completely alien to our own. There was no middle class, only the powerful and the poor. Poverty, foreign occupation, demonic proliferation, corrupt overseers, and onerous quotas, all underscored the daily struggle for subsistence among the peasants of Galilee who lived tiny, poor working villages. Life lasted only twenty-six years; forty percent of children died by the age of twelve. Contextual risk analysis allows entry into this first-century world of Jesus with remarkable clarity. How and why did Jesus engage with demons and condemn the elite and demonic imperialism? Why was he labeled an “evil-doer?” Why were traditions about the Galilean women suppressed? Why was Jesus ritually killed? The figures of Jesus, his opponents and those who followed into peril emerge in startling clarity, leaving us standing with Jesus in Galilee.