Debra Dean Murphy – författare

What are human beings created for? How can we experience the well-being made possible in Christ? What does it mean to love God and our neighbor wholly? These questions go to the heart of what it means to live the Christian life. Happiness, Health, and Beauty explores these questions by putting Wesleyan doctrine in conversation with voices from the wider Christian tradition: theologians, philosophers, social critics, scientists, and poets. The guiding themes for this inquiry into the nature of the Christian life are happiness--how we flourish together in the goodness of God; health--the intrinsic connection between bread and bodies in the Eucharist; and beauty--the disposition to benevolence that is the hallmark of our being fully human.

This is an important book! With a generous spirit and discerning eye, Murphy unmasks the ways in which the biblical and theological context of Christian education has been co-opted, on the one hand, by a focus on learning experiences and, on the other hand, by modernity's understanding of what it means to be human. She summons Christian education back to its integral relationship with Christian worship, drawing it out of the church basement and into the sanctuary where Christian persons and communities are most regularly formed and where the content of Christian formation -- Bible and Theology -- are 'practiced' by the church. Murphy's critique of contemporary religious education theory is provocative; her interpretation of the 'lessons' of the liturgy are prophetic. I will be recommending it to my colleagues in Christian education and liturgical studies alike. -- E. Byron Anderson, Garrett-Evangelical Theological SeminaryFew tasks facing the contemporary church are more urgent than coming to an understanding of the critical importance of Christian formation. Yet as Debra Dean Murphy demonstrates so ably in these pages, this task is too often undermined by the alien assumptions that reside at the core of the 'religious education establishment. Murphy's penetrating analysis and profound proposals will be welcomed by anyone who had ever longed for a theory and practice of Christian education that would flow out of and do justice to the deep and abiding mysteries at the heart of Christian worship. -- Philip D. Kenneson, author of Life on the Vine

About The Ekklesia ProjectThe Ekklesia Project is a network of Christians from across the Christian tradition who rejoice in a peculiar kind of friendship rooted in our common love of God and the Church. We come together from Catholic parishes, Protestant congregations, communities in the Anabaptist tradition, house-churches and more as those who are convinced that to call ourselves 'Christian' means that following Jesus Christ must shape all areas of life. Seeing Christ's Body as our "e;first family,"e; the Ekklesia Project aims to put discipleship and the Church as an alternative community of practices, worship, and integration at the center of contemporary debates on Christianity and society. For more information about The Ekklesia Project, see its website: www.ekklesiaproject.orgAbout the Congregational Formation InitiativeThe overarching goal of The Ekklesia Project's Congregational Formation Initiative (CFI) is to develop creative and effective ways of supporting congregations that are committed to making lifelong formation and discipleship central to their life together. To support this goal, the CFI fosters collaboration among pastors, scholars and lay persons to develop, refine and disseminate resources and processes that will help initiate and sustain congregational conversations about the fundamental identity and mission of the church. For more information about CFI, including the place of this study in the overall initiative, see the EP website listed above.

About The Ekklesia ProjectThe Ekklesia Project is a network of Christians from across the Christian tradition who rejoice in a peculiar kind of friendship rooted in our common love of God and the Church. We come together from Catholic parishes, Protestant congregations, communities in the Anabaptist tradition, house-churches and more as those who are convinced that to call ourselves 'Christian' means that following Jesus Christ must shape all areas of life. Seeing Christ's Body as our "e;first family,"e; the Ekklesia Project aims to put discipleship and the Church as an alternative community of practices, worship, and integration at the center of contemporary debates on Christianity and society. For more information about The Ekklesia Project, see its website: www.ekklesiaproject.orgAbout the Congregational Formation InitiativeThe overarching goal of The Ekklesia Project's Congregational Formation Initiative (CFI) is to develop creative and effective ways of supporting congregations that are committed to making lifelong formation and discipleship central to their life together. To support this goal, the CFI fosters collaboration among pastors, scholars and lay persons to develop, refine and disseminate resources and processes that will help initiate and sustain congregational conversations about the fundamental identity and mission of the church. For more information about CFI, including the place of this study in the overall initiative, see the EP website listed above.