Steven Félix-Jäger – författare

Worship of God is at the heart of the Christian life. But it also varies widely across different churches and traditions. What, then, should our worship look like? And what does it mean to worship God well?In How to Worship for All Its Worth, theologian, artist, and songwriter Steven Félix-Jäger offers four principles for contemporary worship: it should be biblically faithful; aesthetically rich yet appropriate; theologically sound and robust; and pastorally sensitive but challenging.Demonstrating what these principles look like in practice, he also offers case studies from a range of churches and traditions, including Evangelical, Reformed, Pentecostal, Black Gospel, and Charismatic Catholic worshiping communities. Collectively, these principles and case studies can help the body of Christ, which is both one yet diverse, as it seeks to worship God well.

This brief but comprehensive introduction to Christian worldview helps readers understand the Christian faith as the substance of Spirit-filled living and as a knowledge tradition stemming from the global Pentecostal movement.Using beauty, truth, and goodness as organizing principles, the authors delineate a Christian worldview by tracing each category historically, comparing and contrasting each with alternative Christian expressions, and constructing fresh takes on each as read through the lived Pentecostal experience. Unlike other worldview books, the authors' approach emphasizes beauty (relating to experience) rather than truth (involving knowledge acquisition); that difference in emphasis flows naturally from the Pentecostal perspective, which has traditionally centered the experience of the Spirit.Pentecostal Christians will find this volume indispensable for thinking lucidly about their worldview from a renewal perspective.

Jesus calls us to make disciples of all the nations. Many Christians believe this means enlisting soldiers in a culture war. But putting faith in the service of politics risks remaking God in our own image. How can the church help bring God's kingdom to earth without relying on the political structures of this world?Critiquing our idolization of the values of classical Western liberalism, Steven Félix-Jäger seeks a renewal of the church's public witness. He points out the pitfalls that stem from our obsession with individual freedom--from the prosperity gospel to Christian nationalism to conformity with secular progressivism. True freedom is not about individual liberty or free market economics but about flourishing in covenant with God. Félix-Jäger offers a public theology that challenges the church to be a holy, loving, and generous witness to a world bound by visions of self-absorbed autonomy and materialism. Inspired by Jubilee and Pentecost, he ultimately constructs an alternative model for public witness rooted in the abundance of the Spirit.The Problem and Promise of Freedom not only serves as an indispensable resource for students of religion and society but also offers urgent and clear-sighted witness to the church today.

This book explores how the Spirit is represented in visual art, but also how the Spirit is at work in and through visual art, in all its forms. The volume editors and contributors engage visual art from the perspective of pneumatology to give theologies of culture fruitful new perspectives that begin with the Spirit rather than other common theological contact points. The book explores the Spirit’s role in art-making, looks at how the Spirit engages culture through the arts, and shows how the church has historically engaged the Spirit through visual art. Contributors ask how Christian convictions about and experiences of the Spirit might shape the way one thinks about visual art.

The Spirit and the Screen engages contemporary films from the perspective of pneumatology to give theologies of culture fruitful new perspectives that begin with the Spirit rather than other common theological contact points (Christology, anthropology, theological ethics, creation, eschatology, etc.). This book explores pertinent pneumatological issues that arise in film, as well as literary devices that draw allusions to the Spirit. It offers three main contributions: first, it explores how Christian understandings of the person and work of the Spirit illuminate the nature of film and film-making; second, it shows that there are in fact “Spirit figures” in film (as distinct from but inseparable from Christ-figures), even if sometimes they’re not intended as such, “Spirit-led” characters, are moved to act “prophetically,” against their inclinations and in excess of their skill or knowledge and with eccentric, life-giving creativity; third, it identifies subtle and explicit symbolizations of the Spirit in pop culture, symbolizations that requires deep, careful thinking about the Christian doctrine of the Spirit and generate new horizons for cultural analysis. The contributors of this book explore these issues, asking how Christian convictions and experiences of the Spirit might shape the way one thinks about films and film-making.

The Spirit and the Song:Pneumatological Reflections on Popular Music explores pertinent pneumatological issues that arise in music. It offers three distinct contributions: first, it asks what, if anything, music tells listeners about God’s Spiritedness. Can the experience of music speak to human spiritedness, the world’s transcendentality, or a person’s own self-transcendence in ways nothing else does or can? Second, this book explores how the Spirit functions within, and even determines, culture through music. Because music is a profound human expression, it can find itself in a rich dialogue with the Spirit. Third and finally, this book explores the contested status of music in Christian spiritual traditions. It deals with music as inspired by the Spirit, music as participation in Spiritedness, and music as temptation of “the flesh.” As such, this book also engages music’s placement in Christian spiritual traditions. The contributors of this book ask how Christian convictions about and experiences of the Spirit might shape the way one thinks about music.

This book extends a theory of art that addresses the present era’s shift towards global pluralism. By focusing on extrinsic rather than intrinsic qualities of art, this book helps viewers evaluate art across cultural boundaries. Art can be universally classified by an evaluation of its guiding narrative, and can be understood and judged through hermeneutical methods. Since artists engage culture through various local, transnational, and emerging global narratives, it is difficult to decipher what standards are used for evaluation, and which authoritative body evaluates the work. This book implements a narrative-hermeneutical approach to properly classify an artwork and establish its meaning and value.

This book extends a theory of art that addresses the present era’s shift towards global pluralism. By focusing on extrinsic rather than intrinsic qualities of art, this book helps viewers evaluate art across cultural boundaries. Art can be universally classified by an evaluation of its guiding narrative, and can be understood and judged through hermeneutical methods. Since artists engage culture through various local, transnational, and emerging global narratives, it is difficult to decipher what standards are used for evaluation, and which authoritative body evaluates the work. This book implements a narrative-hermeneutical approach to properly classify an artwork and establish its meaning and value.

A contribution to the field of theological aesthetics, this book explores the arts in and around the Pentecostal and charismatic renewal movements.  It proposes a pneumatological model for creativity and the arts, and discusses different art forms from the perspective of that model. Pentecostals and other charismatic Christians have not sufficiently worked out matters of aesthetics, or teased out the great religious possibilities of engaging with the arts. With the flourishing of Pentecostal culture comes the potential for an equally flourishing artistic life. As this book demonstrates, renewal movements have participated in the arts but have not systematized their findings in ways that express their theological commitments—until now. The book examines how to approach art in ways that are communal, dialogical, and theologically cultivating.