Divinity & Discourse – serie

The church is shrinking. What seeds must we sow for the future church and where might we find them?The end of Christendom calls for a re-examination of our understandings of the church, but even more importantly, of church practice. At the very least, the church’s relationship to society has changed profoundly in recent decades. The world around us, certainly in the Northern Hemisphere, is no longer Christian. Protestant or Catholic, Right or Left, Christians are now a minority. Will the church cease to exist in the face of this profound change even as it struggles to sustain its institutional apparatus? Even if it survives for another century, we will increasingly have to make adjustments. But according to what criteria? The Thriving Church strives to identify the fundamental characteristics of being the Church, even amidst decline, so it can re-emerge and thrive without compromising either its traditions or its contemporary significance. The book explores these seeds of the future church as they were lived out and enacted in the first three centuries of Christianity, not because older is necessarily better, but because our relationship to society is now similar to that of the first Christians. Engaging the earliest history, theology and practice of the church, Juan Oliver sketches a path forward, arguing that the Church needs to re-embrace physicality in its rituals. This process also inevitably questions some assumptions inherited or developed over centuries about the nature of the church, its mission, evangelism, formation, membership, liturgy, leadership and outreach.

How Sacrament and Ritual can become a site of resistance and ecological renewal.Sacraments of Liberation argues that the sacraments are central to addressing the intertwined crises of poverty and ecological degradation. Grounded in the “preferential option for the poor”—a phrase popularized by the Liberation Theologists and echoed by Pope Francis—this book presents sacraments as transformative practices that move the Church from abstract theological spaces to the embodied realities of particular places where justice and restoration occur. Responding to economic and ecological crises, this work integrates theological insights from aforementioned liberation theology, early church monk and theologian Maxim the Confessor, and the Orthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov with Edward Casey’s philosophical critique of modernity’s abstraction of space. It presents sacramental life as an alternative to the commodification of land, labor, and life under global capitalism. Rather than reducing the sacraments to mere symbols, it insists that their embodied practice restores community and creation. Through theological reflection and practical application, Sacraments of Liberation demonstrates how the Church’s sacramental life reclaims sacred places of justice and care, offering hope and tangible pathways for healing humanity and the earth.

The church is shrinking. What seeds must we sow for the future church and where might we find them?The end of Christendom calls for a re-examination of our understandings of the church, but even more importantly, of church practice. At the very least, the church’s relationship to society has changed profoundly in recent decades. The world around us, certainly in the Northern Hemisphere, is no longer Christian. Protestant or Catholic, Right or Left, Christians are now a minority. Will the church cease to exist in the face of this profound change even as it struggles to sustain its institutional apparatus? Even if it survives for another century, we will increasingly have to make adjustments. But according to what criteria? The Thriving Church strives to identify the fundamental characteristics of being the Church, even amidst decline, so it can re-emerge and thrive without compromising either its traditions or its contemporary significance. The book explores these seeds of the future church as they were lived out and enacted in the first three centuries of Christianity, not because older is necessarily better, but because our relationship to society is now similar to that of the first Christians. Engaging the earliest history, theology and practice of the church, Juan Oliver sketches a path forward, arguing that the Church needs to re-embrace physicality in its rituals. This process also inevitably questions some assumptions inherited or developed over centuries about the nature of the church, its mission, evangelism, formation, membership, liturgy, leadership and outreach.

A theologically rich and pastorally grounded exploration of how art becomes a language of healing, resistance, and hope behind prison walls.Authored by a pastor with extensive experience in both military and correctional chaplaincy, this rigorous and illuminating study offers a theologically grounded examination of the ways incarcerated individuals employ artistic practice to negotiate trauma and imagine new possibilities for hope. Engaging personal narratives, constructive theological frameworks, and insights drawn from the author’s own chaplaincy work, the book presents art as a sacred mode of discourse—a theopoetic practice that mediates healing, agency, and resistance. Situated within Christian theology, informed by contemporary trauma theory, and attentive to the substantial institutional constraints that shape carceral ministry, the work demonstrates how chaplains and other caregivers can cultivate conditions in which aesthetic encounter becomes a catalyst for spiritual transformation and communal well‑being.