Books published by Cascade Books

Does it really matter? Does it matter if we have free will? Does it matter if Calvinism is true? And does what you think about it matter? No and yes.No, it doesn't matter because God is who he is and does what he does regardless of what we think of him, just as the solar system keeps spinning around the sun even if we're convinced it spins around the earth. Our opinions about God will not change God, but they can change us. And so yes, it does matter because the conversations about free will and Calvinism confront us with perhaps the only question that really matters: who is God?This is a book about that question--a book about the Bible, black holes, love, sovereignty, hell, Romans 9, Jonathan Edwards, John Piper, C. S. Lewis, Karl Barth, and a little girl in a red coat. You've heard arguments, but here's a story--Austin Fischer's story, and his journey in and out of Calvinism on a trip to the center of the universe. ""Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed fills a gap in contemporary literature about Calvinism. Here is a young, dynamic, evangelical pastor, well-educated theologically, who discovered the fatal flaws in Calvinism and reluctantly shook it off. This is his story, including his well-articulated reasons for that transformation. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, especially to people interested in the 'new Calvinism' and why a biblically committed young Christian might bid it adieu.""--Roger E. Olson, George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University""By sharing his own journey in and out of Calvinism, Fischer provides readers with an honest, interesting, insightful, and very compelling critique of the self-absorbed 'black-hole God' of Calvinism. With a disarmingly laid-back style, Fischer crafts a series of clear and astute arguments that demonstrate the unbiblical and irrational nature of each of the central claims of Calvinism. Just as importantly, however, Fischer helps readers discover the humble, other-oriented, self-sacrificial God revealed in Jesus Christ . . .""--Greg Boyd, Princeton Theological Seminary""This book tells Austin Fischer's story, and I hope you read it, and I hope you get a bunch of friends to read it together. Talk about it and ask [the] question, . . . ""Is the Calvinist God the God we discover when we look into the face of Jesus, the incarnation of God?"" Austin tells his answers to [this question] at the age many need to begin answering [that] question.""--Scot McKnight, Northern Seminary""With this book, Austin Fischer brings fresh insights to a very old conversation with a perspective that is at times piercing, at times deeply personal, and always thoughtful and rooted in scripture. He invites readers to wrestle along with him with some tough questions--questions that, no matter where your theological journey takes you, are worth asking with this kind of humility and care.""--Rachel Held-Evans, Author of Evolving in Monkey TownAustin Fischer is Teaching Pastor at Vista Community Church. He and his wife, Allison, live in Temple, Texas. He speaks and writes and you can follow him on Twitter @austintfischer or online at purpletheology.com.

Description:""Walter Brueggemann is the master of finding fresh and compelling dimensions of meaning in texts so familiar they barely scratch the surface of our consciousness. In this exciting collection, Brueggemann finds that when we admit we are dust, we can be liberated. Why? Because we are free from acting like God. We are free to choose obedience to the one living, true Sovereign. The idols lose their grip on us and we live faithfully and in authentic joy.""--Ronald J. Allen, Christian Theological Seminary""According to Walter Brueggemann, the autonomy, secularity, and individualism that characterize modernity have 'exiled' the contemporary believer. Always concerned with the manner in which one is to live in the world, he argues for a subversive imagination similar to that found in the biblical wisdom writings, the Psalms, and the Prophets. One comes away from this book both energized by the vision presented and challenged to make it a reality.""--Dianne Bergant, Catholic Theological Union in Chicago""There is a reason why Walter Brueggemann remains, for preachers and pastors, the most loved and trusted of all biblical scholars--and that is simply because he writes for us. In every season and heartbreak of life and ministry, he writes for us. And over the years, we have come to see that when Brueggemann goes to the text before God, with his signature passion, candor, and ferocious energy, he goes not for our enlightenment or edification, but for our life and for his. Read this book and take off your shoes, because you will enter onto holy ground."" --Anna Carter Florence, Columbia Theological SeminaryEndorsements:""Walter Brueggemann is the master of finding fresh and compelling dimensions of meaning in texts so familiar they barely scratch the surface of our consciousness. In this exciting collection, Brueggemann finds that when we admit we are dust, we can be liberated. Why? Because we are free from acting like God. We are free to choose obedience to the one living, true Sovereign. The idols lose their grip on us and we live faithfully and in authentic joy.""--Ronald J. Allen, Christian Theological Seminary""According to Walter Brueggemann, the autonomy, secularity, and individualism that characterize modernity have 'exiled' the contemporary believer. Always concerned with the manner in which one is to live in the world, he argues for a subversive imagination similar to that found in the biblical wisdom writings, the Psalms, and the Prophets. One comes away from this book both energized by the vision presented and challenged to make it a reality.""--Dianne Bergant, Catholic Theological Union in Chicago""There is a reason why Walter Brueggemann remains, for preachers and pastors, the most loved and trusted of all biblical scholars--and that is simply because he writes for us. In every season and heartbreak of life and ministry, he writes for us. And over the years, we have come to see that when Brueggemann goes to the text before God, with his signature passion, candor, and ferocious energy, he goes not for our enlightenment or edification, but for our life and for his. Read this book and take off your shoes, because you will enter onto holy ground."" --Anna Carter Florence, Columbia Theological SeminaryAbout the Contributor(s):Walter Brueggemann is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament Emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. He is past President of the Society of Biblical Literature and the author of numerous books, including Truth-telling as Subversive Obedience, David and His Theologian, Praying the Psalms, A Pathway of Interpretation, and Ichabod toward Home.

""We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness"" (Eph 6:12). So Paul warns his Ephesian readers. And yet Paul also says that these principalities and powers were created in and for Christ (Col 1:16) and cannot separate us from the love of God (Rom 8:38). What are the principalities and powers of our time? How do we understand them as created, fallen, and disarmed? How does the Christian today engage these powers? These are the questions speakers and participants addressed at the 2014 Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology.""In this volume the question of ''Powers and Principalities'' is examined from many standpoints, most notably exegetical, historical, cultural, and political. The essays are rich and stimulating. The idea of dark spiritual powers at work behind the scenes of everyday life, and especially political life, continues to bear fruit for Christian theological reflection.""--George Hunsinger, McCord Professor of Systematic Theology, Princeton Theological SeminaryMichael Root is Professor of Systematic Theology at The Catholic University of America and Executive Director of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology. He was formerly the director of the Institute for Ecumenical Research, Strasbourg, France.James J. Buckley is Professor of Theology at Loyola University, Maryland and Associate Director of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology. He contributed to and edited The Blackwell Companion to Catholicism (Wiley Blackwell, 2008).

Films are modern spiritual phenomena. They function as such in at least three profound ways: world projection, thought experiments, and catharsis (i.e., as dreams, doubt, and dread). Understanding film in this way allows for a theological account of the experience that speaks to the religious possibilities of film that far extend the portrayal of religious themes or content. Dreams, Doubt, and Dread: The Spiritual in Film aims to address films as spiritual experiences. This collection of short essays and dialogues examines films phenomenologically--through the experience of the viewer as an agent having been acted upon in the functioning of the film itself. Authors were invited to take one of the main themes and creatively consider how film, in their experiences, has provided opportunities for new modes of thinking. Contributors will then engaged one another in a dialogue about the similarities and differences in their descriptions of film as spiritual phenomena. The intended aim of this text is to shift contemporary theological film engagement away from a simple mode of analysis in which theological concepts are simply read into the film itself and begin to let films speak for themselves as profoundly spiritual experiences.""Before it is anything else, film is an event. Thus, to truly understand the significance of the cinema in the contemporary world, we must attend more fully to the concrete, irreducibly embodied experience of filmgoing. By analyzing a wide array of films in explicitly phenomenological terms, the essays in this volume grant us unique insight into the powerful, enlightening and, indeed, even spiritual encounter that takes place within the cinematic event. I highly recommend it."" --Kutter Callaway, Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture, Fuller Theological SeminaryZachary Settle is currently a PhD student in the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt in the areas of political theology and political economy. He is the theology editor for The Other Journal.Taylor Worley holds a PhD in theology from the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St. Andrews and serves as Associate Professor of Faith and Culture at Trinity International University in Deerfield, IL.

People worldwide find themselves part of overlapping communities of identity and belonging--racial, political, cultural, sexual, ideological. Some identities, like brand loyalties, are chosen; some, like class identity, are imposed.As followers of Jesus Christ, those called to live in between the age that is and the age to come, Christians ask what it means to be part of the body of Christ, God''s new creation from among the nations, in a world filled with other nations. ""Who--and whose--are we?"" There is no easy answer, no time at which Christians got it completely right. Yet such questions must be addressed, and the stakes are high. Matters of war and peace, exclusion and inclusion, who starves and who does not, the credibility of the gospel itself--all are caught up in the whirl of identities, allegiances imposed or refused, and questions about what ""the church"" might possibly mean in such circumstances.In this book, a distinguished group of scholars from five continents asks, ""How can the church respect the diversity of its members--many nations, cultures, and communities--while maintaining a coherent witness to the kingdom of God that is not undermined by more parochial ideologies or priorities?""""Theologians influenced by Stanley Hauerwas are often derisively asked, ''Where is this church of yours?'' Budde''s book shows that one answer is to look no further than the Catholic Church. As a Protestant theologian, I am often envious of a Church that perennially sits astride national and ethnic boundaries. And, as these eminent theologians make clear, the legacy of Catholicism''s resistance to nationalism is not unmixed. It would be enough for this volume to showcase the important work of the Center for World Catholicism at DePaul. These ambitious essays go a good deal further. Their beauty will reshape your view of what the church is and could be.""--Jason Byassee, Butler Chair in Homiletics, Vancouver School of Theology ""In The Borders of Baptism, Michael Budde challenged US Catholics to take seriously the political and practical implications of our usually rote and casual claim--that Jesus is Lord--challenging Catholics to identify the idolatries that shape our lives and to understand the church as our primary location of identity and allegiance. In Beyond the Borders of Baptism, Budde is joined by a chorus of rigorous, theological analysts who explore, challenge, and complexify these claims from diverse global locations, rooting the question in historical contexts and bringing alive the textures of the constant negotiations between the body of Christ and the myriad political and cultural formations in which the church finds herself. This mosaic of analyses elucidate important theoretical questions, provide important examples of ecclesial failure, and converge toward an understanding of these border negotiations as eucharistic--kenotic, exploding tired binaries, and allowing the endlessly creative interruption of God''s grace in histories to transform the reified loci we consider natural. Beyond the Borders of Baptism is a must-read for those interested in ecclesiology, Christian formation, and taking discipleship seriously.""--M. Therese Lysaught, Professor, Associate Director, Institute of Pastoral Studies, Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics, Stritch School of Medicine, Loyola University ChicagoMichael L. Budde is Chair and Professor of Catholic Studies and Professor of Political Science at DePaul University, where he is also Senior Research Professor in the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology. He is the author of numerous books on ecclesiology, political economy, and culture, including The Borders of Baptism: Identities, Allegiances, and the Church (2011) and the edited volume Witness of the Body: The Past, Present, and Future of Christian Martyrdom (2011).

Thomas Piketty''s Capital in the Twenty-First Century initiated a great debate not just about inequality but also regarding the failures found in the economic models used by theoreticians and practitioners alike. Wealth of Persons offers a totally different perspective that challenges the very terms of the debate. The Great Recession reveals a great existential rift at the core of certain economic reflections, thereby showing the real crisis of the crisis of economics. In the human sciences we have created a kind of ""Tower of Babel"" where we cannot understand each other any longer. The ""breakdowns"" occur equally on the personal, social, political, and economic levels. There is a need for an ""about-face"" in method to restore harmony among dissociated disciplines.Wealth of Persons offers a key to such a restoration, applying insights and analysis taken from different economic scholars, schools of thought, philosophical traditions, various disciplines, and charismatic entrepreneurs. Wealth of Persons aims at recapturing an adequate understanding of the acting human person in the economic drama, one that measures up to the reality. The investigation is a passport allowing entry into the land of economic knowledge, properly unfolding the anthropological meaning of the free economy.""John McNerney''s Wealth of Persons is an amazing tour de force--his focus on the human person in economics not only opens up economics for the nonprofessional economist, it''s a bracing exposition of the philosophy of the human person, all the more impressive when seen immersed in economic action. By focusing on the Austrian and the later Bologna schools'' insistence on the role of the entrepreneur he critiques, on the one hand, an economy overfocused on profit and, on the other, Marx''s (and later Piketty''s) misreading of economics as a struggle between capital and labor. It should be required reading for all students (and teachers) of economics as well as of applied philosophical anthropology.""--Brendan Purcell, Adjunct Professor at the School of Philosophy and Theology, University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney""This book is a welcome addition to the field of Catholic social teachings and more generally to the debate over the use of economics and its limits . . . The author aims to explain the ''crisis'' in economics and in the economy without blaming the usual suspects, especially human greed. This research program is sorely needed, especially coming from someone outside of the field of economics.""--Frederic Sautet, Associate Professor of Economics at the Catholic University of America""McNerney . . . is not afraid to suggest that theological and metaphysical issues are needed to put the right limits on economics. And he shows how this might be done without undermining the integrity of the discipline itself--indeed, how such issues flow out of the discipline and its activities among real [persons] acting together . . . What McNerney is really getting at is a placing of economics in its true place, with the realization that the acting person also has a transcendent destiny that is really why he is doing anything at all in the first place, as Augustine said.""--Professor James V. Schall, Retired Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Government at Georgetown UniversityJohn McNerney is head chaplain at University College Dublin. Author of John Paul II: Poet and Philosopher (2004), he is also an occasional lecturer to undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of business ethics and philosophy. He has given talks at various international conferences in North America, Europe, and Asia, and is a member of the national Economy of Communion commission in Ireland.

Teaching preaching, like preaching itself, is a noble endeavor. After nearly four decades of teaching, Richard Lischer has sent legions of preachers across the world to preach gospel. This volume pays tribute to his faith-filled life of preaching and teaching. The contributors, some of whom were taught by Lischer, have received many laurels themselves, so readers will find in these pages wisdom for preaching from many quarters. Some authors include sermons with helpful commentary about the preaching exercise; some offer essays to illuminate the task of sermon writing; all acknowledge the influence of Richard Lischer on their preaching and teaching endeavors.""This fascinating book is so much more than an academic tribute to a retiring professor, although Rick Lischer certainly deserves that as one of our premier theologians of homiletics. This is a collection of some of the finest essays I''ve seen about the weight and high calling to proclaim gospel, and it has been written by some of the best scholars on the subject we have."" --M. Craig Barnes, President, Princeton Theological SeminaryCharles Campbell is Professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School. He is the coauthor with Johan Cilliers of Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly (2012). Clayton J. Schmit is Provost of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary of Lenoir-Rhyne University. He has authored books on preaching and worship and is founder of the Lloyd J. Ogilvie Institute of Preaching Series at Cascade Books. Mary Hinkle Shore is the pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Brevard, North Carolina.Jennifer Copeland is the Executive Director of the North Carolina Council of Churches and an adjunct instructor at Duke Divinity School. She is the author of Feminine Registers: The Importance of Women''s Voices for Christian Preaching (2014).

Films are modern spiritual phenomena. They function as such in at least three profound ways: world projection, thought experiments, and catharsis (i.e., as dreams, doubt, and dread). Understanding film in this way allows for a theological account of the experience that speaks to the religious possibilities of film that far extend the portrayal of religious themes or content. Dreams, Doubt, and Dread: The Spiritual in Film aims to address films as spiritual experiences. This collection of short essays and dialogues examines films phenomenologically--through the experience of the viewer as an agent having been acted upon in the functioning of the film itself. Authors were invited to take one of the main themes and creatively consider how film, in their experiences, has provided opportunities for new modes of thinking. Contributors will then engaged one another in a dialogue about the similarities and differences in their descriptions of film as spiritual phenomena. The intended aim of this text is to shift contemporary theological film engagement away from a simple mode of analysis in which theological concepts are simply read into the film itself and begin to let films speak for themselves as profoundly spiritual experiences.""Before it is anything else, film is an event. Thus, to truly understand the significance of the cinema in the contemporary world, we must attend more fully to the concrete, irreducibly embodied experience of filmgoing. By analyzing a wide array of films in explicitly phenomenological terms, the essays in this volume grant us unique insight into the powerful, enlightening and, indeed, even spiritual encounter that takes place within the cinematic event. I highly recommend it."" --Kutter Callaway, Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture, Fuller Theological SeminaryZachary Settle is currently a PhD student in the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt in the areas of political theology and political economy. He is the theology editor for The Other Journal.Taylor Worley holds a PhD in theology from the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St. Andrews and serves as Associate Professor of Faith and Culture at Trinity International University in Deerfield, IL.

Though women have been objects more often than subjects of interreligious dialogue, they have nevertheless contributed in significant ways to the dialogue, just as the dialogue has also contributed to their own self-understanding. This volume, the fifth in the Interreligious Dialogue Series, brings together historical, critical, and constructive approaches to the role of women in the dialogue between religions. These approaches deal with concrete examples of women's involvement in dialogue, critical reflections on the representation of women in dialogue, and the important question of what women might bring to the dialogue. Together, they open up new avenues for reflection on the nature and purpose of interreligious dialogue.

These poems--selected from the past three decades--are firmly rooted in what Richard Wilbur called the "hunks and colors of the world." They faithfully try to take into account a world we did not make and, at the same time, record the terrifying and painful contradictions of human experience. And finally, they try to do so while remaining open to the intrinsic joy of being. These are poems rooted in the belief that words can invoke those presences which bring us back, again and again, to the fundamental experience of being: that there is something rather than nothing. The poems in A Word In My Mouth embody, as Czeslaw Milosz puts it, "the double life of our common human circumstance as beings in between the dust that we are and the divinity to which we would aspire."