Bøker av Hal Taussig

What happens inside the church doors is its liturgy. It is there that life and fulfillment should be found, but too often today liturgy seems stale and lacking in vitality. The problem is not a lack of faith so much as it is a lack of life in the liturgy itself. In our liturgies we have let our emphasis on preserving traditional forms and expressions overrule attempts to give vital expression to the life and faith of contemporary participants. This is especially true with that part of the liturgy that is known as the Lord's Supper or eucharist. Though the practice of this sacrament is still central to the piety of most Christians today, here especially there is often a lifelessness and lack of connection with life as it is now lived. This need not be, however. The tradition is alive with meaning that we have too often overlooked. And liturgy can more effectively address the contemporary situation if we can learn better how to apply it to the aesthetic and symbolic language of today's culture. --from chapter 1

What difference does scholarship on the historical Jesus make for the way we think about the meaning of Christian faith in the twenty-first century? In The Historical Jesus Goes To Church, biblical scholars--Fellows of the Jesus Seminar--speak directly to the ways in which new knowledge of the Jesus of history requires and enables us to think differently about the significance of Jesus and about the reliability and authority of the Bible. They also imagine what these new understandings imply for public worship, preaching, prayer and practice, and life in community. These articles evoke the spirit of Paul, Christianity's first theologian, who like us found himself standing at the intersection of two eras and knew that he had to let go of his past if he hoped to have a future.