TY - BOOK ID - 80835730 TI - Spiritual Defiance : Building a Beloved Community of Resistance PY - 2015 SN - 9780300213768 030021376X 9780300203523 0300203527 PB - New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, DB - UniCat KW - Church renewal. KW - Faith. KW - Christianity KW - Religious belief KW - Theological belief KW - Belief and doubt KW - Religion KW - Salvation KW - Theological virtues KW - Trust in God KW - Church KW - Church reform KW - Reform of the church KW - Renewal of the church KW - Religious awakening KW - Renewal KW - Reform UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:80835730 AB - A leading voice of progressive Christianity makes a powerful case for faith as a radical way of being in the world During his thirty-year career as a parish minister and professor, Robin Meyers has focused on renewing the church as an instrument of social change and personal transformation. In this provocative and passionate book, he explores the decline of the church as a community of believers and calls readers back to the church's roots as a community of resistance. Shifting the conversation about church renewal away from theological purity and marketing strategies that embrace cultural norms, and toward "embodied noncompliance" with the dominant culture, Meyers urges a return to the revolutionary spirit that marked Jesus's ministry. Framing his discussion around three poems by twentieth-century Polish poet Anna Kamienska, Meyers casts the nature of faith as a force that stands against anything and everything that engenders death and indignity. He calls for active-sometimes even subversive-defiance of the ego's temptations, of what he terms "the heresy of orthodoxy itself," and of an uncritical acceptance of militarism and capitalism. Each chapter is a poignant and urgent invitation to recover the Jesus Movement as a Beloved Community of Resistance. ER -