Book Description
In this splendidly crafted work, McFague argues for theology as an ethical imperative for all thinking Christians: Responsible discipleship today entails disciplined religious reflection. Moreover, theology matters: Without serious reflection on their worldview, ultimate commitments, and lifestyle, North American Christians cannot hope to contribute to ensuring the “good life” for people or the planet. To live differently we must think differently.
McFague has therefore written this primer in theology. It helps Christians assess their own religious story in light of the larger Christian tradition and the felt needs of the planet. At once an apology for an ecologically driven theology and a model for how theology itself might be expressed, her work is expressly crafted to bring people into the practice of religious reflection as a form of responsible Christian practice in the world. McFague shows the reader how articulating one's personal religious story and credo can lead directly into contextual analysis, unfolding of theological concepts, and forms of Christian practice.
In lucid prose she offers creative discussions of revelation, the reigning economic worldview (and its ecological alternative), and how a planetary theology might approach classical areas of God and the world, Christ and salvation, and life in the Spirit. Enticing readers into serious self-assessment and creative commitment, McFague's new work encourages and models a theological practice that “gives glory to God by loving the world.”
Customer Reviews:
Treasure Trove of Economic Fallacies.......2005-03-30
This book is a delight to read, if only because McFague manages to compress so much economic illiteracy into a single book. Zero-sum game fallacy, the confusion between matter and resources, dependency theory, the idea that the market economy destroys the environment, the identification of a market economy with consumerism. They're all here in abundance! I would give the book one star simply because it displays such ignorance about a subject it claims to analyze. But some credit must be given to McFague for packing so many mistakes into so small a space, and for lacking any sense of irony for enjoying a cushy high level academic salary while disdaining all those consumer-driven lumpen proletariats who get by on half her salary.
Embrace and love the world you live in... thus, embrace God........2002-08-08
Avant-garde theologian, reformative and unorthodox Christian, Sallie McFague, in 'Life Abundant', sets forth a radical, earthbound, theology that is as provocative as it is over sanguine.
Her 'hope against hope' prophetic cry to all North Americans is to 'love and protect the world' and thus love God. Forsake your 'hell bent' consuming way and share the world's resources equally. Be liberated from your role as oppressors. While this message is needed and laudable, it will, sadly, go unheard and thus unheeded. For, as Seneca, the Roman philosopher said at the time of Christ, "It is the superfluous things for which men concern themselves".
Dr. McFague is an accomplished professor of Theology (Vanderbilt Divinity School) and, as such, she challenges you to reconsider your life philosophy, your spiritual theology and your consumer mentality. Dr. McFague wants you not to read her book as much as to engage, challenge and argue with her via the book. In the end, she hopes you will rethink and develop a 'working theology' that embraces and loves the world we live in.
While the title of the book is affable, and even quaint, this book is not. This is a dense and demanding read; however, a postulation worthy of every thinking person's effort. I am going to attempt the absurd. I am going to attempt to distill the erudite writings of Dr. McFague in three phrases. In "Life Abundant" Sallie McFague has an admonitory outcry for "middle class North American Christians". She calls them to 1) Change their manic consumer lives, and choose to live in harmony with, and care for, all creation. 2) Realize that Christians (as all people) live to give God glory by loving the world and everything in it. 3) Deconstruct their traditional theologies and then reconstruct them in concert with her "Panentheistic" theology.
Be forewarned, any attempt to fully grasp Sally McFague's in a coherent way will be akin to attempting to wrap your arms around a full grown Redwood tree. Her theology is "relatively absolute". She believes that all theologians speak of God metaphorically, and there is no such thing as a complete theology, rather there are only piecemeal theologies, and no creditable theologian makes empirical statements about who God is. Thus, the reading of her explanation of her belief system is akin to listening to Dennis Hopper disjointedly saying in 'Apocalypse Now' that he found "the one" (referring to Marlin Brando). Heavy man, heavy.
Her theology is Christian Panentheism - Pan'en'theism. God is immanent, incarnated in the world through nature. Thus she sees the world as 'in' ('en') God and that God is 'with' the world. God is with us here and now in all living beings. "The world", for Sallie "is where God dwells, it is God's 'house'". And, for her, the "divine incarnation" is not limited to Jesus, but God is incarnate in the world and each creature is "a microcosm of divine incarnation".
For McFague God is Reality. She states; "when we say that God is reality we mean that reality is both with us and beyond us, both eminent and transcendent, both physical and spiritual". God is "the source, the sustainer, and the goal of everything that is."
Her theology is a 'working theology' and she believe that we must act - now and decisively. She condemns the consumptive, consumer life style of North Americans. Her evolved theology is no longer the self-centered tribal, traditional anthropocentric Christian theology of the masses (salvation for the individual), but is a cosmological theology that affirms that being with nature is being with God and salvation is when you are in God's presence (God is found in relationship with others and nature). For Sallie the deterioration of nature and the injustice to the poor people is caused by the religion of our time - consumerism.
I found that some of her provocative statements raise significant questions. For example, if God so loves the world and is continually engaged, or "radical present", with the world, then where is the evidence of His/Her/Its involvement? Nowhere does Dr. McFague explain where or how God is "radically present". Please, give me examples, Dr. McFague, of where and how God is involved with this world He/She/It loves.
She does not embrace the Christian belief in the popular image of God as a supernatural being and redeemer of human individuals. But rather for Dr. McFague God is - radically transcendent and radically immanent. Her Christology is unconventional and unorthodox. She discards the personally redemptive, sacrificial death of Christ - "Personally, I have never been able to believe it", and replaces it with an 'ecological economic Christology.'
Her chapters on economic models are great reads, but her statement that we, in North America, have "allowed our economic theories (i.e. market capitalism) to tell us who we are"- is disputable. Market capitalism did not make us consuming, self-gratifying individuals, but rather we adopted market capitalism because it is what best benefits who we are.
Also, she beats the drum of 'frugality', asking her readers to restrict significantly their materialistic intake (she admittedly acknowledges that this is not a beat that North Americans are likely to dance to). Thus, her Jeremiah prophetic call to a radical life change, thought desperately needed, will accomplish what it did with Israel - Nada.
Her end notes (30 pages) are a gold mine for all those interested in cross-references, excellent bibliographies, insights and side-bar comments.
In short, though complex, this is a stimulating and thought provoking read. Anyone who believes, as McFague does, that God loves and wants to save the earth, should read this book, agree with her theology, "we are to give God glory by loving the earth" and chorus "Amen, and Amen". Recommended
Another mindblower.......2000-12-13
Just when I thought Christian theology has nothing more to say, Sallie McFague comes along and not only says something new but encourages her readers to participate in creating and living theology. Her theological credo is to give glory to God by loving the world and all in it. She acknowledges that this is a relative absolute for her as a North American feminist living in the 21st century, something all theologies should be. The book is divided into three parts: I The Practice of Planetary Theology, II The Context of Planetary Theology and III The Content of Planetary Theology. Her ecological liberation theology is opposed to the materialistic consumerism of the North American middle class. If these priviledged few (20% of the world's population) do not lower their impact on the environment and the poorer nations (80%)they won't have a future either. The way to change people's behavior is to alter the mindset (theology and economy). "Life Abundant" even makes sense to me as a white Afrikaans male living in South Africa. We have the unique combination of a First and Third World, rich and poor, in one country. We can see and feel the devastation the rich have on the environment and the poor. This latest work by Sallie McFague helped me make sense of my world and enticed me to develop my own religious autobiography. If you care for theology, God, nature, human beings or Christ, get this book ASAP. It will change your life and hopefully save the world.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Theological Studies, published by Theological Studies, Inc. on September 1, 2002. The length of the article is 401 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril.(Brief Article)
Author: Eloise Rosenblatt
Publication:
Theological Studies (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 2002
Publisher: Theological Studies, Inc.
Volume: 63
Issue: 3
Page: 651(2)
Article Type: Book Review, Brief Article
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This is volume I of an eight-volume set.
Book Description
Spain is a popular destination for people considering a home abroad, a holiday retreat, for retirement or as an investment. Many regions have an ideal climate all year round, and this is a major attraction. There may be great weather nearly all year round in Spain, but getting the right information and advice before deciding to live there is crucial. This book deals with the detail of moving to Spain in a practical, straightforward style. All the information is clearly laid out and every aspect is covered, from preparing to leave and settling in, to health and welfare and retirement.
Book Description
* From the author of the best-selling "Complete Guide to Buying Property in France.""Deals with all the issues." -- The Observer
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The Complete Guide to Buying Property in Spain
A. Foster
Manufacturer: Property Search Spain
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0952363917 |
Book Description
This glorious, cacophonous, rebellious city is one of the most enviable places to live on earth. Gaudi's creations and the Catalan spirit have inspired Hemmingway, Orwell, Picasso and Dali to capture Europe's most beguiling city. The Barcelona Explorer is written by Catalans, Spaniards and expats who all live in the city and love to share its secrets and charms.
General Info: history, geography, language, hotels and how to get about. Residents: from visas to vehicles and where to live, to where to send the kids to school or where to get a nose job. Exploring: the sights, attractions, parks and beaches, along with weekend breaks and trips out of town. Activities: sports and hobbies, from castelling to kayaking to cookery, along with gyms, spectator sports and spas. Shopping: where to buy anything, from botifarra to bitumen. Going Out: where to eat, drink and be merry.
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You and the Law in Spain: The Complete Up-to-date Readable Guide to Spanish Law for Foreigners: 2001
David Searl
Manufacturer: Santana Books (Santana, Ediciones, S.L.)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 848995416X |
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GCSE History (Complete Revision & Practice)
Manufacturer: Coordination Group Publications Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1841463752 |
Book Description
Recent years have seen a steep rise in invasions of non-native species in virtually all major ecoregions on Earth. Along with this rise has come a realization that a rigorous scientific understanding of why, how, when, and where species are transported is the necessary foundation for managing biological invasions.
Invasive Species presents extensive information and new analyses on mechanisms of species transfer, or vectors, as the latest contribution from the Global Invasive Species Programme (GISP). Contributors assess invasion vectors and vector management in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems for major taxonomic groups in a variety of regions around the world. The book:
- examines invasion causes, routes, and vectors in space and time
- highlights current approaches and challenges to preventing new invasions, both from a geographic and taxonomic point of view
- explores strategies, benefits, and limitations of risk assessment
- offers a synthesis of many facets of vector science and management
- presents recommendations for action
Chapter authors review fungi, plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates, with geographic assessments covering New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and the United States.
Although the full extent and cumulative impact of nonnative species can only be approximated, biological invasions are clearly a potent force of global change, contributing to a wide range of deleterious effects including disease outbreaks, habitat alteration and loss, declines of native species, increased frequency of fires, and shifts in nutrient cycling. Vectors are the delivery mechanisms, resulting in recent increases in rates of new invasions. Invasive Species brings together in a single volume new information from leading scientists around the world on approaches to controlling and managing invasion vectors. This volume is a timely and essential reference for scientists, researchers, policymakers, and anyone concerned with understanding biological invasions and developing effective responses to them.
Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Description:
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New Solid Acids and Bases
K. Tanabe
Manufacturer: Elsevier Science & Technology
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Inorganic
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Catalysis
| Chemistry
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General
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General
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General & Reference
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ASIN: 0444988009 |
Book Description
Stochastic order relations prprovide a valuable insight into the behaviour of complex stochastic (random) systems and enable the user to collect meaningful comparative data. Application areas include queueing systems, actuarial and financial risk, decision making and stochastic simulation.
- Applicable to a broad range of scientific disciplines, including economics, finance, insurance and operations research
- Provides coverage of the latest research and applications
An essential resource for researchers and postgraduate students appliying stochastic order relations, and scientisits from applied statistics, operations research, economics and finance.
Customer Reviews:
A new bible on stochastic orders.......2002-10-25
This wonderful book is posed to become THE reference on the subject of stochastic orders. It replaces a good but a bit outdated book by Shaked and Shanthikumar and even more outdated book by Stoyan. A great improvement over these two books is a large section devoted to applications of stochastic orders to a variety of practical models. I also liked concise diagrams showing relations among various orders as well as examples of distributions that can be ordered. This is definitely the most comprehensive reference that exists today.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Risk and Insurance, published by Thomson Gale on September 1, 2006. The length of the article is 10076 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: A comparison of neural network, statistical methods, and variable choice for life insurers' financial distress prediction.
Author: Patrick L. Brockett
Publication:
Journal of Risk and Insurance (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 73
Issue: 3
Page: 397(23)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
Winner of the 2003 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize
A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL
The nameless narrator of The Moon and the Bonfires, Cesare Pavese's last and greatest novel, returns to Italy from California after the Second World War. He has done well in America, but success hasn't taken the edge off his memories of childhood, when he was an orphan living at the mercy of a bitterly poor farmer. He wants to learn what happened in his native village over the long, terrible years of Fascism; perhaps, he even thinks, he will settle down. And yet as he uncovers a secret and savage history from the war—a tale of betrayal and reprisal, sex and death—he finds that the past still haunts the present. The Moon and the Bonfires is a novel of intense lyricism and tragic import, a masterpiece of twentieth-century literature that has been unavailable to American readers for close to fifty years. Here it appears in a vigorous new English version by R. W. Flint, whose earlier translations of Pavese's fiction were acclaimed by Leslie Fiedler as "absolutely lucid and completely incantatory."
Customer Reviews:
The eternal dilemma.......2006-11-23
I have read this book many many years ago, and many many time.
I was passionate about Pavese as a young adult. I 'forgave' him some even then rather politically incorrect view of the female universe.
I would say that this was my favorite book of his.
I'm a Italian woman, and a rather restless baby boomer. The message that I carry with me from the book is the unresolved choice between the moon and the bonfires.
Is your life more complete and fulfilled if you travel to the moon and see the whole world? or the secret to a rich life is to stay faithfull to the bonfires - no matter how irrational - and never move out of the confinement of your valley? Flower revolution or traditionalism? A woman president or the Amish way of life?
But it also reminds me of a short animation movie of the '70 where the 'camera' moved from the calm of a lake down to the dept of the athoms and back to the lake via the vast expansion of the universe. One and the same, the big and the small. There is no magic bullet, no sure bet, and no judgment to pass.
I consider it a must read. I have to laugh... I even contemplate translating it when I could not get it in English for my Californian husband.
"I came through, even without a name.".......2002-12-11
As the book opens, an unnamed narrator has returned, after twenty years, to the small Italian village in which he grew up, alone and unloved. A foundling abandoned on the cathedral steps, the narrator was brought up, for a fee, by a destitute farmer, who treated him more like a workhorse than a person with a soul. Eventually escaping as a youth to the United States, he worked his way to California, but when an accidental fortune leaves him "rich, big, fat, and free," he returns to Gaminella, where he confronts the harsh memories of his childhood and the even harsher wartime events which traumatized the town after he left.
In cold, realistic, and unemotional prose, the author alternates bleak memories of the boy who was always an outsider with his observations about his later life in the U.S. and his growing awareness of the atrocities that happened in Gaminella during the war. As the speaker reconnects with the characters from his past, particularly Nuto, a friend and musician, he notes the sameness of their days, their lack of hope, and the emptiness at the heart of their lives. The speaker has always believed that "a town means not being alone, knowing that in the people, the trees, the soil, there is something of yourself, that even when you're not there it stays and waits for you," a belief which acquires enormous irony as the town's collusion in events during and after the war become clear and as bodies mysteriously surface.
In language which is both understated and rigidly controlled, Pavese creates a world as bleak and cold as the moon, a world of secrets, a world in which there seem to be no dreams. His detached, almost off-handed presentation of horrors sets them in high relief and heightens their impact. Only when Pavese describes the attraction of the speaker to his employer's two daughters do we get a feeling that there's a heart beating within him, yet he remembers his "place," something which makes the daughters' fates doubly affecting and ironic for the reader. The moon and the bonfires, men and the land, nature and spirit, and ultimately life and death all combine here in a story about a small town, and, Pavese points out, "one needs a town, if only for the pleasure of leaving it." Mary Whipple
the reason why one wants to die.......1998-12-05
i came across the book because i was reading some material on jean-luc godard, from which i learnt that godard read pavese's work, so i got the book from the library... i really don't know how to say anything about the book, but it certainly is one of the few books that really touched me... the protagonist's nostalgic sadness on reflecting his childhood and its innocent charm, the solitude of (impossible) love were depicted as they were natural, natural but not natural enough for him to be at ease. the style is bare but this bareness proved to be great merit, it's like hou hsiao hsien's film
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La Luna Y Las Fogatas/the Moon And the Bonfires: Edicion Critica (Narrativas)
Cesare Pavese
Manufacturer: Adriana Hidalgo Editora
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Classics
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Spanish
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Clásicos
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Contemporánea
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ASIN: 9879396855 |
Product Description
complete and unabridged. Could a tender memory come to life after so long?
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Moon and Bonfires
Manufacturer: Signet
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0451011171 |
Books:
- Life in the Cold: An Introduction to Winter Ecology
- Listening Point (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage Book Series)
- Listening to Nature: How to Deepen Your Awareness of Nature
- Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely & Simply in a Troubled World
- Living With Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest
- Looking for the Summer
- Lost in the Barrens
- Manual of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas
- Modernismo: Architecture and Design in Spain
- National Audubon Society Regional Guide to the Mid-Atlantic States (National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Mid-Atlantic States)
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