Way of Love: Recovering the Heart of Christianity

The pioneering scholar and author of Food and Faith and Living the Sabbath asserts that Christianity has slid off its rightful foundation, arguing that the faith only makes sense and can only be expressed in a healthy way if it seen as based on love, with a mission of training others in the way of love.
It’s often said that God is love, yet his message of compassion and caring for others is often overshadowed by the battles dividing us politically, culturally, and religiously. Why does Christianity matter if it isn’t about love? asks Duke University professor of Theology and Ecology Norman Wirzba.
The Way of Love invites readers to experience Christianity that is centered on love. Extensive theological training cannot replace the way of love that transforms and connects each of us to God and the faith, Wirzba contends. Interweaving illuminating testimonials, historical references, and Scripture, he reveals how love allows us to move into the fullness of life; when we do not love we lose our faith. “To fail to love,” he reminds us, “is to lose God.”

Politics & Social Sciences

Wirzba, Norman

Philosophy

HarperOne

The pioneering scholar and author of Food and Faith and Living the Sabbath asserts that Christianity has slid off its rightful foundation, arguing that the faith only makes sense and can only be expressed in a healthy way if it seen as based on love, with a mission of training others in the way of love. It's often said that God is love, yet his message of compassion and caring for others is often overshadowed by the battles dividing us politically, culturally, and religiously. Why does Christianity matter if it isn't about love? asks Duke University professor of Theology and Ecology Norman Wirzba. The Way of Love invites readers to experience Christianity that is centered on love. Extensive theological training cannot replace the way of love that transforms and connects each of us to God and the faith, Wirzba contends. Interweaving illuminating testimonials, historical references, and Scripture, he reveals how love allows us to move into the fullness of life; when we do not love we lose our faith. "To fail to love," he reminds us, "is to lose God."

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." (Gen. 1:26) It has become a commonplace that Biblical religion bears a heavy share of responsibility for our destruction of the environment, and this passage from the King James version of the Bible exemplifies what is generally believed to be the Biblical attitude toward the earth. In this provocative book, however, Norman Wirzba argues that the doctrine of creation, when understood as a statement about the moral and spiritual meaning of the world, actually holds the key to a true understanding of our place in the environment and our responsibility toward it. Wirzba contends that an adequate response to environmental destruction depends on a new formulation of ourselves as part of a created whole, rather than as autonomous, unencumbered individuals. Drawing on the work of biblical scholars, ecologists, agrarians, philosophers, theologians, and cultural critics, Wirzba develops a comprehensive worldview that grows out of the idea that the world is God's creation. While the text of Genesis has historically encouraged a vision of persons as masters of creation, a more theologically and ecologically sensitive rendering, he says, would be to say that we are servants of creation. Our present culture, Wirzba believes, results from a denial of creation that has caused modern problems as diverse as rootlessness, individualism, careerism, boredom, and consumerism. The recovery of the meaning of creation can lead to a renewed sense of human identity and vocation, and happier, more peaceful lives. He concludes by offering practical advice for individuals who wish to begin the work of transformation and renewal. Moving beyond the usual political debates, The Paradise of God presents a compelling vision of a new religious environmentalism.

The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age

Sociology

Oxford University Press

It has become a commonplace that Biblical religion bears a heavy share of responsibility for our past negligence towards the environment. In this provocative book, Norman Wirzba argues that the Biblical doctrine of creation actually holds the key to a true understanding of our place in the environment and our responsibility toward it. Wirzba contends that an adequate response to environmental destruction depends on a new formulation of ourselves as part of a larger whole, rather than as radically free individuals. Drawing on the work of biblical scholars, ecologists, agrarians, philosophers, theologians, and cultural critics, Wirzba presents a compelling vision of a new religious environmentalism.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press, U.S.A.

Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land

This refreshing work offers a distinctly agrarian reframing of spiritual practices to address today's most pressing social and ecological concerns. For thousands of years most human beings drew their daily living from, and made sense of their lives in reference to, the land. Growing and finding food, along with the multiple practices of home maintenance and the cultivations of communities, were the abiding concerns that shaped what people understood about and expected from life. In Agrarian Spirit, Norman Wirzba demonstrates how agrarianism is of vital and continuing significance for spiritual life today. Far from being the exclusive concern of a dwindling number of farmers, this book shows how agrarian practices are an important corrective to the political and economic policies that are doing so much harm to our society and habitats. It is an invitation to the personal transformation that equips all people to live peaceably and beautifully with each other and the land. Agrarian Spirit begins with a clear and concise affirmation of creaturely life. Wirzba shows that a human life is inextricably entangled with the lives of fellow animals and plants, and that individual flourishing must always include the flourishing of the habitats that nourish and sustain our life together. The book explores how agrarian sensibilities and responsibilities transform the practices of prayer, perception, mystical union, humility, gratitude, and hope. Wirzba provides an elegant and compelling account of spiritual life that is both attuned to ancient scriptural sources and keyed to addressing the pressing social and ecological concerns of today. Scholars and students of theology, ecotheology, and spirituality, as well as readers interested in agrarian and environmental studies, will gain much from this book.

University of Notre Dame Press

A moving exploration of the place of hope in the world today, drawing on agrarian principles In this series of meditations, Norman Wirzba recasts hope not as something people have, like a vaccine to prevent pain and trouble, but as something people do. Hope evaporates in conditions of abandonment and abuse. It grows in contexts of nurture and belonging. Hope ignites when people join in what Wendell Berry calls "love's braided dance"--a commitment to care for one another and our world. Through personal narratives and historical examples, Wirzba explores what sustains hope and why it so often seems absent from our vision of the future. The vitality of hope, he maintains, depends on a collective commitment to care for the physical world (its soils and waters, plants and animals, houses and neighborhoods) and to promote the moral, aesthetic, and spiritual ideals that affirm life as good, beautiful, and sacred. Engaging with such contemporary topics as climate change, AI and social media, and the intensifying refugee crises, and drawing on the wisdom of James Baldwin, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Martha Graham, and others, Wirzba offers a powerful argument for hope as a way of life in which people are intimately and practically joined with all the living.

Love's Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis

Religion & Spirituality

Yale University Press

This is the book that helped set the stage for the ecology movement. Written in 1915 by Liberty Hyde Bailey, the Father of American Horticulture, it exercised enormous influence on early environmental protection programs. In addition to its timeless reflections on the earth's intrinsic divinity, it applies groundbreaking scientific principles to horticulture. A botanist and horticulturist, Bailey was dismayed by the increasing separation between people and the land. In this book, he emphasizes the value of local culture and the preservation of wilderness. Bailey notes the rise of industrialized agriculture and cautions against the movement away from natural food. His clear expression of the religious and ethical implications of the human relationship to the earth offers both an enduring philosophy and practical modern advice.

The Holy Earth: Toward a New Environmental Ethic

Bailey, Liberty Hyde

Dover Publications

This book provides a comprehensive theological framework for assessing eating's significance, employing a Trinitarian theological lens to evaluate food production and consumption practices as they are being worked out in today's industrial food systems. Norman Wirzba combines the tools of ecological, agrarian, cultural, biblical, and theological analyses to draw a picture of eating that cares for creatures and that honors God. Unlike books that focus on vegetarianism or food distribution as the key theological matters, this book broadens the scope to include discussions on the sacramental character of eating, eating's ecological and social contexts, the meaning of death and sacrifice as they relate to eating, the Eucharist as the place of inspiration and orientation, the importance of saying grace, and whether or not there will be eating in heaven. Food and Faith demonstrates that eating is of profound economic, moral, and theological significance.

Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

Business & Money

Education & Reference

Cambridge University Press

This book provides a comprehensive theological framework for assessing eating's significance, employing a Trinitarian theological lens to evaluate food production and consumption practices as they are being worked out in today's industrial food systems. Norman Wirzba combines the tools of ecological, agrarian, cultural, biblical, and theological analyses to draw a picture of eating that cares for creatures and that honors God. Unlike books that focus on vegetarianism or food distribution as the key theological matters, this book broadens the scope to include discussions on the sacramental character of eating, eating's ecological and social contexts, the meaning of death and sacrifice as they relate to eating, the Eucharist as the place of inspiration and orientation, the importance of saying grace, and whether or not there will be eating in heaven. Food and Faith demonstrates that eating is of profound economic, moral, and theological significance.

Religious Studies

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wirzba, Norman. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wirzba, Norman

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wirzba, Norman. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Way of Love: Recovering the Heart of Christianity

Way of Love: Recovering the Heart of Christianity

The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age

The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age

Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land

Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land

Love's Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis

The Holy Earth: Toward a New Environmental Ethic

Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating