A WORLD ACCORDING TO GOD: Practices for Putting Faith at the Center of Your Life

In the best tradition of theological writing, theologian Stortz, who teaches at Pacific Lutheran Seminary, offers faith-filled reflections on the practices that are essential to Christianity and the activities that make one a follower of Jesus: discipleship, baptism, the Lord's supper, prayer, forgiveness, remembering, fidelity and resurrection. For contemporary Christians, these practices from the life of Jesus are not so much techniques as they are activity and leitmotif, metaphors that provide interpretation of and guidance for living. Their re-enactment by Christians serves as a reminder of faith. Thus, baptism, which brings one into the church, makes the believer a member of God's family and initiates relationships with God and fellow Christians that structure a lifetime. Stortz's Christianity is devout yet not dogmatic, solidly based in Christian scripture yet not narrowly so. Her chapter on fidelity—love nurtured over time and bounded and renewed by promises—as a way of life presents original thinking about responsible Christian sexual ethics far from the culture wars over protecting the sanctity of marriage and equally far from laissez-faire libertarianism. She insightfully suggests that Jesus upon the cross cannot by himself forgive his persecutors, but instead asks his father to perform that loving miracle. Stortz's prose is often lyrical or striking—the dead "teach us a resurrection affection"—a rare quality in theological writing. This short book is fresh and profound. (May)