Robert Gillies

The Contemplative Imperative and Evangelism

This article argues that because the whole of Jesus’ ministry should be seen as a totality, what he taught in Galilee is as valid as what happened in Gethsemane. His teaching on healing, kingdom proclamation, concern for others is thus on a level with his teaching on and practice of prayer. He enjoined his disciples to follow his way in all respects both then and still does so now. A direct link between the evangelistic and the contemplative imperatives of Jesus is the substantive thesis of this paper. A narrative reading of the Gethsemane story is the biblical setting in which this thesis is proposed.

Prayers for Lent and Holy Week

These prayers are taken, with a few changes, from my book Sounds before the Cross (Handsel Press, 2007). The first seven prayers are for use at any point in Lent, the final two are principally for use in Holy Week and are especially prepared for devotional use on Good Friday. The structure of the prayers is best described as skeletal. Intrusions of grammar and the conventions of syntax and form are kept to a minimum. The purpose behind setting these prayers in a varied and irregular style is to create as much interpretative space as possible for the person who might wish to pray through them. They can be read, and therefore prayed, with a wide range of varying meanings and emphases by deploying variations in punctuation, voice tone, speed and meditative silence. In these prayers I am not so much offering comprehensive theology as open theology and I invite those committed to prayer and leading prayers to experiment with their scope to the fullest extent. This will require some perseverance for on first reading the prayers may seem confusing. However my hopes will have borne fruit if the prayers that follow come to be understood, are then phrased in a way that is appropriate to the local context and, most importantly, lead people closer to God. The World Cries to the Father

A Little Known American

Schism’, a schism following those of 1054 and the Reformation, produced by the triumph of the Enlightenment. He is opposed to all ’secular gospels with theological dressings’ such as feminist or liberation theology and recalls the churches to unite across the most divisive barriers of Evangelicals and Catholics and Orthodox to retell the old gospel in the idiom of the modem world. Elaine Storkey offers a calm assessment of feminist attitudes to Christianity and urges women to search for Jesus for he endorses