Faith Beyond Fear: Sermons from Newman's Pulpit

John Henry Newmans pulpit at St Marys Oxford was a powerhouse of religious innovation and reinvigoration in English religion through the 1830s and 1840s. This towering neogothic structure gave platform to preachers who conveyed a new imagination for the life of faith and whose vision of belief provoked personal and societal awakenings. Today we are in need once again of reimagining the challenges of our world and the meaning of Christian faith in ways that cut through the religious jumble and speak to the fears and failings of our time. This volume collects sermons by one of that pulpits most recent preachers. Anxiety pain hope and judgement are key themes. There are liturgical themes and feasts taken in fresh directions and always an insistence on deconstructing easy answers and pious lingo. These are exercises in reading Scripture and reading our lives in ways that speak beyond the borders of religious identity and certainty. These sermons draw us deeper into the reality of our own predicaments and fears to discover a presence and power that might surprise and disrupt us and help us to reimagine faith in the modern world.