The Spiritual Practice of Remembering

We often dismiss history as dull or irrelevant, but our modern disengagement from the past puts us fundamentally out of step with the long witness of the Christian tradition. Yet, says Margaret Bendroth, the past tense is essential to our language of faith, and without it our conversation is limited and thin.

This accessible, beautifully written book presents a new argument for honoring the past. The Christian tradition gives us the powerful image of a vast communion of saints, all of God's people, both living and dead, in vital conversation with each other. This kind of connection with our ancestors in the faith, Bendroth maintains, will not happen by wishing or by accident. She argues that remembering must become a regular spiritual practice, part of the rhythm of our daily lives as we recognize our world to be, in many ways, a gift from others who have gone before.

Author: Margaret Bendroth
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Published: 11/11/2013
Pages: 142
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 8.47h x 5.60w x 0.37d
ISBN: 9780802868978

Review Citation(s):
Christian Century 03/19/2014 pg. 30

About the Author
Bendroth, Margaret: - Margaret Lamberts Bendroth is executive director of the American Congregational Association and director of the Congregational Library in Boston. Her other books include Women and Twentieth-Century Protestantism and Fundamentalism and Gender.