Christian Assembly

What is church? What makes the church one? While these questions may seem innocuous, church has become conflicted territory, with internal factions, external pressures, and ecumenical turmoil all calling for a more positive, sturdy, more resilient notion of Christian community.

Wengert approaches the questions as a Reformation historian. He shows how the New Testament notion of ''marks'' of the church was taken up by Martin Luther and developed by Phillip Melanchthon not as a descriptive tag but as a criterion for authenticity in Christian community. Lathrop, a liturgical theologian, shows concretely how those marks can stamp the worship life of a congregation as well as the evaluative work of congregations with their pastors, bishops, superintendents, and conference ministers.

This volume originated as six lectures jointly presented to the Academy of Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 2001.

Author: Gordon W. Lathrop, Timothy J. Wengert
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishing
Published: 09/05/2000
Pages: 196
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.63lbs
Size: 8.66h x 5.56w x 0.49d
ISBN: 9780800636609

About the Author
Lathrop, Gordon W.: -

Gordon W. Lathrop has served as a parish pastor, as professor of liturgy at Wartburg Theological Seminary and the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, and as visiting professor at Yale Divinity School, the Virginia Theological Seminary, the University of Iceland, the University of Uppsala in Sweden, and the Pontifical Thomas Aquinas University in Rome. His books from Fortress Press include The Pastor: A Spirituality (2006), Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology (1999), and, with Timothy Wengert, Christian Assembly (2004). He has been president of both the North American Academy of Liturgy and the international Societas Liturgica.

Wengert, Timothy J.: - Timothy J. Wengert is emeritus professor of Church History at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. A parish pastor for seven years in Minnesota and Wisconsin with a doctorate from Duke University, he taught on Philadelphia's faculty from 1989-2013. He has written extensively on the Reformation, was co-editor of the English edition of The Book of Concord (Fortress, 2000) and translated Luther's Small Catechism, used throughout the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. In addition to books on Philip Melanchthon and Martin Luther, he co-authored with Susan Wood a book on Lutheran/Roman Catholic relations, Shared Spiritual Journey (Paulist, 2016) and currently serves on the U.S. Lutheran/Roman Catholic dialogue. He currently resides in Long Valley, NJ.

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