Embodied Holiness

Book excerpt: What Does the Body - Physical & Social - Have to Do With Holiness? Modern Western Christianity has too often seen holiness and growth in Christian character as exclusively an individual and "spiritual" (or non-physical) matter. Centered on a suggestive proposal about "the sanctified body" by Stanley Hauerwas, the essays in this provocative volume argue contrary to that tendency, insisting that any genuine Christian holiness is vitally related to our physical and social bodies. Along with way, the essayists trace crucial confusions in ecclesiology, prayer and social action to the distorted nonbodily understanding of sanctification. Essays and authors include "The Sanctified Body" by Stanley Hauerwas "The Human Person as Intercessory Prayer" by Craig Keen "Tacit Holiness" by Rodney Clapp "Holiness as the Renewal of the Image of God in the Individual & Society" by Theodore Runyon "Paying Attention: Holiness in the Life Writings of Early Methodist Women" by Joyce Quiring Erickson "The Once & Future Church Revisited" by Michael G. Cartwright "'And He Felt Compassion': Holiness Beyond the Bounds of Community" by Michael E. Lodahl "A Contribution to a Wesleyan Understanding of Holiness & Community" by Samuel M. Powell