Resurrection City: A Theology of Improvisation (Prophetic Christianity)
Cornel West-- Union Theological Seminary"Peter Heltzel is a jazz-infused theologian par excellence! Don't miss this gem of a book."Shannon Craigo-Snell-- Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary"Jazz musicians can improvise because they are so rooted in musical traditions, because they know the standards so well. This grounding allows for the freedom to create something that is both continuous with the past and open to a new future. Theology, claims Peter Heltzel, should be like improvisational jazz -- various traditions coming together in an ongoing continuity that is always new. InResurrection CityHeltzel performs just this kind of theology. Deeply grounded in Scripture, history, music, and the struggle for justice, Heltzel improvises a prophetic Christian theology of hope. Both scholarly and accessible,Resurrection Cityis a virtuoso performance."Eldin Villafa�e-- Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary"This is an informative, provocative, and timely book &mdash; a gift to the church as it seeks the shalom of the city."George E. Lewis-- Columbia University"Heltzel's extraordinary theology prophetically re-imagines the future of Christianity through improvisation, the lifeblood of creative music around the world, enacting a clarion call to assembly that exhorts us toward a spiritual practice affirming the twinned imperatives of justice and love."J. Kameron Carter-- Duke University Divinity School"Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. and the notion of 'Resurrection City,' Peter Heltzel, a leading thinker of his generation of American evangelicals, presents here arguably the most cogent theological engagement with race and the American evangelical world available today, even as he locates his engagement within a wider frame -- a vision for an evangelicalism of the future. This, Heltzel lyrically argues, will be an evangelicalism that dares to love as God loves. It is a jazz-inflected, musical evangelicalism -- an evangelicalism that engages its past, that negotiates the present with improvisational verve (the inspiration here is John Coltrane's sermonic anthemA Love Supreme), and that consequently can receive the future. I heartily recommend this book."