Sheltering Saints: Living with the homeless by Roger Quick (DLT, £9.99 (£9); 978-1-913657-68-0).
“Following on from the warmly received Entertaining Saints (DLT, September 2020), here are yet more tales from St George’s Crypt, the charity for homeless and vulnerable people in Leeds, that are in turn deeply moving and touchingly funny, told in the inimitable style of the Crypt’s chaplain, Roger Quick. The book as a whole demonstrates the saving work of Christ in action, tells the story of a historic Christian institution, and is full of humanity in its truest form. Includes illustrations by Leeds artist Si Smith.”
Class and Power in Roman Palestine: The socioeconomic setting of Judaism and Christian origins by Anthony Keddie (Cambridge University Press, £22.99 (£20.69); 978-1-108-71372-6). New in paperback.
“Anthony Keddie investigates the changing dynamics of class and power at a critical place and time in the history of Judaism and Christianity — Palestine during its earliest phases of incorporation into the Roman Empire (63 BCE-70 CE). He identifies institutions pertaining to civic administration, taxation, agricultural tenancy, and the Jerusalem Temple as sources of an unequal distribution of economic, political, and ideological power. Through careful analysis of a wide range of literary, documentary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence, including the most recent discoveries, Keddie complicates conventional understandings of class relations as either antagonistic or harmonious. He demonstrates how elites facilitated institutional changes that repositioned non-elites within new, and sometimes more precarious, relations with privileged classes, but did not typically worsen their economic conditions. These socioeconomic shifts did, however, instigate changing class dispositions. Judaean elites and non-elites increasingly distinguished themselves from the other, through material culture such as tableware, clothing, and tombs.”
Introduction to Eastern Christian Liturgies by Stefanos Alexopoulos and Maxwell E. Johnson (Liturgical Press, £47.99 (£43.19); 978-0-8146-6355-4).
“In Introduction to Eastern Christian Liturgies, renowned liturgical scholars Stefanos Alexopoulos and Maxwell E. Johnson fulfil the need for a new, comprehensive, and straightforward survey of the liturgical life of the Eastern Christian Churches within the seven distinct liturgical Eastern rites still in existence today: Armenian, Byzantine, Coptic, Ethiopic, East Syrian, West Syrian, and Maronite. This topical overview covers baptism, chrismation, Eucharist, reconciliation, anointing, marriage, holy orders, burial, Liturgy of the Hours, the liturgical year, liturgical ethos and spirituality, and offers a brief yet comprehensive bibliography for further study. This book will be of special interest to masters-level students in liturgy and theology, pastoral ministers seeking an introduction to the liturgies of the Christian East, and all who seek to increase their knowledge of the liturgical riches of the Christian East.”
Selected by Frank Nugent, of the Church House Bookshop, which operates the Church Times Bookshop.
