Lauren F. Winner

On the Path to a Religious Life

Girl Meets God

With characteristic wit, intellectual sharpness, and passion for authenticity, the groundbreaking author of "Girl Meets God" illuminates eleven spiritual lessons that Judaism has taught her.

Mudhouse Sabbath

In the critically acclaimed memoir Girl Meets God, Lauren F. Winner chronicled her sojourn from Judaism to Christianity. Now, in Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, Winner describes how experiences of loss and failure unexpectedly slam her into a wall of doubt and spiritual despair: “My belief has faltered, my sense of God’s closeness has grown strained, my efforts at living in accord with what I take to be the call of the gospel have come undone.” Witty, relatable, and fiercely honest, Winner lays bare her experience of what she calls the “middle” of the spiritual life. In elegant and spare prose, she explores why—in the midst of the overwhelming anxiety, loneliness, and boredom of her deepest questioning about where (or if) God is—the Christian story still explains who she is better than any other story she’s ever known. Still is an absorbing meditation combining literary grace with spiritual wisdom. It is sure to resonate with anyone looking to sustain a spiritual life in the midst of real life.

Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis

Still

Lauren F. Winner—a leading writer at the crossroads of culture and spirituality and author of Still and Girl Meets God—joins the ranks of luminaries such as Anne Lamott and Barbara Brown Taylor with this exploration of little known—and, so, little used—biblical metaphors for God, metaphors which can open new doorways for our lives and spiritualities. There are hundreds of metaphors for God, but the church only uses a few familiar images: creator, judge, savior, father. In Wearing God, Lauren Winner gathers a number of lesser-known tropes, reflecting on how they work biblically and culturally, and reveals how they can deepen our spiritual lives. Exploring the notion of God as clothing, Winner reflects on how we are “clothed with Christ” or how “God fits us like a garment.” She then analyzes how clothing functions culturally to shape our ideals and identify our community, and ruminates on how this new metaphor can function to create new possibilities for our lives. For each biblical metaphor—God as the vine/vintner who animates life; the lactation consultant; and the comedian, showing us our follies, for example—Winner surveys the historical, literary, and cultural landscapes in order to revive and heal our souls.

Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God

Wearing God

SEX. Splashed across magazine covers, billboards, and computer screens--sex is casual, aggressive, and absolutely everywhere. And everybody's doing it, right? In Real Sex, heralded young author Lauren F. Winner speaks candidly to Christians about the difficulty--and the importance--of sexual chastity. With honesty and wit, she talks about her struggle to live a celibate life. Never dodging tough terms like "confession" and "sin," Winner grounds her discussion of chastity first and foremost in Scripture. She confronts cultural lies about sex and challenges how we talk about sex in church. Her biblically grounded observations and suggestions will be especially valuable to unmarried Christians struggling with the sexual mania of today's culture. Real Sex is essential reading for Christians grappling with chastity and a valuable tool for pastors.

The Naked Truth about Chastity

Real Sex

On Wayward Gifts, Characteristic Damage, and Sin

Dangers of Christian Practice

Indelibly marked by the rich traditions and spiritual practices of Judaism, a convert from Orthodox Judaism to Christianity explores eleven Jewish spiritual practices that can transform the way Christians view the world and God, enabling them to incorporate these practices into their faith. Original.

An Invitation to a Life of Spiritual Discipline

Following up her highly acclaimed Girl Meets God, author Lauren F. Winner has written an engrossing reflection of literary grace and spiritual wisdom with Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis. As she lives through a failed marriage and the loss of her mother, Winner finds her Christian faith slipping away. Through reading religious works and tomes and being counseled by leaders of the church, she learns she must find the courage to trust in God in order to to find His presence. Elegantly written and profound, Still offers reflections on how murky and gray the spiritual life can be while, at the same time, shows us how to see the light we do encounter more clearly.

"A very satisfying book, persuasive in showing how material culture and household devotion are central to the workings of `lived' Anglicanism in eighteenth-century Virginia." David D. Hall, Harvard Divinity School.

Anglican Religious Practice in the Elite Households of Eighteenth-century Virginia

A Cheerful and Comfortable Faith

The author of Girl Meets God speaks candidly about chastity in a sex-obsessed culture.

Challenging the central place that “practices” have recently held in Christian theology, Lauren Winner explores the damages these practices have inflicted over the centuries Sometimes, beloved and treasured Christian practices go horrifyingly wrong, extending violence rather than promoting its healing. In this bracing book, Lauren Winner provocatively challenges the assumption that the church possesses a set of immaculate practices that will definitionally train Christians in virtue and that can’t be answerable to their histories. Is there, for instance, an account of prayer that has anything useful to say about a slave-owning woman’s praying for her slaves’ obedience? Is there a robustly theological account of the Eucharist that connects the Eucharist’s goods to the sacrament’s central role in medieval Christian murder of Jews? Arguing that practices are deformed in ways that are characteristic of and intrinsic to the practices themselves, Winner proposes that the register in which Christians might best think about the Eucharist, prayer, and baptism is that of “damaged gift.” Christians go on with these practices because, though blighted by sin, they remain gifts from God.

The Dangers of Christian Practice

Douglas Wilson

Rick Holland

Respected relationship experts explore 5 different styles of dating. Discover which approach works best for you.

Lauren F. Winner

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