Practicing Our Faith
Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People, edited by Dorothy C. Bass and first published in 1997, has given rise to other books, study guides, articles, websites, church projects, seminary courses, small group discussions and videos too numerous to count. Published in its third edition in January 2019 by Fortress Press, Practicing Our Faith is now being embraced by a new generation.
The seeds of Practicing Our Faith and of the movement it birthed can be traced to the early 1990s when two leaders in the mainline Protestant church – Dorothy Bass, a church historian and theologian at Valparaiso University and Craig Dykstra, senior vicepresident for religion at Lilly Endowment – grew concerned about the rampant individualism and decline of Christian community they were observing in society.
“Even though churches were losing members, there was a strong interest in the culture in spirituality and religion,” Bass remembers. Citing rapid social change and a sense of fragmentation at the time, she says the two wanted to discover “an approach that would heal some of the fragmentation, and help people find the connections between their lives and their faith.” She credits her colleague for developing the idea of practices as being key to a Christian way of life, while Dykstra traces the impetus for that development to his reading and work in graduate school in the 1970s.
“Christian practices are not activities we do to make something spiritual happen in our lives,” he says. “Nor are they duties we undertake to be obedient to God. Rather they are patterns of communal action that create openings in our lives where the grace, mercy and presence of God may be made known to us. They are places where the power of God is experienced. In the end these are not ultimately our practices, but forms of participation in the practice of God.”
The 12 practices highlighted in the book are: honouring the body hospitality household economics saying yes and saying no keeping Sabbath testimony discernment shaping communities forgiveness healing dying well singing our lives.
Study guides and more about the book are available at www.PracticingOurFaith.org.