The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior [Paperback]

Steven Garber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 11, 2007

Voted one of Christianity Today's 1998 Books of the Year! All kinds of important choices are made during the college years. Young men and women explore what they really believe about the nature of the world and the purpose of life. They choose their work. They build friendships and often choose to marry. They develop goals and adopt habits that may last a lifetime. Yet late modernity is not a welcome environment for emotional, intellectual and spiritual formation. Society is increasingly fragmented. And the educational system itself, fragmented and specialized, may disintegrate more than it integrates. How do parents, professors, campus ministers, youth pastors and others help students, during one of the most eventful and intense periods of life, learn to connect what they believe about the world with how they live in it? Steven Garber vigorously engages just that question in this revised edition that includes a new chapter on what he has learned about lifelong formation in the years since the book first appeared. Drawing on the history of ideas, ethics, sociology and popular culture, he offers must-reading on the critical lifework of making sense of life.

Product Details

• Paperback: 222 pages
• Publisher: IVP Books; Expanded Edition edition (January 11, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0830833196
• ISBN-13: 978-0830833191
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #226,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars christian angle on the social aspect of faithfulness., December 23, 2010

By 

suburban dissident - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior (Paperback)

Garber makes three key points for those looking to live a meaningful Christian life in the modern world: cultivate a coherent worldview, find a teacher to learn from, and develop and community with whom to live out that worldview. The rest of the book focuses on explaining the why and how of his findings.

_Fabric_ is helpful for a few reaons: (1) it engages with a broad literature and diverse fields of study, (2) it is well thought out and coherently argued, (3) it is very accessible. While the "study" he does and the interviews he draws on are far from methodologically rigorous, the book is a good first step. It is not the last word on these issues but is rather a book that can be see as generally readable and leads into possibly deeper study of the issues Garber address. One should look at this as a springboard into works by James Davison Hunter, Christian Smith, Peter Berger, and other more academic Christian thinkers who get at the nuts a bolts and more in depth philosophical aspects of what Garber hints at.

I would recommend this specifically for late high school students, college students, and those involved with student ministries. If you are wanting to develop comprehensive theories about the role of beliefs in society, this won't be particularly useful. But, again, as a ministry tool, Garber's work gets at some fundamental questions and makes a strong case for living coherently by weaving together belief and behavior.