HEALING LITURGIES FOR THE SEASONS OF LIFE [Paperback]

Abigail Rian Evans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0664224822 | ISBN-13: 978-0664224820 | Edition: 1

Are you looking for a new way to renew your worship, respond to the needs of the church and community, and connect with people in their passage of life--both chronological and crisis? This book offers a rich resource to you, both as a tool for worship and also devotionally as you face the deepest questions of life. Here you will find one way that the church can renew and rediscover its healing ministry. Abigail Evans, a leading specialist in bioethics and health ministries, explores how God's gift of healing is available during all seasons of a person's life and how the power of hope and healing are affirmed and redirected through liturgical services, sacraments, and rites. This distinctive resource features specific healing liturgies for injury, illness, death, separation, retirement, and a host of other major life events, from a wide variety of religious traditions.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Abigail Rian Evans is Charlotte W. Newcombe Professor of Practical Theology and Academic Coordinator of Field Education at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. She founded and directed (1983-1991) the National Capital Health Ministries program in Washington, D.C., and served on the Clinton Health Care Task Force (1993).

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press; 1 edition (February 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0664224822
• ISBN-13: 978-0664224820
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #950,259 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Healing Liturgies: a major new and innovative worship aid, September 10, 2004

By 

John R. Powers "M.Div; Ph.D." (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: HEALING LITURGIES FOR THE SEASONS OF LIFE (Paperback)

Healing Liturgies is a novel and extraordinary contribution to protestant worship in an area that has long been overlooked. It would be well if this book found its way into the pews of all of our churches as a way of centering the full spectrum of experiences and emotions that we experience as we traverse the seasons of our lives.

Dr. Evans has done an exceptional job in researching, editing, amending and adapting source material from traditional as well as original sources and melding these into a schema that brings a unity and vibrancy to the whole. Its major contribution, however, is in enabling the whole of our congregations to reach into the souls of its individual members, share the joy of joyful moments and share equally the terrible sorrow that attends the tragedies that are a part of all of our lives.

In assembling these many liturgies, Dr. Evans provides a wholeness that gives balance to lives highs and lows of life and gives meaning to both. This, it seems, is the missing ingredient in much of our contemporary worship.

She provides us sections on childhood, early to middle adulthood, late adulthood and the older adult in which poignant events are highlighted in each section, with commentary, reflection and liturgies that can be used in worship or as springboards for communal discussion.

Healing liturgies provides new perspectives on issues such as life altering illnesses, disabilities, mental illness, addiction, domestic violence and sexual abuse. It offers resources for use during hospitalization, general healing services and a multitude of specific conditions or diseases. It also addresses the "broken world" focusing on community needs, prejudice, criminal justice and the need for communal reconciliation.

This wonderful resource is highly recommended for pastors and for congregations.

5.0 out of 5 stars Abigail Evans Healing Liturgies Celebrated, October 6, 2007

By 

G. L. Rediger "Spiritual Health Consultant" (Albuquerque, New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: HEALING LITURGIES FOR THE SEASONS OF LIFE (Paperback)

HEALING LITURGIES FOR THE SEASONS OF LIFE, by Abigail Rian Evans embodies the scholarly passion for healing and wholeness in the church presented so well in Professor Evans' classic THE HEALING CHURCH (1999). It not only demonstrates the church's long history of concern for human suffering, it provides a thoroughgoing compendium of resources for the practice and celebration of healing and wholeness. Sound theology, pertinent definitions, and discussion of controversial issues, confirm and affirm the church's highest liturgical healing practices. A major portion of the book offers a wide variety of liturgical materials for life's maladies and seasons. Further, it enlarges the common understanding of healing by providing liturgies for social justice, human relationships and environmental needs as a natural extension of concern for wholeness in all of God's creation.
Professor Evans states her thesis early as "God's gift of healing is available during all seasons of a persons life and that the power of hope and healing may be affirmed and redirected through liturgical services, sacraments and rites. It is important, not only psychologically but also spiritually, to mark the passages of life and times of crisis" (p xiii).
This book completes a trilogy of works introduced by her REDEEMING MARKETPLACE MEDICINE (1999). Together these books are a bold, prophetic challenge for religion to take its appropriate place in helping lead the emerging crusade for health in the USA.

5.0 out of 5 stars Healing Liturgies, September 21, 2007

By 

Lloyd Rediger (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews

This review is from: HEALING LITURGIES FOR THE SEASONS OF LIFE (Paperback)

This book embodies the scholarly passion for healing and wholeness in the church presented so well in Professor Evans' classic The Healing Church (1999). It not only demonstrates the church's long history of concern for human suffering, it provides a thoroughgoing compendium of resources for the practice and celebration of healing and wholeness. Sound theology, pertinent definitions, and discussion of controversial issues, affirm confirm the church's highest liturgical healing practices. A major portion of the book offers a wide variety of liturgical materials for life's maladies and seasons. Further, it enlarges the common understanding of healing by providing liturgies for social justice, human relationships and environmental needs as a natural extension of concern for wholeness in all of God's creation.
Professor Evans states her thesis early as "God's gift of healing is available during all seasons of a person's life and that the power of hope and healing may be affirmed and redirected through liturgical services, sacraments and rites. It is important, not only psychologically but also spiritually, to mark the passages of life and times of crisis." (p xiii). Though she pointedly affirms appropriate adaptations and freeform ministrations for healing, her thesis situates her work in traditional worship and pastoral settings.
According to the author, this book completes a trilogy of works introduced by her Redeeming Marketplace Medicine (1999). Together these works are a bold, prophetic critique of current medical and theological premises and practices regarding health, sickness and healing. Her trilogy reproves the church for relinquishing its natural authority and responsibility in defining and ministering to illness, impairment, and brokenness to the medical and mental health professions. She traces the biblical and continuing church's primary roles in wholistic health, and insists that healing and health must be inclusive of body, mind and spirit. This stance offers a necessary collaboration between medical, mental health and religious professional. Yet she is more intent on demonstrating the spiritual roles and forms that must be recovered if the church is to have competent clergy and lay leaders for effective healing ministries. This third book of the trilogy demonstrates the profound range of liturgical-sacramental resources available. And by so doing exposes the inadequate training and practice in their use that is apparent to contemporary observers of the church.
The enormous virtues of this large (486 pages) book begin with its function as the library of the trilogy. Yet other qualities add to its value. Its format provides clear designations of the seasons of human life, as taught by Erik Erikson. And it offers introductory explanations of the resources appropriate to each of these seasons. Professor Evans moves beyond these stages easily to explore the factors and issues that disrupt and distort the living of the seasons of life. Her treatment of major illness themes moves beyond medical definitions to include brokenness, abuse, consequences, punishment and disabilities. The discussion of sickness as God's punishment versus its being a consequence of human behavior is particularly valuable (p. 149f). The discussion of death, dying and bereavement is remarkable in its concise designations of these experiences, with enlightening liturgies and rites from a wide variety of religious traditions.
Social injustice, racism, imprisonment, exploitation of the environment, diversity, and even "deliverance" (exorcism), extend healing to its broadest meanings in this book. They are the author's opportunity for adding perspectives and resources so necessary and yet complicated for traditionally trained clergy and laity. Including such dynamic issues demonstrates the necessity for the church to be involved in all the contemporary forms of sickness and brokenness. And in Appendix A she adds a valuable listing of religious organizations already providing the healing ministries she recommends.
Professor Evans' Healing Liturgies for the Seasons of Life lays before us the finest examples of the church's traditional and contemporary resources for healing. Along with the other two books, it challenges us to participate wholeheartedly in the emerging healing and health movement in the USA.

G. Lloyd Rediger
New Mexico Conference of Churches
Albuquerque, New Mexico