Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves

Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves
Author :
Publisher : Fortress Press
Total Pages : 232
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781506473918
ISBN-13 : 1506473911
Rating : 4/5 (911 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves by : Mary W. McCampbell

Download or read book Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves written by Mary W. McCampbell and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anyone reading comments in online spaces is often confronted with a collective cultural loss of empathy. This profound loss is directly related to the inability to imagine the life and circumstances of the other. Our malnourished capacity for empathy is connected to an equally malnourished imagination. In order to truly love and welcome others, we need to exercise our imaginations, to see our neighbors more as God sees them than as confined by our own inadequate and ungracious labels. We need stories that can convict us about our own sins of omission or commission, enabling us to see the beautiful, complex world of our neighbors as we look beyond ourselves. In this book, Mary McCampbell looks at how narrative art--whether literature, film, television, or popular music--expands our imaginations and, in so doing, emboldens our ability to love our neighbors as ourselves. The prophetic artists in these pages--Graham Greene, Toni Morrison, and Flannery O'Connor among them--show through the form and content of their narrative craft that in order to love, we must be able to effectively imagine the lives of others. But even though we have these rich opportunities to grow emotionally and spiritually, we have been culturally trained as consumers to treat our practice of reading, watching, and listening as mere acts of consumption. McCampbell instead insists that truly engaging with artists who have the prophetic capacity to create art that wakes us up can jolt us from our typically self-concerned spiritual stupors. She focuses on narrative art as a means of embodiment and an invitation to participation, hospitality, and empathy. Reading, seeing, or listening to the story of someone seemingly different from us can awaken us to the very real spiritual similarities between human beings. The intentionality that it takes to surrender a bit of our own default self-centeredness is an act of spiritual formation. Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves presents a journey through initial self-reflection to a richer, more compassionate look outward, as narrative empowers us to exercise our imaginations for the sake of expanding our capacity for empathy.


Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves Related Books

Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves
Language: en
Pages: 232
Authors: Mary W. McCampbell
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2022-04-19 - Publisher: Fortress Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Anyone reading comments in online spaces is often confronted with a collective cultural loss of empathy. This profound loss is directly related to the inability
Unfettered
Language: en
Pages: 213
Authors: Mandy Smith
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021-05-18 - Publisher: Brazos Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Smith's sage advice will aid Christians in recognizing the simple joys of practicing their faith."--Publishers Weekly Western culture is in a tailspin, and Chr
Deep Reading
Language: en
Pages: 211
Authors: Rachel B. Griffis
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2024-05-28 - Publisher: Baker Books

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book helps readers develop practices that will result in deep, formative, and faithful reading so they can contribute to the flourishing of their communiti
Beauty Is Oxygen
Language: en
Pages: 164
Authors: Wesley Vander Lugt
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2024-06-18 - Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Beauty is oxygen because it comes from the lungs of God. Isolating individualism, rank injustice, and everyday monotony threaten to suffocate our souls. But Wes
Imagining the Academy
Language: en
Pages: 259
Authors: Susan Huddleston Edgerton
Categories: Education in popular culture
Type: BOOK - Published: 2005 - Publisher: Psychology Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.