The church doesn't need to be more spiritual. It needs to become more human. Since God decided becoming human was right, so must the church. Jesus' language was consistently understood by nonreligious people. Elitist in-house church language may never reach the growing number of Americans without a religious background who have given up on God. This book views the church as a unique people-group and the reader as an anthropologist. Employing basic ethnographic methods, the reader looks at the church again for the first time without a religious lens. Based upon the premise that all good theology emerges from good anthropology, the book first considers the rituals celebrated around the symbols of a manger, cross, bread, wine, and tomb. Such symbols then become the basis for theological interpretation. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the reader's conversation partner to help make the theological journey from human community to church, manger to incarnation, cross to redemption, and tomb to resurrection. The church will flourish in the twenty-first century to the degree that it proclaims the Gospel using nonreligious language with a human accent. Paul O. Bischoff is an independent Lutheran theologian and Bonhoeffer scholar whose career includes teaching at North Park Theological Seminary, pastoring in the Evangelical Covenant Church in America, and facilitating adult forum theological discussions in the church.
