Priests of History: Stewarding the Past in an Ahistoric Age

(Paperback, ITPE Edition)

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How can Christians engage meaningfully with history

In an age underpinned by the idea that life is about self-invention and fulfilment, contemporary Western culture holds that the past has little to teach us. We live in what this book terms the "Ahistoric Age," in which we are profoundly disconnected from history.

In the attempt to appear relevant, the church often embraces this ahistoric worldview by jettisoning the historic ideas and practices of Christian formation. But this has unintended consequences, leaving Christians unmoored from history and losing the ability to grapple with its ethical complexities.

InPriests of History, Sarah Irving-Stonebraker draws upon her expertise, and her experience as an atheist who has become a Christian, to examine what history is and why it matters. If Christians can learn how to be "priests of history," tending and keeping our past, history can help us strengthen and revive our spiritual and intellectual formation and equip us to communicate the gospel in a confused and rootless world.

Author Bio

Dr. Sarah Irving-Stonebraker is Associate Professor of History and Western Civilization at Australian Catholic University. She received her PhD in History from the University of Cambridge and held a Junior Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford. She converted from atheism to Christianity while an Assistant Professor at Florida State University. Her first book, Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire, won the Royal Society of Literature and Jerwood Foundation Award for Nonfiction. She and her husband Johnathan live in Sydney, Australia, with their three children and are members of an Anglican church in the Diocese of Sydney.