Resources
Conflict & Communion: Essays on Justice and the Sacrament of Holy Communion
- About the Book’s Cover: The cover features the top of a roundtable built by William Everett for a church in Massachusetts. It features inlaid tile in the center to hold water as a reminder of baptism. The other symbols inlaid in the table are different woods.
Conflict and Communion
Reconciliation and Restorative Justice at Christ’s Table
By Thomas Porter (General Editor)
In this broken world, community is rare. Sadly, sometimes even in the church.
Conflict confronts us in just about every corner of our lives — from personal to familial, from congregational to denominational, from national to international. “We desire community but so often react out of brokenness,” writes one reviewer. “Conflict and Communion points to the Lord’s Table as the place where true harmony can be experienced.”
Porter sets the stage for the book by naming the conflicts that were present at the Last Supper — conflicts among the disciples, conflicts among those in authority.
Then as now, the Eucharist and its spiritual power propels must-needed transformation necessary in individuals and in congregations to heal our greatest needs. The 10 essays written by a diverse Methodist cast reflect on practical ways to live the sacrament in the everyday and extraordinary life of congregations.
Contributors include:
- William Everett
- Gayle Carlton Felton
- Larry Goodpaster
- Marjorie Thompson
- Peter Storey
- Thomas Porter
- Marcia McFee
- Jan Love
- Stephanie Hixon
- David Hooker
Reclaim the radical restorative justice and interdependent community available through the Table of Holy Communion. As the editor writes, “Through the practice of reconciliation empowered by the liturgy of Holy Communion, we hope that the Table will become for all of us and for our world a source of healing, transformed life, reconciled relationships, with God and with one another.”
What Readers Are Saying
“Conflict and Communion presents the community shaping and life transforming benefits of table gatherings. Communion has the power to move people into faithful lives. Restoration, discernment, and confrontation with injustice, as the truth is spoken in love all can occur at table.”
— Philip Amerson
President, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
“As a Catholic theologian intent on understanding and validating the Eucharistic faith and practice of other Christians, this book is a treasure. Its depiction of Methodist worship brought to situations of conflict witnesses, in its immersion in the healing life and work of Christ the reconciler, to the faith we share in the Lord’s true presence among us in our greatest needs.”
— Raymond G. Helmick
S.J., Boston College
Subscribe