Enhancing Christian Life – How Extended Cognition Augments Religious Community

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Prologue Section One: The Nature of the Person 1. Minding Christian Life 2. Modern Spirituality Section Two: The Nature of Persons 3. Minding Bodies 4. Minds Beyond Bodies 5. Mind Beyond the Individual Section Three: The Nature of the Church 6. The Church and "My Spirituality" 7. The "Individual" Life of the Christian 8. The Wikis of Christian Life 9. Things Said and Unsaid 10. Metaphors of a New Paradigm Bibliography Name Index Subject Index Scripture Index

About the Author :
Brad D. Strawn (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is the Evelyn and Frank Freed Professor of the Integration of Psychology and Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. He has post-doctoral training in psychoanalysis and is a licensed psychologist. He is coauthor (with Warren S. Brown) of The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Neuroscience, Psychology and the Church and coeditor of Christianity and Psychoanalysis: A New Conversation. Warren S. Brown is the director of the Lee Edward Travis Research Institute and professor of psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is principal editor and contributor to Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature and coauthor (with Nancey Murphy) of Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?

Review :
"Want to be a more Christian Christian? Read this book and put its lessons into practice within your church and family. Brad D. Strawn and Warren S. Brown, in Enhancing Christian Life, have caught a new, transformative way of understanding Christian formation. They base Christian formation on modern cognitive psychology that recognizes how intertwined relationships are with our embodied life. What they contribute is a thorough description of the Christian implications of this relational approach for the church and Christian relationships. Their book will make you want to engage more with the church. By doing so, both you and the church will be blessed." "In case you were under the impression that being a Christian is a solo achievement, Brad Strawn and Warren Brown are here to disabuse you of that misunderstanding. They say it's a mistake to assume that spirituality is ever an individual, internal, and private matter. For them, it is always an embodied, collective, and spatial enterprise. Written in a lively, down-to-earth fashion, this book has monumental implications for our understanding of both spirituality and ecclesiology." "This book is a timely wake-up call for the church in this generation to remember that the church is 'a group of followers of Christ who understand themselves as embodied, engaged, enacting, and extending into one another's lives for the sake of the world and the glory of God.' These basic truths are presented with a new freshness and relevance as the authors draw heavily on 'the theory of embodied cognition.' They are well-informed and reliable guides to fresh insights from this cutting-edge theory in cognitive psychology." "As an advocate for relational approaches to spirituality, I am extremely grateful to Strawn and Brown for their profoundly intelligent and practical insights in Enhancing Christian Life. They have extended my understanding of the relational, social, and embodied nature of spirituality. This book has me reflecting in fresh ways on all kinds of things, ranging from theories of human nature to the dynamics of psychotherapy practice to the purpose of checking my cellphone while waiting in line at the grocery store. This is the best book I have read connecting neuroscience, psychology, and the day-to-day realities of spiritual formation." "Enhancing Christian Life provides a compelling vision for the community of faith as integral to Christian life. Strawn and Brown challenge streams of Christianity that reduce the faith to an individualized and privatized spirituality resulting in a diminished faith and life, and persuasively reframe the Christian life by explaining how our brain/body systems embed us in and with others. As embodied people, we enact the body of Christ by building cognitive extensions with one another through worship experiences and carrying out Christian practices. The authors effectively argue that Christian community should become an extension of ourselves—enhancing our lives personally and corporately. When we join with the Spirit's transforming work between and among us, we act as God's people prepared to further extend ourselves 'for the sake of the world.'"