Sermon delivered at All Souls Unitarian Church by Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, Guest Minister about her book “Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire.”
The Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker has been President of Starr King School for the Ministry (Unitarian Universalist) since 1990 and Professor of Theology since 2001, the first woman to serve as the permanent head of an accredited theological school. An ordained United Methodist minister, Parker has dual fellowship with the United Methodist Church and the Unitarian Universalist Association. Before coming to Starr King School, she served as a parish minister for ten years in the Pacific Northwest and taught part-time at Northwest Theological Union in Seattle.
About “Saving Paradise”
Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire restores the idea of Paradise to its rightful place at the center of Christian thought. Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker offer a fascinating new lens on the history of Christianity, from its first centuries to the present day, asking how its early vision of beauty evolved into a vision of torture, and what changes in society and theology marked that evolution. www.savingparadise.net