Let the Bones Dance: Embodiment and the Body of Christ

Minister and theologian Marcia Mount Shoop Offers an analysis of Reformed heritage---and an impassioned provocation that we live more adventurously.

"Beautifully written and deeply felt. This work offers a vivid theology relocated in the flesh and blood of life's utter physicality. Finally a book to recommend when people ask about resources on bodies and theology!"---Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Pastoral Theology, The Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion, Vanderbilt University

"An incredibly compelling theological work. Bringing together a host of cutting-edge concerns that matter not simply to academic theologians, but to the lived life of faith, this project invokes the importance of bodies and their marking by gender, race, ethnicity, etc. Mount Shoop uses these now-familiar themes to break new ground by revealing the inadequacy of the overly verbal and cognitive character of Protestant worship and practice. It is groundbreaking."---Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Professor of Theology, Duke Divinity School, and author of Places of Redemption: Theology for a Worldly Church

"Mount Shoop thiks in new ways about central theological concepts and dares to imagine a new church emerging out of them. She combines the intellectual vigor of an academic with the heart and soul of a pastor who understands what it means to lead a congregation. Happily, she writes like a poet. Let the Bones Dance is provocative, stimulating, and readable."---John M. Buchanan, pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Illinois, and author of A New Church for a New World

Contemporary Christian faith and practice tend to address spiritual, mental, and emotional issues but ignore the body. As a result, many believers are uncomfortable in their own skins. Mount Shoop addresses this "dis-ease" with a theology that is attentive to physical experience. She also suggests how worship services can more fully invite God to inhabit every part of a congregation---including their flesh-and-blood bodies.

Marcia W. Mount Shoop received her PhD in religious studies from Emory University. She is an ordained Presbyterian minister and serves as theologian-in-residence at University Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.