Communicating for Life by quentin j. schultze

Communicating for Life: Christian Stewardship in Community and Media (Baker, 2000)

Foreword by Martin E. Marty

"I recommend Communicating for Life to all persons struggling for authenticity in word and deed."
          — Robert J. Hoeksema, — Reformed Review

"This work is highly recommended."
          — John Suk, Calvin Theological Journal

"Communicating for Life provides an insightful road map for Christian responsibility in communication."
          — Joicy Becker-Richards, Princeton Seminary Bulletin

"Schultze is adept at showing us the sin embedded in our communication and our need to be transformed by God's grace to enable us to become agents of shalom."
          — Joseph B. W. Smith, Christian Century

This is a book about "love and accountability, forgiveness and humility, and about how faithful communication by God's grace is not only a foretaste of heaven, it is also a conduit for shalom in the here and now. We commend Communicating for Life to you."
          — Denis D. Haack, Critique

"This book's solid doctrine is lubricated by lucid writing and dozens of real-life examples — international journalists who risk torture for telling the truth, a secretary struggling with ethical questions of e-mail privacy. Schultze thus extends his work from scholarly theory to an accessible handbook for our everyday interaction with friends, strangers, and the media."
          — Nathan Bierma, The Banner

"Schultze's tone and approach to application strike a chord of appropriate Christian inquiry--raising important questions for the field and looking for interlocutors of every strip. Taken as such, the book reads as a hearty invitation to communiction inquiry from a 'merely' Christian standpoint."
          — Calvin L. Troup, Rhetoric and Public Affairs

"This book has convicted me to use my gifts in communication to build community, rather than destroy it."
          — C. Mitchell Carnell, Jr., ChristianityToday.com

"[Schultze] connects stewardship with how we speak and listen, how we interact in word and gesture, what we have to say and hear, whether one-on-one, in community, or in mass communications within our culture... I hope his book will convert others to this approach to communicating and then inform them as they go about living up to their new resolves."
          — Martin Marty, University of Chicago (from the foreword)

"Easily the best presentation I know of a Christian perspective on communication and the media. It raises questions where most of us just take things for granted, and issues challenges where most of us just go along. Though deeply informed in both the Christian tradition and contemporary discussions on the media, it nonetheless wears its learning with extraordinary grace and vividness of rhetoric."
          — Nicholas Wolterstorff, Yale Divinity School

"This book answers the question, 'What does it mean to think like a Christian about human communication?' [The] author touches on topics seldom treated in the communication literature: the role of grace in human relationships, the nature of wisdom, the power of forgiving, the knowledge of good and evil, the creative force of peacemaking, and the transforming reality of God's love. Although specifically written for undergraduates, this book should be read by everyone concerned with the interrelationships among communications, community, and communion. The bookstores are full of treatises about communication written from Marxist, feminist, positivist, and cultural studies perspectives. Now there is a book written from an explicitly Christian perspective and one thing is clear: never again can religious beliefs and values be relegated to the intellectual sidelines. To study human communication is to be immersed in questions of the most profound religious significance."
          — Martin J. Medhurst, Texas A&M University

"This high-torque book engages your mind and invigorates your spirit. The theory of symbolic action is a splendid achievement. It catches hold of Augustine, Burke, Elliot and contemporary cultural studies, but is distinctive with Shalom. The problems and stories are stunning in themselves--from across history and around the globe. Quentin Schultze sets the standard for all work henceforth in the theology of communication."
          — Clifford Christians, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign