In Power and Passion, Sam Wells shows how the characters in the Holy Week story face choices and experience feelings very similar to our own. He explores six kinds of power and demonstrates how Jesus’ resurrection brings a new power that transforms the passion of our lives.

Power and Passion

Power and Passion examines six key characters in this drama — Pontius Pilate, Barabbas, Joseph of Arimathea, Pilate’s wife, Peter and Mary Magdalene. Each one comes alive as Wells shows how they reflect and shape our reactions to contemporary issues such as marriage, friendship, discipleship, politics and violence.

Through close readings of the passages, applied scholarship and suggestions for discussion, Wells reveals how Jesus’ death exposes the truth about our world and how his resurrection makes possible a new way of life.

Structured with one chapter for each week of Lent, Wells guides us from the deathly power that put Jesus on the cross to the new power brought by Jesus’ resurrection. The book offers opportunities at the end of each chapter for prayer and discussion. The Archbishop of Canterbury selected Power and Passion as his Lent book for 2007.

The Rev. Canon Dr. Samuel Wells was born in Canada. He studied in Oxford, Edinburgh, and Durham, and then served in parish ministry in the Church of England for 14 years in Newcastle, Norwich and Cambridge. In 2005, he moved to North Carolina to become dean of the Chapel at Duke University and research professor of Christian ethics at Duke Divinity School. He has written several books on theological ethics, including God’s Companions: Reimagining Christian Ethics, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics, and Transforming Fate into Destiny.

Prophets, Sages, & Poets

In this new collection of essays, “James Crenshaw brings to the ancient text a judicious, historically informed perspective and, at the same time, an unwavering conviction that the biblical world has much to say to our twenty-first-century world.”
— William P. Brown, Columbia Theological Seminary.

A leading scholar of Old Testament study, focusing especially on wisdom and poetry along with special studies in prophecy and theodicy, Crenshaw is currently serving as the Joseph Gregory McCarthy Visiting Professor of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.

“Characterized both by insightful readings of primary texts and a deep engagement with the scholarship of others, Crenshaw's works are essential reading for anyone who would enter the conversation on these topics.”
— Carol A. Newsom, Candler School of Theology