Abundant Lives

A Progressive Christian Ethic of Flourishing

Available May 1, 2024

Excerpts from Abundant Lives

Introduction

Our world is full of pain and joy, violence and creativity, cruelty and kindness. How should we live? What should our actions be . . .

Chapter 1

How, then, shall we use…broad ideas about flourishing and suffering to help us understand what our concrete priorities should be . . .

Chapter 4

Love God, Your Neighbor, Yourself, and Your Enemy . . .

Chapter 5

If we seek to follow Jesus today or even to simply live into his vision of God’s kin-dom, we need to give love pride of place, both as a value and as a guide to action . . .

Imagine a world in which all people flourished. Imagine all people freed and empowered to be and become their best selves, to pursue their callings, to offer their gifts to a world that wanted those gifts and appreciated them, to take in the gifts of others in delight and thankfulness . . .

What people are saying …

Beautifully written, deep yet easily accessible, and so comprehensive. It offers us one of the best introductions to progressive Christian living I have ever seen.

Brian D. McLaren

Author, Speaker, Activist, and Public Theologian

Abundant Lives is a gracious wooing to a transformational journey opening you and I to a way of love. Amanda Udis-Kessler dares us to discover afresh, that we are in this together, we actually need each other… that maybe, Jesus’ invitation to love God and love neighbor as we learn to love ourselves is a reliable pathway to flourishing lives and a flourishing planet. This is a must read for anyone who senses that there might be more to life than partisan divisiveness, ideological separations, and cultural fragmentations. Amanda invites us to attend to our shared humanity as bodied and located human beings teaming with desire for meaning, beauty and love. This is no escapist manifesto, rather Abundant Lives courageously invites us to move toward our suffering and trauma with profound hope that in embracing reality we discover liberation. If you long for more, I commend Abundant Lives to you, and after reading it, please pass it to a friend.

Dwight J. Friesen

Professor of Practical Theology, Seattle School of Theology & Psychology

In plain language [Amanda Udis-Kessler] sketches out a dazzling, yet practical life ethic for promoting human and planetary flourishing. This slim volume punches way above its weight.

Marvin M. Ellison

Author and Willard S. Bass Professor of Christian Ethics , Bangor Theological Seminary

[Abundant Lives] is simply brilliant! The way you bridge ethics, theology, and sociology so clearly and succinctly is masterful. I appreciate the fact that you make the book accessible to a wide audience across a range of perspectives while not being afraid to take a clear stand.

Luther Young, sociologist, public theologian, and pastor

Amanda Udis-Kessler