Gail Ramshaw is one of today's most important and influential thinkers about liturgy. She is also a dedicated college professor with a keen sense for how to approach the full array of Christian worship experience in light of the contemporary study of religion. She has written a variety of books published by Augsburg Fortress, including many books about worship education, two textbooks, and a children’s book.
Worship Education
Word of God, Word of Life: Understanding the Three-Year Lectionaries
Gail Ramshaw provides ten insights into the three-year lectionaries to guide all who are interested in exploring the meaning and importance of the Revised Common Lectionary and the Lectionary for Mass. Ramshaw combines deep historical, biblical, liturgical, and ecumenical knowledge with a keen perspective on the contemporary church to show us all the value and wisdom of these lectionaries.
More Days for Praise: Festivals and Commemorations in Evangelical Lutheran Worship
For centuries the church has paired its church year—focused on Christ’s life, death, and resurrection—with a second calendar that uses the lives of saints as a lens to see God’s gracious acts. Evangelical Lutheran Worship has continued that practice with its calendar of festivals and commemorations. In this volume, teacher and scholar Gail Ramshaw shows that those whom the church has lifted up are both faithful and fascinating, always pointing to Christ. Here is a guide to help you include these observances in your prayer life.
Pray, Praise, and Give Thanks: Litanies, Laments, and Thanksgivings at Font and Table
This collection of prayers for use in worship contains three litanies, a template for constructing prayers of intercession, prayers of lament for evils that afflict us and our world, prayers to be offered at baptisms and baptismal remembrances (thanksgivings at the font), and eucharistic prayers (thanksgivings at the table). Pastors, worship planners, and scholars will all find this volume invaluable. Includes CD-ROM.
Praying for the Whole World: A Handbook for Intercessors
In the intercessions, the assembly asks God to respond to the needs of the whole world. Through these petitions, worshipers enact their baptismal calling to intercede for the well-being of all things. In many churches, laypersons prepare the prayers of intercession. In this concise, charming, down-to-earth handbook, Ramshaw proposes seven steps, from Monday through Sunday, to assist your crafting of the prayers of the faithful.
The Three-Day Feast: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter
Recent decades have witnessed the revival of the ancient liturgies of the Three Days—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. In this book Ramshaw gives a little history and a lot of suggestions about how these services can enrich the worship life of your entire assembly.
Using Evangelical Lutheran Worship, Vol 3: Keeping Time
This title in the Using Evangelical Lutheran Worship series explores why Christians have different ways of looking at time, at how the life of the church is ordered and organized by days, weeks, seasons, and years. It provides detailed information about Sundays, festivals, seasons, and commemorations as well as daily prayer.
A Three-Year Banquet: The Lectionary for the Assembly
A concise, clear, straightforward introduction to the way that Christian communities have organized their reading of scripture in worship.
Treasures Old and New: Images in the Lectionary
In Treasures Old and New, Gail Ramshaw illuminates forty primary images from the three-year lectionary. With each of the images she considers related terms, exploring a total of nearly two hundred words and phrases in light of biblical history, typological relationships, poetic nuances, metaphoric meanings, and liturgical year connections.
God Beyond Gender: Feminist Christian God-Language
The Christian use of God-language has become a matter of debate among laypersons, theologians, worship leaders, and others. Such debates are often heated, because the address of God impinges on what many persons find to be close to the heart of their spirituality. Combining doxological, Christian, and feminist concerns, Gail Ramshaw examines each of the primary types of Christian language about God and in the process, evaluates gender issues and proposes helpful guideline and solutions.
Textbooks
Christian Worship: 100,000 Sundays of Symbols and Rituals
This unique textbook not only lays out the religious-studies framework of a contemporary understanding of worship; it also offers a full history of Christian worship in each historical period, including the American experience. In light of this history of experiences, Ramshaw finally addresses ongoing issues in our understanding of Christian worship (gender, authority, ethics, skepticism) and places them into an explicitly cross-religious framework with Islam, Judaism, and other religions.
What Is Christianity?: An Introduction to the Christian Religion
Gail Ramshaw frames this new introduction to Christianity around the basic questions that students ask. Investigating Christianity as a lived experience, she opens each chapter with a voice from the field of religious studies and then presents answers to each chapter’s question by surveying the history, doctrine, practices, and convictions of Christian churches.
For Children
Every Day and Sunday, Too
Young children will be drawn to the many illustrations depicting their experiences of daily life and, at the same time, they'll learn the basic pattern and meaning of Sunday worship. Educators can explain Christian worship in a new light.
