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Revelation
The Education of a Priest
by Dale Coleman
Foreword by Randall Balmer
Imprint: Resource Publications
Over the forty-plus years of his adult vocation as an Episcopal priest, Dale Coleman has wanted to write about his journey from the Salvation Army to the Episcopal Church. He wished to be in a Christian church with "elbow room" that would allow questions, true spiritual growth, and "faith seeking understanding."
Dale is fearless in looking at the Episcopal Church, and especially his seminary days at a "smells and bells" traditional Anglican Seminary. He writes boldly and freely about the boy he was and the man he has become, placing his first allegiance in the Lord Jesus Christ. Christians need to be honest and clear about their faith in the growing toxicity of our culture. His first questions from his youth were "Where did the Bible come from, and how is it to be read and interpreted?" These and many other questions about the Christian church, its faith and life are addressed in this book. If you've ever wondered about such matters, this is the book for you!
Dale Coleman grew up in a Christian fundamentalist subculture, and decided in college to become an Episcopalian, discovering the liberating word of Christ anew. He has served as an Episcopal priest at five different churches in various parts of the United States. He loves serving Christ in his church! He is currently the rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Belleville, Illinois.
“Reading Coleman is to read him reading texts in recent theology as well as significant texts from the Christian tradition. The latter often save him from the former. Coleman tells his journey from the Salvation Army to Anglo Catholicism with insight and humor, or better put, with the insight that can only be born by life infused with joy.”
—Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School
“When Father Dale Coleman and I met in the mid-1990s, he became a fast friend because of his clear love for humor. His humor is abundant in this memoir, as is his serious concern for theology.”
—Douglas LeBlanc, Senior Editor, The Living Church
“Irreverent, hilarious, offensive, insightful, caustic, exasperating, incisive, devout, brutally honest, and deeply moving—this is a story of how a boy raised in the Salvation Army became a priest in Christ’s holy catholic and apostolic church. Dale Coleman’s memories of the men and women who formed him in the Christian faith are compelling; his anecdotes about life in seminary and church, priceless. And at the center of it all, there is the hidden, and not-so-hidden, presence of the risen Jesus of Nazareth.”
—Alvin Kimel, Eclectic Orthodoxy