Download or read book Christianity and the Culture Machine written by Vincent F. Rocchio and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-08-05 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christianity and the Culture Machine is a precedent-shattering approach to combining theories of media and culture with theology. In this intensive examination of Christianity's role in the cultural marketplace, the author argues that Christianity's inability to effectively contest the ideology of secular humanism is not a theological shortcoming, but rather a communications problem: the institutional church is too wedded to an outmoded aesthetic of Christianity to communicate effectively. Privileging authority and obedience over the egalitarian and transformative goal of Christianity, the church fails to recognize how it undermines the vitality of the Christian narrative and message. In the absence of a more compelling vision offered by the official church, a new aesthetic can be found forming within the margins of popular culture texts. Despite its past failures in representing the Bible in mainstream film and television, the culture industry now offers more compelling versions of core Christian theology without even realizing it--within the margins of the main storylines. This book analyzes the aesthetic principles employed by these appropriations and articulations of Christian discourse as a means of theorizing what a new aesthetic of Christianity might look like.
Download or read book Theology Remixed written by Adam C. English and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2010-10-07 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jesus didn't give his followers a fixed set of statements defining everything they needed to know about the kingdom of God in a neat package. Rather he told stories, made comparisons, drew contrasts. He talked of a mustard seed, of yeast and of a hidden treasure to communicate some of the most important truths of the faith. Jesus didn't fall back on parables because he lacked the right words. Parables were the exact way Jesus intended to communicate. What pictures or analogies today can give us greater understanding of the Christian faith? Adam English finds fresh insight in four: Christianity as story, game, language, culture. Christianity is like a story with scenery, characters and plots. It's like a language with vocabulary, grammar and conversation. It's like a game with rules and players, goals and equipment. It's like a culture with a distinct way of living, working, playing and loving. No one analogy is complete, but all offer new windows of appreciation for the faith. English gives us a fresh representation of Christian theology that is neither modern nor postmodern, but in dialogue with both in order to articulate what we believe. Here is a book for those who want to grasp Christianity more fully and authentically in a way that illuminates our contemporary cultural context and enables us to make a compelling response.
Download or read book God and the Chip written by William A. Stahl and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2009-08-03 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our ancestors saw the material world as alive, and they often personified nature. Today we claim to be realists. But in reality we are not paying attention to the symbols and myths hidden in technology. Beneath much of our talk about computers and the Internet, claims William A. Stahl, is an unacknowledged mysticism, an implicit religion. By not acknowledging this mysticism, we have become critically short of ethical and intellectual resources with which to understand and confront changes brought on by technology.
Download or read book Power Failure written by Albert Borgmann and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2003-06 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A call to redeem and restrain technology through everyday Christian practices and sacraments such as communal celebrations, shared meals, and daily Scripture reading.
Download or read book Christianity and Culture in the Crossfire written by David A. Hoekema and published by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. This book was released on 1997 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eleven eminent scholars examine how Christian commitment illuminates the issues of relativism, feminism, cultural diversity, and postmodernism that occupe center stage in higher education today.
Download or read book Creating a Missional Culture written by JR Woodward and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2013-09-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once upon a time, Moses had had enough. Exhausted by the challenge of leading the Israelites from slavery to the Promised Land, Moses cried out to God, "What have I done to displease you that you put the burden of all these people on me? . . . If this is how you are going to treat me, please go ahead and kill me" (Exodus 11:11, 15). If that sounds hauntingly familiar to you, you may be the senior pastor of a contemporary church. The burden of Christian leadership is becoming increasingly unbearable--demanding skills not native to the art of pastoring; demanding time that makes sabbath rest and even normal sleep patterns seem extravagant; demanding inhuman levels of efficiency, proficiency and even saintliness. No wonder pastors seem and even feel less human these days. No wonder they burn out or break down at an alarming rate; no wonder the church is missing the mark on its mission. In Creating a Missional Culture, JR Woodward offers a bold and surprisingly refreshing model for churches--not small adjustments around the periphery of a church's infrastructure but a radical revisioning of how a church ought to look, from its leadership structure to its mobilization of the laity. The end result looks surprisingly like the church that Jesus created and the apostles cultivated: a church not chasing the wind but rather going into the world and making disciples of Jesus.
Download or read book The Death of Christian Culture written by John Senior and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978.
Download or read book Culture Makers written by Josiah Vencel and published by Xulon Press. This book was released on 2008-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God did not call Christians to sit on the sidelines of society. But that is precisely what has happened for nearly a century as believers have forgotten about their divinely appointed role in the world. Yet history testifies to the remarkable salt-and-light influence of Bible-believing saints who have applied their faith in all areas of life, not just within the walls of a church. Christ came to transform you into an agent of reconciliation ... not just to save souls, but to redeem entire cultures for his glory. If you¿ve ever wondered how to apply your faith consistently, to think about life christianly or to engage the world for Christ, Culture Makers will not let you down. Culture Makers will answer questions such as: Is there a biblical way to see all of life? What is Christianity¿s role in society? How do my personal beliefs shape culture? How do I respond to unbiblical points of view? How can the biblical worldview revitalize my faith? And so much more. Discover your place in the world. Fulfill your calling. Become a culture maker.
Download or read book Foundations of Christian Culture written by Ivan Ilyin and published by Waystone Press. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 67 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There was a time when society was inspired by Christian principles. Art, government, society emulated, as much as possible, the search for perfection dictated by the call to virtue. Ultimately, the twentieth century's many disasters and Christendom's failure to stop revolution and world war have discredited Christianity itself in the eyes of many. Nevertheless, I am convinced that only Christianity can revitalize a culture that has lost most of its connection with beauty and that glorifies banality, variety, and diversity as ends in themselves. However, this would not be a retread of historical Christendom, but a new vision, predicated on the new realities of an increasingly Neo-pagan and Transhumanist West. According to Ivan Ilyin, "The Gospel teaches not flight from the world, but the Christianization of the world. Thus, the sciences, the arts, politics, and the social order can all be those spiritual hands with which the Christian takes the world. And the calling of a Christian is not to chop off those hands, but to imbue their work and toil with the living spirit of Christ. Christianity has a great calling, which many do not ever realize. This purpose can be defined as the creation of a Christian culture." This book is Ivan Ilyin's spiritual and practical handbook at creating Christian culture in an increasingly post-Christian world. Translated by Nicholas Kotar
Download or read book Onward written by Russell D. Moore and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christianity Today "Beautiful Orthodoxy" Book of the Year in 2016. Keep Christianity Strange. As the culture changes all around us, it is no longer possible to pretend that we are a Moral Majority. That may be bad news for America, but it can be good news for the church. What's needed now, in shifting times, is neither a doubling-down on the status quo nor a pullback into isolation. Instead, we need a church that speaks to social and political issues with a bigger vision in mind: that of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Christianity seems increasingly strange, and even subversive, to our culture, we have the opportunity to reclaim the freakishness of the gospel, which is what gives it its power in the first place. We seek the kingdom of God, before everything else. We connect that kingdom agenda to the culture around us, both by speaking it to the world and by showing it in our churches. As we do so, we remember our mission to oppose demons, not to demonize opponents. As we advocate for human dignity, for religious liberty, for family stability, let's do so as those with a prophetic word that turns everything upside down. The signs of the times tell us we are in for days our parents and grandparents never knew. But that's no call for panic or surrender or outrage. Jesus is alive. Let's act like it. Let's follow him, onward to the future.
Download or read book Does Christianity Kill Culture written by Arthur Chingwaru and published by WestBow Press. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was written in an environment of multi-culturalism. To be against one or pro the other might offend the other. A multi-cultural society allows you to feel connected to different cultures, and culturally different points of view. Cultural differences are not of some one’s own making but natural. The importance of Christianity to culture is that, Christianity started social things like schools and hospitals, which are for the alleviation of the plight of society. Christianity involves things like our family lives and our personal hygiene, which are very important for our well-being. Christianity takes us as all equals in the eyes of God the Father, is not selfish but viewing every creation as important. How we view ourselves is how we should view others as important as ourselves. Christianity is unique in that it combines many cultures. It started at the time of Jesus, which means those who came to Christianity, had their own cultures. Some cultures had to abandon what they valued before, such as polygamy, alcohol divorce, abortion and some rituals, which were anti-Christ. Some cultures were made to adopt some Christian cultures, which were not in their cultures before, such as Christmas and Easter holidays. With the fact that they were made to drop some of their traditions and adapt some Christian cultures could be the reason why they would start saying Christianity is killing culture.
Download or read book Theories of Culture written by Kathryn Tanner and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1970s exciting new directions in the study of culture have erupted to critique and displace earlier, largely static notions. These more dynamic models stress the indeterminate, fragmented, even conflictual character of cultural processes and completely alter the framework for thinking theologically about them. In fact, Tanner argues, the new orientation in cultural theory and anthropology affords fresh opportunities for religious thought and opens new vistas for theology, especially on how Christians conceive of the theological task, theological diversity and inculturation, and even Christianity's own cultural identity.
Download or read book Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture written by David Hamidović and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-05-20 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture presents an overview of the digital turn in Ancient Jewish and Christian manuscripts visualisation, data mining and communication. Edited by David Hamidović, Claire Clivaz and Sarah Bowen Savant, it gathers together the contributions of seventeen scholars involved in Biblical, Early Jewish and Christian studies. The volume attests to the spreading of digital humanities in these fields and presents fundamental analysis of the rise of visual culture as well as specific test-cases concerning ancient manuscripts. Sophisticated visualisation tools, stylometric analysis, teaching and visual data, epigraphy and visualisation belong notably to the varied overview presented in the volume.
Download or read book How Should We Then Live written by Francis A. Schaeffer and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2005 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Special 50th anniversary L'Abri Fellowship edition. Schaeffer's seminal work which analyzed the reasons for modern society's state of affairs and presented living a Christ-centered life as the only viable alternative
Download or read book Crossroad Discourses between Christianity and Culture written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 651 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christianity exists in relation to and interacts with its cultural environment in a number of ways. In this volume authors from a wide variety of backgrounds explore various facets of the relationship and interaction of Christianity with its cultural environment: politics, society, esthetics, religion and spirituality, and with itself. Divided into three main sections, Crossroad Discourses between Christianity and Culture looks at the interaction of Christianity with culture in the first section, with other religions and spiritualities in the second, and finally with itself in the third. The contributions engage in a critical examination of not only the culture in which Christianity finds itself but also in a critical examination of Christianity itself and its interaction with that culture. The editors hope that teachers, students, and readers in general will profit greatly from the critical articles contained in this book.
Download or read book Material Christianity written by Colleen McDannell and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can the religious objects used by nineteenth- and twentieth-century Americans tell us about American Christianity? What is the relationship between the beliefs of the faithful and the landscapes they build? This lavishly illustrated book investigates the history and meaning of Christian material culture in America over the last 150 years. Drawing on a rich array of historical sources and on in-depth interviews with Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons, Colleen McDannell examines the relationship between religion and mass consumption. She describes examples of nineteenth-century religious practice: Victorians burying their dead in cultivated cemetery parks; Protestants producing and displaying elaborate family Bibles; Catholics writing for special water from Lourdes reputed to have miraculous powers. And she looks at today's Christians: Mormons wearing sacred underclothing as a reminder of their religious promises, Catholics debating the design of tasteful churches, and Protestants manufacturing, marketing, and using a vast array of prints, clothing, figurines, jewelry, and toys that some label "Jesus junk" but that others see as a witness to their faith. McDannell claims that previous studies of American Christianity have overemphasized the written, cognitive, and ethical dimensions of religion, presenting faith as a disembodied system of beliefs. She shifts attention from the church and the theological seminary to the workplace, home, cemetery, and Sunday school, highlighting a different Christianity--one in which average Christians experience the divine, the nature of death, the power of healing, and the meaning of community through interacting with a created world of devotional images, environments, and objects.
Download or read book The Culturally Savvy Christian written by Dick Staub and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-09-09 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Culturally Savvy Christian—his incisive critique of contemporary culture and religion—Dick Staub concludes that though it is influential, American popular culture is generally superficial (diversionary, mindless, and celebrity-driven) spiritually delusional (moralistic, therapeutic, and deistic) and soulless (sustained not by art, craft, and ideas, but by the mad pursuit of profit—propped up by marketing and technology). Similarly American Christianity has devolved into its own mindless, diversionary, and celebrity-driven superficiality. Because humans are created in God's image with spiritual, intellectual, creative, moral, and relational capacities, we long for more, yet the true seeker faces the lose-lose alternatives of a soul-numbing culture and a vacuous Christianity-lite. The renaissance we need in both faith and culture will originate in a deep spiritual renewal that restores God's image in us and creates a new breed of culturally savvy, thoughtful creatives who rekindle the spiritual, intellectual, and creative legacy of Christians as enrichers of culture.
