Download or read book The Politics of the Cross written by Daniel K. Williams and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where do Christians fit in a two-party political system? The partisan divide that is rending the nation is now tearing apart American churches. On one side are Christian Right activists and other conservatives who believe that a vote for a Democratic presidential candidate is a vote for abortion, sexual immorality, gender confusion, and the loss of religious liberty for Christians. On the other side are politically progressive Christians who are considering leaving the institutional church because of white evangelicalism’s alliance with a Republican Party that they believe is racist, hateful toward immigrants, scornful of the poor, and directly opposed to the principles that Jesus taught. Even while sharing the same pew, these two sides often see the views of the other as hopelessly wrongheaded—even evil. Is there a way to transcend this deep-seated division? The Politics of the Cross draws on history, policy analysis, and biblically grounded theology to show how Christians can protect the unborn, advocate for traditional marriage, promote racial justice, care for the poor, and, above all, honor the gospel by adopting a cross-centered ethic instead of the idolatrous politics of power, fear, or partisanship. As Daniel K. Williams illustrates, both the Republican and Democratic parties are rooted in Christian principles, but both have distorted those principles and mixed them with assumptions that are antithetical to biblical truth. Williams explains how Christians can renounce partisanship and pursue policies that show love for our neighbors to achieve a biblical vision of justice. Nuanced, detailed, and even-handed, The Politics of the Cross tackles the thorny issues that divide Christians politically and offers a path forward with innovative, biblically minded political approaches that might surprise Christians on both the left and the right.

Download or read book Christians Politics and the Cross written by Erwin Lutzer and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-22 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are living in a time when we desperately need to engage our culture with the only message that has any hope of transforming it. Yet, many Christians have pushed aside the cross in order to fight the world on its own terms and with its own strategies. Instead, Pastor Lutzer says, we must stand on biblical ground. This fight is not one against our fellow Americans, it's "against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Let us not retreat or become silent, but let us remember where our true allegiance lies. This book reminds us that spiritual redemption, not political reformation, is at the heart of God's agenda. Only the church, not a political party, can bear God's message to a hurting world. And the world is watching us. Are we showing them Christ?

Download or read book Kingdoms in Conflict written by Charles W. Colson and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 1989-01-27 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " ...Definitely worth reading" -Billy Graham "Colson's criticisms of the Religious Right are especially noteworthy...Colson's warnings echo a concern that religious conservatives would be reckless to ignore." -Richard N. Ostling, Religion Editor, Time "The timing could hardly be better for an author with a new book." -Newsweek "Kingdoms in Conflict speaks with wisdom and "guts" to the major issues of our day." -Charles R. Swindoll "Kingdoms in Conflict is a classic that belongs on every Christian's bookshelf." -Dr. James C. Dobson "This was a book waiting for Chuck Colson to write. As no other evangelical author can, Colson brings his political experience, thoroughly changed life, and lucid writing together at just the right time..." -Moody Monthly "The arguments- church-state, the correct admixture between the two- are familiar grist for controversial mills, but Colson does wonderful theatrical instruction in his book..." - William F. Buckley, Jr. "In Kingdoms in Conflict Charles W. Colson masterfully weds the two subjects he knows best- politics and Christian faith." -Russell Chandler "Kingdoms in Conflict offers a welcomed new insight into an age-old question." - Jack Anderson "One cannot be a passive reader of Chuck Colson's Kingdoms in Conflict." -Mark O. Hatfield

Download or read book Jesus Outside the Lines written by Scott Sauls and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2015-03-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether the issue of the day on Twitter, Facebook, or cable news is our sexuality, political divides, or the perceived conflict between faith and science, today’s media pushes each one of us into a frustrating clash between two opposing sides. Polarizing, us-against-them discussions divide us and distract us from thinking clearly and communicating lovingly with others. Scott Sauls, like many of us, is weary of the bickering and is seeking a way of truth and beauty through the conflicts. Jesus Outside the Lines presents Jesus as this way. Scott shows us how the words and actions of Jesus reveal a response that does not perpetuate the destructive fray. Jesus offers us a way forward—away from harshness, caricatures, and stereotypes. In Jesus Outside the Lines, you will experience a fresh perspective of Jesus, who will not (and should not) fit into the sides.

Download or read book The Good of Politics Engaging Culture written by James W. Skillen and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2014-03-18 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this addition to the acclaimed Engaging Culture series, a highly respected author and Christian thinker offers a principled, biblical perspective on engaging political culture as part of one's calling. James Skillen believes that constructive Christian engagement depends on the belief that those made in the image of God are created not only for family life, agriculture, education, science, industry, and the arts but also for building political communities, justly ordered for the common good. He argues that God made us to be royal stewards of public governance from the outset and that the biblical story of God's creation, judgment, and redemption of all things in Jesus Christ has everything to do with politics and government. In this irenic, nonpartisan treatment of an oft-debated topic, Skillen critically assesses current political realities and helps readers view responsibility in the political arena as a crucial dimension of the Christian faith.

Download or read book Five Views on the Church and Politics written by J. Brian Benestad and published by Zondervan Academic. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn to think deeply about the relationship between church and state in a way that goes beyond mere policy debates and current campaigns. Few topics can grab headlines and stir passions quite like politics, especially when the church is involved. Considering the attention that many Christian parachurch groups, churches, and individual believers give to politics--and of the varying and sometimes divergent political ideals and aims among them--Five Views on the Church and Politics provides a helpful breakdown of the possible Christian approaches to political involvement. General Editor Amy Black brings together five top-notch political theologians in the book, each representing one of the five key political traditions within Christianity: Anabaptist (Separationist: the most limited possible Christian involvement in politics) - represented by Thomas Heilke Lutheran (Paradoxical: strong separation of church and state) – represented by Robert Benne Black Church (Prophetic: the church's mission is to be a voice for communal reform) – represented by Bruce Fields Reformed (Transformationist: emphasizes God's sovereignty over all things, including churches and governments) – represented by James K. A. Smith Catholic (Synthetic: encouragement of political participation as a means to further the common good of all people) – represented by J. Brian Benestad Each author addresses his tradition's theological distinctives, the role of government, the place of individual Christian participation in government and politics, and how churches should (or should not) address political questions. Responses by each contributor to opposing views will highlight key areas of difference and disagreement. Thorough and even-handed, Five Views on the Church and Politics will enable readers to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the most significant Christian views on political engagement and to draw their own, informed conclusions.

Download or read book Cross and Culture written by Kurt Mahlburg and published by Australian Heart Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is There Hope in the Chaos? Our civilisation is unstable. Everyone can feel it. We face a looming mental health crisis. Slavery, censorship and superstition are back. Our politics are polarising. All the affluence in the world can’t seem to quench our thirst for meaning and purpose. But maybe there is hope—if we know where to look. In this timely book, Kurt Mahlburg shows how profoundly the West has been shaped by the life and teachings of Jesus—from our democratic freedoms and our pursuit of reason and science to our belief that every life is precious. Could rediscovering Jesus be the answer to our crisis?

Download or read book The Flag and the Cross written by Philip S. Gorski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this short primer, Gorski and Perry explain what white Christian nationalism is and is not; when it first emerged and how it has changed; where it's headed and why it threatens democracy. Tracing the development of this ideology over the course of three centuries and especially its influence over the last three decades, they show how white Christian nationalism motivates the anti-democratic, authoritarian, and violent impulses on display in our current political moment.

Download or read book Legislating Morality written by Norman L. Geisler and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2003-02-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's moral decline is not secret. An alarming number of moral and cultural problems have exploded in our country since 1960--a period when the standards of morality expressed in our laws and customs have been relaxed, abandoned, or judicially overruled. Conventional wisdom says laws cannot stem moral decline. Anyone who raises the prospect of legislation on the hot topics of our day - abortion, family issues, gay rights, euthanasia - encounters a host of objections: As long as I don't hurt anyone the government s should leave me alone." No one should force their morals on anyone else." You can't make people be good." Legislating morality violates the separation of church and state." 'Legislating Morality' answers those objections and advocates a moral base for America without sacrificing religious and cultural diversity. It debunks the myth that morality can't be legislated" and amply demonstrates how liberals, moderates, and conservatives alike exploit law to promote good and curtail evil. This book boldly challenges prevailing thinking about right and wrong and about our nation's moral future.

Download or read book Pandemics Plagues and Natural Disasters written by Erwin W. Lutzer and published by Moody Publishers. This book was released on 2020-07-16 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where is God When We Suffer? God’s silence in the midst of human suffering is a great mystery of our existence. Faced with mass suffering, such as pandemics, plagues, and natural disasters, we may wonder whether God actually cares about us or whether He just says that He does. Pandemics, Plagues, and Natural Disasters: What is God Saying to Us? helps explain the role of God in suffering. Dr. Erwin Lutzer examines how God uses tragedies throughout the Bible to speak to His people, and that, ultimately, God always has our well-being in mind even when He doesn’t relieve our immediate pain. Perhaps most importantly, find lasting joy and relief by learning how times of such widespread trouble reveal God’s ultimate plans for our salvation from all temporary and eternal suffering.

Download or read book Christians Against Christianity written by Obery M. Hendricks, Jr. and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely and galvanizing work that examines how right-wing evangelical Christians have veered from an admirable faith to a pernicious, destructive ideology. Today’s right-wing Evangelical Christianity stands as the very antithesis of the message of Jesus Christ. In his new book, Christians Against Christianity, best-selling author and religious scholar Obery M. Hendricks Jr. challenges right-wing evangelicals on the terrain of their own religious claims, exposing the falsehoods, contradictions, and misuses of the Bible that are embedded in their rabid homophobia, their poorly veiled racism and demonizing of immigrants and Muslims, and their ungodly alliance with big business against the interests of American workers. He scathingly indicts the religious leaders who helped facilitate the rise of the notoriously unchristian Donald Trump, likening them to the “court jesters” and hypocritical priestly sycophants of bygone eras who unquestioningly supported their sovereigns’ every act, no matter how hateful or destructive to those they were supposed to serve. In the wake of the deadly insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol, Christians Against Christianity is a clarion call to stand up to the hypocrisy of the evangelical Right, as well as a guide for Christians to return their faith to the life-affirming message that Jesus brought and died for. What Hendricks offers is a provocative diagnosis, an urgent warning that right-wing evangelicals’ aspirations for Christian nationalist supremacy are a looming threat, not only to Christian decency but to democracy itself. What they offer to America is anything but good news.

Download or read book The Cross written by Robin M. Jensen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-17 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cross stirs intense feelings among Christians as well as non-Christians. Robin Jensen takes readers on an intellectual and spiritual journey through the two-thousand-year evolution of the cross as an idea and an artifact, illuminating the controversies—along with the forms of devotion—this central symbol of Christianity inspires. Jesus’s death on the cross posed a dilemma for Saint Paul and the early Church fathers. Crucifixion was a humiliating form of execution reserved for slaves and criminals. How could their messiah and savior have been subjected to such an ignominious death? Wrestling with this paradox, they reimagined the cross as a triumphant expression of Christ’s sacrificial love and miraculous resurrection. Over time, the symbol’s transformation raised myriad doctrinal questions, particularly about the crucifix—the cross with the figure of Christ—and whether it should emphasize Jesus’s suffering or his glorification. How should Jesus’s body be depicted: alive or dead, naked or dressed? Should it be shown at all? Jensen’s wide-ranging study focuses on the cross in painting and literature, the quest for the “true cross” in Jerusalem, and the symbol’s role in conflicts from the Crusades to wars of colonial conquest. The Cross also reveals how Jews and Muslims viewed the most sacred of all Christian emblems and explains its role in public life in the West today.

Download or read book Cross Vision written by Gregory A. Boyd and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned pastor-theologian Gregory A. Boyd tackles the BibleÕs biggest dilemma. Ê The Old Testament God of wrath and violence versus the New Testament God of love and peaceÑitÕs a difference that has troubled Christians since the first century. Now, with the sensitivity of a pastor and the intellect of a theologian, Gregory A. Boyd proposes the Òcruciform hermeneutic,Ó a way to read the Old Testament portraits of God through the lens of JesusÕ crucifixion. Ê In Cross Vision, Boyd follows up on his epic and groundbreaking study, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. He shows how the death and resurrection of Jesus reframes the troubling violence of the Old Testament, how all of Scripture reveals GodÕs self-sacrificial love, and, most importantly, how we can follow JesusÕ example of peace.

Download or read book Scandalous Witness written by Lee C. Camp and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christian identity is in moral and political crisis, scandalized by the many ways in which it has been coopted and misrepresented. Addressing this painful reality, Lee Camp writes that Christianity in America has been made into a bad public joke because of “our failure to rightly understand what Christianity is.” From this provocative claim, Camp’s manifesto makes the convincing case that a renewed Christian politic is more essential than ever, one that is “neither left nor right nor religious,” but a prophetic way of life modeled after Jesus of Nazareth. Camp’s robust vision exposes modern parodies of faith—the American concept of “Christian values,” for one—and challenges Christians to rethink who they are and how they participate in the modern world. Authentic gospel truth is a scandal to the American myth, he argues, and we are called to be scandalous witnesses.

Download or read book Not in It to Win It written by Andy Stanley and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible to disagree politically and love unconditionally? The reaction of evangelicals to political and cultural shifts in recent years revealed what they value most. Lurking beneath our Bible-laced rhetoric, faith claims, books, and sermons is a relentless drive to WIN! But the church is not here to win. By every human measure, our Savior lost. On purpose. With a purpose. And we are his body. We are not in it to win anything. We are in it for something else entirely. That something else is what this book is about. You'll discover: How to take a stand the right way. You'll learn how to make your case with a posture of humility and understanding, rather than being fueled by the fear of losing something. How to view politics through the lens of faith. Learn curiously, listen intentionally, and love unconditionally. How the life of Jesus and his teaching applies to modern-day challenges in a fresh way. The "biblical" stand may not be what we've been taught. Jesus never asked his followers to agree on everything. But he did call his followers to obey a new command: to love others in the same way he has loved us. Instead of asserting our rights or fighting for power, we need to begin asking ourselves: what does love require of me?

Download or read book When a Nation Forgets God written by Erwin W. Lutzer and published by Moody Publishers. This book was released on 2015-12-18 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This excellent book is so important. It clearly and powerfully explains what the parallels are between Germany's fall from grace and the beginning of our own fall. - Eric Metaxas, author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy In When A Nation Forgets God, Erwin Lutzer studies seven similarities between Nazi Germany and America today—some of them chilling—and cautions us to respond accordingly. Engaging, well-researched, and easy to understand, Lutzer’s writing is that of a realist, one alarmed but unafraid. Amidst describing the messes of our nation’s government, economy, legal pitfalls, propaganda, and more, Lutzer points to the God who always has a plan. At the beginning of the twentieth Century, Nazi Germany didn’t look like a country on the brink of world-shaking terrors. It looked like America today. When a Nation Forgets God uses history to warn us of a future that none of us wants to see. It urges us to be ordinary heroes who speak up and take action.

Download or read book Jesus and John Wayne How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation written by Kristin Kobes Du Mez and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.