Download or read book A Faith of Our Own written by Jonathan Merritt and published by FaithWords. This book was released on 2012-05-08 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every day, major headlines tell the story of how Christianity is attempting to influence American culture and politics. But statistics show that young Americans are disenchanted with a faith that has become culturally antagonistic and too closely aligned with partisan politics. In this personal yet practical work, Jonathan Merritt uncovers the changing face of American Christianity by uniquely examining the coming of age of a new generation of Christians. Jonathan Merritt illuminates the spiritual ethos of this new generation of believers who engage the world with Christ-centered faith but an un-polarized political perspective. Through personal stories and biblically rooted commentary this scion of a leading evangelical family takes a close, thoughtful look at the changing religious and political environment, addressing such divisive issues as abortion, gay marriage, environmental use and care, race, war, poverty, and the imbalance of world wealth. Through Scripture, the examples of Jesus, and personal defining faith experiences, he distills the essential truths at the core of a Christian faith that is now just coming of age.
Download or read book How to Win the Culture War written by Peter Kreeft and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2009-08-20 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The battle lines have been drawn. Many Christians have fallen into the trap of proclaiming "Peace! Peace!" when there is no peace. Hiding their eyes from the pressing issues of the day, they believe that resistance to the prevailing culture is useless. At the same time, other Christians have been too quick to declare war, mistaking battlefield casualties as enemies rather than victims. In How to Win the Culture War Peter Kreeft issues a rousing call to arms. Christians must understand the true nature of the culture war--a war between the culture of life and the culture of death. Kreeft identifies the real enemies facing the church today and maps out key battlefields. He then issues a strategy for engagement and equips Christians with the weapons needed for a successful campaign. Above all, Kreeft assures us that the war can be won--in fact, it will be won. For those who hope in Christ, victory is assured, because good triumphs over evil and life conquers death. Love never gives up. Neither must we.
Download or read book Jesus and Gin written by Barry Hankins and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jesus and Gin is a rollicking tour of the roaring twenties and the barn- burning preachers who led the temperance movement—the anti-abortion crusade of the Jazz Age. Along the way, we meet a host of colorful characters: a Baptist minister who commits adultery in the White House; media star preachers caught in massive scandals; a presidential election hinging on a religious issue; and fundamentalists and liberals slugging it out in the culture war of the day. The religious roar of that decade was a prologue to the last three decades. With the religious right in disarray today after its long ascendancy, Jesus and Gin is a timely look at a parallel age when preachers held sway and politicians answered to the pulpit.
Download or read book Pagans and Christians in the City written by Steven D. Smith and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditionalist Christians who oppose same-sex marriage and other cultural developments in the United States wonder why they are being forced to bracket their beliefs in order to participate in public life. This situation is not new, says Steven D. Smith: Christians two thousand years ago faced very similar challenges. Picking up poet T. S. Eliot’s World War II–era thesis that the future of the West would be determined by a contest between Christianity and “modern paganism,” Smith argues in this book that today’s culture wars can be seen as a reprise of the basic antagonism that pitted pagans against Christians in the Roman Empire. Smith’s Pagans and Christians in the City looks at that historical conflict and explores how the same competing ideas continue to clash today. All of us, Smith shows, have much to learn by observing how patterns from ancient history are reemerging in today’s most controversial issues.
Download or read book Jesus and the Culture Wars written by C J Conner and published by Tate Publishing. This book was released on 2007-08 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jesus and the Culture Wars: Reclaiming the Lord's Prayer is an in-depth look at the cultural unrest of Christ's time and now. From the radical feminization of our nation's boys to unholy alliances with militant Islam, American mainline denominations are leading the charge. They aren't the only ones on the wrong side of the culture wars, though. So were the Pharisees. What does it really mean to pray with Jesus 'Hallowed be Thy Name' or 'Lead Us not into Temptation' in a religious context as politically charged as the one we face today? Jesus and the Culture Wars offers a fresh perspective on the Lord's Prayer and a call to Christians everywhere to reclaim it from the religious authorities who have taken it hostage. Visit www.revcjconner.com to talk about Jesus and the Culture Wars 'Nothing could be more counter-cultural, and therefore imperative, than unwrapping each petition of the Lord's Prayer, one of the most powerful weapons in the Christian arsenal against post-modern and other errors. CJ Conner has accomplished this feat admirably.' Dr. Uwe Siemon-Netto, Ph.D., D.Litt. Concordia Seminary Institute on Lay Vocation, St. Louis
Download or read book Onward written by Russell D. Moore and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2015-08 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 Cultural Engagement written by Josh Chatraw and published by Zondervan Academic. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How should Christians approach important contemporary issues like war, race, creation care, gender, and politics? Christians in every culture are confronted with social trends and moral questions that can be difficult to navigate. But, the Bible often doesn't speak directly to such issues. Even when it does, it can be confusing to know how best to apply the biblical teaching. In Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues authors Joshua D. Chatraw and Karen Swallow Prior first offer a broadly accessible framework for cultural engagement and then explore specific hot topics in current Western culture including: Sexuality Gender Roles Human Life and Reproduction Technology Immigration and Race Creation and Creature Care Politics Work Arts War, Weapons, and Capital Punishment Featuring contributions from over forty top thinkers, proponents of various views on the specific topics present their approaches in their own words, providing readers an opportunity to fairly consider options. Unique in how it addresses both big-picture questions about cultural engagement and pressing current issues, Cultural Engagement provides a thorough and broad introduction useful for students, professors, pastors, college ministers, and any believer wanting to more effectively exercise their faith in the public square.
Download or read book Christians and Politics Beyond the Culture Wars written by David P. Gushee and published by Baker Publishing Group (MI). This book was released on 2000 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assesses current state of Christian engagement in politics: focusing on a variety of historical, theological, and theoretical issues and offering responses to current moral and social problems.
Download or read book Secular Faith written by Mark A. Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-09-11 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Pope Francis recently answered “Who am I to judge?” when asked about homosexuality, he ushered in a new era for the Catholic church. A decade ago, it would have been unthinkable for a pope to express tolerance for homosexuality. Yet shifts of this kind are actually common in the history of Christian groups. Within the United States, Christian leaders have regularly revised their teachings to match the beliefs and opinions gaining support among their members and larger society. Mark A. Smith provocatively argues that religion is not nearly the unchanging conservative influence in American politics that we have come to think it is. In fact, in the long run, religion is best understood as responding to changing political and cultural values rather than shaping them. Smith makes his case by charting five contentious issues in America’s history: slavery, divorce, homosexuality, abortion, and women’s rights. For each, he shows how the political views of even the most conservative Christians evolved in the same direction as the rest of society—perhaps not as swiftly, but always on the same arc. During periods of cultural transition, Christian leaders do resist prevailing values and behaviors, but those same leaders inevitably acquiesce—often by reinterpreting the Bible—if their positions become no longer tenable. Secular ideas and influences thereby shape the ways Christians read and interpret their scriptures. So powerful are the cultural and societal norms surrounding us that Christians in America today hold more in common morally and politically with their atheist neighbors than with the Christians of earlier centuries. In fact, the strongest predictors of people’s moral beliefs are not their religious commitments or lack thereof but rather when and where they were born. A thoroughly researched and ultimately hopeful book on the prospects for political harmony, Secular Faith demonstrates how, over the long run, boundaries of secular and religious cultures converge.
Download or read book Is There a Culture War written by James Davison Hunter and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of a bitter presidential campaign and in the face of numerous divisive policy questions, many Americans wonder if their country has split in two. Is America divided so clearly? Two of America's leading authorities on political culture lead a provocative and thoughtful investigation of this question and its ramifications.
Download or read book The Early Christians in Their Own Words written by Eberhard Arnold and published by The Plough Publishing House. This book was released on 1997 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these firsthand accounts of the early church, the spirit of Pentecost burns with prophetic force through the fog enveloping the modern church. A clear and vibrant faith lives on in these writings, providing a guide for Christians today. Its stark simplicity and revolutionary fervor will stun those lulled by conventional Christianity.The Early Christians is a topically arranged collection of primary sources. It includes extra-biblical sayings of Jesus and excerpts from Origen, Tertullian, Polycarp, Clement of Alexandria, Justin, Irenaeus, Hermas, Ignatius, and others. Equally revealing material from pagan contemporaries - critics, detractors, and persecutors - is included as well.
Download or read book Cease Fire written by Tom Sine and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 1996-12-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. Three abortion doctors and eight aides are gunned down and six are killed. More than 150 abortion clinics are firebombed. A church is vandalized by gay prostitutes. A pro-choice activist calls for "massive militant action" against anti-abortionists. In Cease Fire Tom Sine takes up the concerns of millions of Christians -- evangelical and mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox -- who feel uneasy with some of the excesses of the politically correct left but who recoil at the stance taken by Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition that the extreme religious right, with its quest for political power, is the only place to turn. Sine looks at the tactics and agendas of extremists on both sides and asks what society would look like if their particular visions were to win out. He then argues that the positions of the religious right and of the left are not the only available choices. The Bible offers a third choice, God's "better way" -- a biblical center represented by neither right nor left in the current debate. Cease Fire is written to enable readers to understand why America's culture wars are so adversarial, polarizing, and increasingly violent; to anticipate which side is likely to gain the upper hand in these contentious conflicts and how it is likely to shape our common future; and to offer a third way -- a radical biblical alternative to the political ideologies of the religious right and the left -- for those searching for a new place to stand in a new millennium.
Download or read book Hollywood Under Siege written by Thomas R Lindlof and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2008-08-08 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1988, director Martin Scorsese fulfilled his lifelong dream of making a film about Jesus Christ. Rather than celebrating the film as a statement of faith, churches and religious leaders immediately went on the attack, alleging blasphemy. At the height of the controversy, thousands of phone calls a day flooded the Universal switchboard, and before the year was out, more than three million mailings protesting the film fanned out across the country. For the first time in history, a studio took responsibility for protecting theaters and scrambled to recruit a "field crisis team" to guide The Last Temptation of Christ through its contentious American openings. Overseas, the film faced widespread censorship actions, with thirteen countries eventually banning the film. The response in Europe turned violent when opposition groups sacked theaters in France and Greece and caused injuries to dozens of moviegoers. Twenty years later, author Thomas R. Lindlof offers a comprehensive account of how this provocative film came to be made and how Universal Pictures and its parent company MCA became targets of the most intense, unremitting attacks ever mounted against a media company. The film faced early and determined opposition from elements of the religious Right when it was being developed at Paramount during the last year the studio was run by the celebrated troika of Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. By the mid-1980s, Scorsese's film was widely regarded as unmakeable—a political stick of dynamite that no one dared touch. Through the joint efforts of two of the era's most influential executives, CAA president Michael Ovitz and Universal Pictures chairman Thomas P. Pollock, this improbable project found its way into production. The making of The Last Temptation of Christ caught evangelical Christians at a moment when they were suffering a crisis of confidence in their leadership. The religious right seized on the film as a way to rehabilitate its image and to mobilize ordinary citizens to attack liberalism in art and culture. The ensuing controversy over the film's alleged blasphemy escalated into a full-scale war fought out very openly in the media. Universal/MCA faced unprecedented calls for boycotts of its business interests, anti-Semitic rhetoric and death threats were directed at MCA chairman Lew Wasserman and other MCA executives, and the industry faced the specter of violence at theaters. Hollywood Under Siege draws upon interviews with many of the key figures—Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Michael Ovitz, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jack Valenti, Thomas P. Pollock, and Willem Dafoe—to explore the trajectory of the film from its conception to the subsequent epic controversy and beyond. Lindlof offers a fascinating dissection of a critical episode in the embryonic culture wars, illuminating the explosive effects of the clash between the interests of the media industry and the forces of social conservatism.
Download or read book Jesus Wars written by John Philip Jenkins and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-02-20 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fifth-Century Political Battles That Forever Changed the Church In this fascinating account of the surprisingly violent fifth-century church, PhilipJenkins describes how political maneuvers by a handful of powerful charactersshaped Christian doctrine. Were it not for these battles, today’s church could beteaching something very different about the nature of Jesus, and the papacy as weknow it would never have come into existence. Jesus Wars reveals the profoundimplications of what amounts to an accident of history: that one faction ofRoman emperors and militia-wielding bishops defeated another.
Download or read book Pop Culture Wars written by William D. Romanowski and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2006-02-15 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Entertainment has long been a source of controversy in American life. On the one hand, American popular culture is enormously desired, captivating audiences around the world. On the other hand, more and more critics blame it for the breakdown of morals and even civilizations itself. Surely Christians and other religious citizens have something to contribute to what is, after all, a discussion of morality. But too often their contributions have been ill-informed, unreflective and reactionary. In this groudbreaking book, William Romanowski brings something desperately needed to the discussion: an informed, systematic and challenging Christian perspective. Comprehensive and historically revealing, Pop Culture Wars bids to accomplish nothing less than to reframe and render more constructive a crucial but angry cultural debate.
Download or read book Christ and the Culture Wars written by Benjamin Chang and published by Christian Focus. This book was released on 2023-05-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A call to engage with the identity politics of our world, and reframe the way we spread the Christian gospel. In our modern world the gospel of Jesus is seen by many less as good news for all humanity,and more as the bigoted edicts of a bygone era. Benjamin Chang explores the stories of the revolution, tracing the trajectories of four of the biggest social justice movements - feminism, racial justice, gay pride and the trans movement - before looking at the ways Christians usually engage with these arenas of cultural conflict (mirror, argue, ignore) and identifying a better way forward. Rather than hunkering down in our own identity tribes, arguing against other groups, or ignoring what is going on in the culture around us, Chang encourages Christians to find ways to speak for Jesus. He urges us to look at the way we tell stories,and consider whether we can re-capture hearts in our culture by telling a more powerful counter-narrative. He gives us language to use to speak about the cross in our world of identity politics. We will see that the gospel resonates with a culture when it speaks the language of the culture.
Download or read book A War for the Soul of America written by Andrew Hartman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-04-26 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What were the culture wars all about? Through the 1980s and 1990s, politics, art, media, schools, and the culture at large were roiled by seemingly unending public battles over gender, race, sexuality, music, and religion. "A War for the Soul of America" is the first full-scale intellectual history of this period, tracing the histories and influences of key figures, institutions, publications, and alliances--from the Moral Majority and the NEA Four to Madonna and William F. Buckley. Hartman argues that these conflicts were not cynical sideshows that obscured larger economic and political revolutions; rather, he sees them as the key ways in which Americans came to terms with changing demographics, communities, and conceptions of American identity. Hartman s balanced and fair-minded assessment of the time before Fox News and Lady Gaga will change the way you look at public controversies of all kinds."
