How does a missional mindset or perspective impact the way we read Scripture? How does the Bible speak to and through a missional disciple? And seriously, what kind of God is God? A missional reading of Scripture is pivotal to helping the church find its way back to its true vocation and to helping newly forming missional communities follow the triune God revealed in Jesus. To the extent that the church is absorbed with itself and its own com ...
Many have experienced Christianity as a confusing list of restrictive rules designed to wring all of the joy out of life. Others seek to live as Christians without a clear understanding of what the focus of a Christian life should be, leaving them to wonder if Jesus had more in mind than regular Sunday morning worship attendance. What does a healthy Christian life look like? Larry Duggins has molded three anchor scriptures into a simple model o ...
Most academics agree with Peter Berger that pluralism theory appears more accurate than secularization theory in accounting for the societal changes that accompany modernization. Yet Berger's earlier book Many Altars of Modernity gives limited attention to the implications of the pluralist paradigm for religious discourse, in particular for evangelicals. According to Berger–who wrote the first chapter in this book–while pluralism leads to l ...
The role of Evangelical Christianity in American public life is controversial. The mythology of America as a «Christian nation» and the promissory note of secularism have proved inadequate to cope with the increasing pluralism, the resilience of spirituality, and the wariness toward formal religion that mark our post-secular age. Christianity and democracy have a complex history together, but is there a future where these two great traditions dr ...
Suicide, for years, has been a public health crisis in the Western world. Yet more and more states and countries are allowing physician assisted suicide or euthanasia. Have you wondered whether it is actually wrong to end your life if you are mortally ill? Susan Windley-Daoust engages in an extended discussion with a game dialogue partner who thinks that there are five good reasons to employ physician-assisted suicide–and proves those common rea ...
From the birth of Christianity and with the Christian churches' separation from Judaism, a tragic misunderstanding of marriage and divorce has occurred. Not only have we lost the understanding of biblical marriage counsel and wisdom, we have also lost the process of marriage and its biblical allowances for separation of man and wife under certain conditions. Christianity often fails to understand the biblical practice of marriage, as well a ...
The ethics of the Bible can be summarized in one word: love. Love became flesh in the person of Jesus–in the narrative of his life, his teachings, his death, and his resurrection. Jesus was the «Word of God» (John 1:1). Splendors of Godly Love brings a fresh perspective on age-old Christian concepts to guide us through life. Chris van der Merwe is a literary scholar who carefully analyzes biblical texts and explores the richness of their conte ...
We shouldn't be too surprised if Jesus, the Son of David, was also a song writer. The Lord's Prayer is a psalm, and reading the prayer as a psalm opens up its meaning. To read the Lord's Prayer as a psalm, you have to be able to read a psalm as a psalm. So this book is first of all an adventure in reading the Bible's poetry–the psalms, of course, but also much of the prophets' testimony. The Old Testament's ...
What if our actual lives aren't 'written' like a simple story? Nor like a book that flows neatly and sequentially from 'chapter-to-chapter' via a rigidly linear plot. But written, instead, through a series of creative interludes or moments. Further still, what if our lives shouldn't simply happen to us? But, rather, be lived through our affirmative acts of seeking 'life.' As part of an ongoing, active ques ...
