Do you know what will happen a week from next Tuesday? You might find a quite ordinary day with work, laundry, and a child's soccer game. Or perhaps the day will bring an unexpected tragedy for someone you love. Maybe something completely out of the blue will surprise you. While no one can know what today, tomorrow, or a week from next Tuesday will hold, you can know Christ's gift of JOY in your life every day. Despite our best efforts ...
Dear to the hearts of many Christians is the land of the Bible, which today is convulsed by strife. Contradictory claims about the past, present, and future of this land can bewilder us. The essays in this volume invite Christians of every denomination to share in perspectives that are solidly grounded in Scripture and tradition, yet serve as alternatives to the currently prevailing approaches. A Lutheran, two Roman Catholics, two Episcopalians ...
Do atonement theologies that focus on Jesus' death underwrite human violence? If so, we do well to rethink beliefs that this death is necessary to bring salvation. Focusing on the Bible's salvation story, Instead of Atonement argues for a logic of mercy to replace Christianity's traditional logic of retribution. The book traces the Bible's main salvation story through God's liberating acts, the testimony of the p ...
Karl Barth's Christology provides a key to out-narrating the Deus absconditus, which, as Rustin Brian contends, is in fact the god of modernity. Included in this is the rejection of the logical and philosophical systems that allow for the modern understanding of God as the Deus absconditus, namely, dialectics and nominalism. This rejection is illustrated, interestingly enough, in Barth's decision to literally cover up, with a rug, Mart ...
Transforming Faith Communities argues for a model of being church that combines congregationalism with a constructive approach to church-state relationships. Congregationalism within a vision for a renewed Christendom is commended here as a viable option for Christian mission in the twenty-first-century world. In making this case, two movements are explored–those inspired by sixteenth-century Anabaptism and late twentieth-century Latin American ...
Our lives move along with ups and downs, and we cope with them the best we can. But underneath there is a hunger for something more. There are times of stress such as when a loved one dies, a job is lost, a child is on a dangerous path, a difficult situation goes on and on. There are many other stressors that we all encounter. This book offers quotations from ancient and modern authors and poems and reflections that give a thought or ima ...
Life is a complex journey, and each of us must find our own way. But sometimes we take a wrong turn and get lost. When that happens we have to backtrack and begin again. We are living in a time when many young adults who dropped out of church in high school or college are seeking to reconnect with their faith, while older Christians are feeling a need to turn their own lives around. Finding the Way offers help for all Christians who are ...
Despite the fact that the theological gains of Latin American Liberation Theology (LALT) have been incorporated into several theologies around the world, many North Atlantic evangelicals still consider LALT a heresy. The underlying reason for the lack of positive engagement between North Atlantic Evangelical Theology in general–and American Evangelical Theology in particular–and LALT is the mistaken perception that LALT and evangelical theology ...
Evidence of mainstream denominational decline virtually throws itself in our faces–growing religious pluralism in North America; the decline over the last half century in the salience, prestige, power, and vitality of Protestant denominational leadership; slippage in mainline membership and corresponding growth, vigor, visibility, and political prowess of conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist bodies; patterns of congregational independen ...
