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This book attempts to explain why the religious radicalism of the sixties gave way to the conservatism of the seventies.
A sparklingly strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age. Fifty-five years have passed since the cover of Time magazine proclaimed the death of God and while participation in mainstream religion has indeed plummeted, Americans have never been more spiritually busy. While rejecting traditional worship in unprecedented numbers, today's Americans are embracing a kaleidoscopic panoply of spiritual traditions, rituals, and subcultures -- from astrology and witchcraft to SoulCycle and the alt-right.As the Internet makes it ever-easier to find new "tribes," and consumer capitalism forever threatens to turn spirituality into a lifestyle brand, remarkably modern American religious culture is undergoing a revival comparable with the Great Awakenings of centuries past. Faith is experiencing not a decline but a Renaissance. Disillusioned with organized religion and political establishments alike, more and more Americans are seeking out spiritual paths driven by intuition, not institutions. In Strange Rites, religious scholar and commentator Tara Isabella Burton visits with the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley; Satanists and polyamorous communities, witches from Bushwick, wellness junkies and social justice activists and devotees of Jordan Peterson, proving Americans are not abandoning religion but remixing it. In search of the deep and the real, they are finding meaning, purpose, ritual, and communities in ever-newer, ever-stranger ways.
In a groundbreaking historical work that focuses on the long, tense convergence of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam with an uncompromising secular perspective, Susan Jacoby illuminates the social and economic forces that have shaped individual faith and the voluntary conversion impulse that has changed the course of Western history—for better and for worse. Covering the triumph of Christianity over paganism in late antiquity, the Spanish Inquisition, John Calvin’s dour theocracy, American plantations where African slaves had to accept their masters’ religion—along with individual converts including Augustine of Hippo, John Donne, Edith Stein, Muhammad Ali, George W. Bush and Mike Pence—Strange Gods makes a powerful case that nothing has been more important in struggle for reason than the right to believe in the God of one’s choice or to reject belief in God altogether.
Jesus said, “Go and make disciples.” So, what exactly are we doing? Western churches face a difficult future marked by numerical decline and evident signs of shrinking cultural influence. But Discipleship in Community wisely asks the church to go back to basics. What does it mean to follow Jesus? What does a life of discipleship look like? Trusted scholars Mark Powell, John Mark Hicks, and Greg McKinzie invite you to consider how good theology can lead to better, more intentional discipleship. In Discipleship in Community you will learn • how the language of Trinity matters to everyday disciples; • how God’s plan and mission is unfolding and how, as disciples, we can participate in that mission; • how the Bible is more than a book of facts and how it guides us into a relationship with God; • how baptism and the Lord’s Supper allow us to experience God’s saving power; and • how local churches can encourage intentional discipleship.
Traces the decline of Christianity in America since the 1950s, posing controversial arguments about the role of heresy in the nation's downfall while calling for a revival of traditional Christian practices.
How to talk about Jesus in a way that connects with modern culture. As followers of Jesus, we know that the good news is deeply attractive. But we often fear that to those on the outside, it comes across as irrelevant or even repellent. Sometimes the Christian worldview feels so out of step with everything else going on that we don't know how to share our faith. However, author Daniel Strange wants to show you that the connections are there—in fact, the longings that our culture cannot help but express are the very ones that Jesus fulfils. Building on the work of theologian J.H. Bavinck, Dan reveals five recurring themes that our culture can’t stop talking about, or, as he puts it, the "five permanent ‘itches’ that in our work, rest, and play, we have to vigorously scratch." From TV to books to social media, these are the questions we can't stop asking and the tensions we can't stop wrestling with—and Jesus speaks powerfully into each one. This book will help you to spot these connections in our culture, excite you about how Jesus makes sense of humankind’s deepest questions and longings, apply them to your own life first and then equip you to speak of him to others in a way that is truly magnetic. "Dan Strange has written another terrific, down-to-earth book to help believers engage in fruitful conversations with friends about faith." Dr. Timothy Keller, who has also written the foreword to this book.
In the summer of 2002, Timothy K. Beal loaded his family into a twenty-nine-foot-long motor home and hit the rural highways of America in search of roadside religious attractions-sites like the World's Largest Ten Commandments and Precious Moments Chapel. Roadside Religion tells of his attempts to understand the meaning of these places as expressions of religious imagination and experience, and to encounter faith in all its awesome absurdity.
With the conclusion of the Civil War, the beginnings of Reconstruction, and the realities of emancipation, former slaves were confronted with the possibility of freedom and, with it, a new way of life. In The Times Were Strange and Stirring, Reginald F. Hildebrand examines the role of the Methodist Church in the process of emancipation—and in shaping a new world at a unique moment in American, African American, and Methodist history. Hildebrand explores the ideas and ideals of missionaries from several branches of Methodism—the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, and the northern-based Methodist Episcopal Church—and the significant and highly charged battle waged between them over the challenge and meaning of freedom. He traces the various strategies and goals pursued by these competing visions and develops a typology of some of the ways in which emancipation was approached and understood. Focusing on individual church leaders such as Lucius H. Holsey, Richard Harvey Cain, and Gilbert Haven, and with the benefit of extensive research in church archives and newspapers, Hildebrand tells the dramatic and sometimes moving story of how missionaries labored to organize their denominations in the black South, and of how they were overwhelmed at times by the struggles of freedom.
"When people are committed to gender equality, what gets in their way of achieving it? Why do well-intentioned people reinforce sexist outcomes? Why does dissonance persist between organizational actors' good intentions of equality and sexist outcomes? This book provides answers to these questions by applying the critical lens of gendered organizations to moderate-liberal congregations that separated from their mainline denomination in support of women's equal leadership yet remain predominately male in positions of authority. This critical methodological study investigates congregations affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) with some dually aligned with The Alliance of Baptists. Although the CBF identifies the equal leadership of women as a core component of its collective identity and women are enrolling in Baptist seminaries at almost equal rates as men, only five percent of CBF congregations employ women as solo senior pastors. This book provides an organizational analysis investigating gendered congregational processes on the individual, interactional, and organizational levels including themes such as gendered hiring criteria, a perceived incongruence of women's bodies and leadership, unconscious biases of organizational actors, and how women pastors' experiences of discrimination influence their more risky approaches to leadership"--
The Importance of Religion reveals the significance of religion in modern times, showing how it provides people with meaning to their lives and helps guide them in their everyday moral choices Provides readers with a new understanding of religion, demonstrating how in its actions, texts and world views religion is enduring and vividly engages with the mystery of the world Offers striking arguments about the relationship of religion to science, art and politics Engagingly written by a highly respected scholar of religion with an international reputation