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Seventeen times per day, Muslims pray that Allah would keep them from going astray—in the way that Christians have gone astray.But have they? Rather than portraying Jesus Christ as an imposter who claimed to be divine, Islamic theology presents Jesus as a mortal prophet who served his generation as other prophets did their respective generations. Since Christians believe the biblical narrative that Jesus is Lord, God, and Savior, it is not surprising that the standard Islamic narrative asserts that Christians have gone astray. In fact, if Christians are correct in their beliefs, then the advent of Muhammad, and the religion of Islam itself, are unnecessary to God’s cosmic history. This book probes deeply into the extremely urgent—but often unasked—question facing Muslims regarding when, where, and how the main body of Christians may have gone astray.
In this groundbreaking book, renowned religion scholar Philip Jenkins offers a lost history, revealing that, for centuries, Christianity's center was actually in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, with significant communities extending as far as China. The Lost History of Christianity unveils a vast and forgotten network of the world's largest and most influential Christian churches that existed to the east of the Roman Empire. These churches and their leaders ruled the Middle East for centuries and became the chief administrators and academics in the new Muslim empire. The author recounts the shocking history of how these churches—those that had the closest link to Jesus and the early church—died. Jenkins takes a stand against current scholars who assert that variant, alternative Christianities disappeared in the fourth and fifth centuries on the heels of a newly formed hierarchy under Constantine, intent on crushing unorthodox views. In reality, Jenkins says, the largest churches in the world were the “heretics” who lost the orthodoxy battles. These so-called heretics were in fact the most influential Christian groups throughout Asia, and their influence lasted an additional one thousand years beyond their supposed demise. Jenkins offers a new lens through which to view our world today, including the current conflicts in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Without this lost history, we lack an important element for understanding our collective religious past. By understanding the forgotten catastrophe that befell Christianity, we can appreciate the surprising new births that are occurring in our own time, once again making Christianity a true world religion.
Donald G. Bloesch's wide-ranging and in-depth reflection on the presence, reality and ministry of the Holy Spirit serves as a landmark to those seeking a faithful theological understanding of the Holy Spirit.
Evangelicals, argues Wells, have largely lost the truth that God also stands outside all human experience, that he still summons sinners to repentance and belief regardless of their self-image, and that he calls his church to stand fast in his truth against the blandishments of the modern world.
Why Should Christians Care About the Dignity of Human Life? What determines whether a life has value? Does age, ability, or health? Scripture tells us that we are all created in the image and likeness of God, and Christians are called to defend the dignity of his creation. But as debates rage around issues from abortion to euthanasia, it can be difficult to speak up against opposing viewpoints. In Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, renowned theologian Francis A. Schaeffer and former US surgeon general C. Everett Koop, MD argue that society's view of life quickly deteriorates when we devalue God's creation through "anti-life" and "anti-God" practices. First written forty years ago, their perspectives are still relevant today as secular humanist issues, including euthanasia and infanticide, increasingly take hold in our culture. Their medical, historical, and theological insights empower readers to affirm a pro-life worldview and defend it confidently.
Insider twentysomething Christian journalist Brett McCracken has grown up in the evangelical Christian subculture and observed the recent shift away from the "stained glass and steeples" old guard of traditional Christianity to a more unorthodox, stylized 21st-century church. This change raises a big issue for the church in our postmodern world: the question of cool. The question is whether or not Christianity can be, should be, or is, in fact, cool. This probing book is about an emerging category of Christians McCracken calls "Christian hipsters"--the unlikely fusion of the American obsessions with worldly "cool" and otherworldly religion--an analysis of what they're about, why they exist, and what it all means for Christianity and the church's relevancy and hipness in today's youth-oriented culture.
This book explores the personal backgrounds, historical methodologies, and academic philosophies of George Marsden, Nathan Hatch, and Mark Noll. It addresses the issues raised by the interaction of personal faith and scholarship, and the subsequent effect this has upon the evangelical community at large and the academic mission of institutions that wish to maintain their Christian distinction. The author shows how these scholars founded the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, and she demonstrates the significance of their attempts to open evangelical historical scholarship to a wider audience. Readers will get to know the personalities behind these evangelical scholars and will discover the uniqueness of Marsden, Hatch, and Noll as individuals as well as leaders. This is the first book to approach faith and learning from the point of view of these three men. Full of personal interviews and unpublished materials, The Evangelical Historians will appeal to students and scholars of American Studies, religion, culture, and sociology. It will serve as a useful text for courses in the History of American Christianity, Christianity and Culture, Historiography, Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, and 18th and 19th-Century American Protestantism. In addition, members of the historical guild interested in religion in America and the role of Christianity will surely want a copy of this rare and thoughtful work. Contents: Preface; A Historian's History; Integrating Faith and Learning; Transgressing Boundaries: Historical Critique and Evangelical Response; The Opening of the Evangelical Mind; Conclusion; Index.
Has something indeed happened to evangelical theology and to evangelical churches? According to David Wells, the evidence indicates that evangelical pastors have abandoned their traditional role as ministers of the Word to become therapists and "managers of the small enterprises we call churches." Along with their parishioners, they have abandoned genuine Christianity and biblical truth in favor of the sort of inner-directed experiential religion that now pervades Western society. Specifically, Wells explores the wholesale disappearance of theology in the church, the academy, and modern culture. Western culture as a whole, argues Wells, has been transformed by modernity, and the church has simply gone with the flow. The new environment in which we live, with its huge cities, triumphant capitalism, invasive technology, and pervasive amusements, has vanquished and homogenized the entire world. While the modern world has produced astonishing abundance, it has also taken a toll on the human spirit, emptying it of enduring meaning and morality. Seeking respite from the acids of modernity, people today have increasingly turned to religions and therapies centered on the self. And, whether consciously or not, evangelicals have taken the same path, refashioning their faith into a religion of the self. They have been coopted by modernity, have sold their soul for a mess of pottage. According to Wells, they have lost the truth that God stands outside all human experience, that he still summons sinners to repentance and belief regardless of their self-image, and that he calls his church to stand fast in his truth against the blandishments of a godless world. The first of three volumes meant to encourage renewal in evangelical theology (the other two to be written by Cornelius Plantinga Jr. and Mark Noll), No Place for Truth is a contemporary jeremiad, a clarion call to all evangelicals to note well what a pass they have come to in capitulating to modernity, what a risk they are running by abandoning historic orthodoxy. It is provocative reading for scholars, ministers, seminary students, and all theologically concerned individuals.
From the creative minds of the scholarly group behind the groundbreaking Jesus Seminar comes this provocative and eye-opening look at the roots of Christianity that offers a thoughtful reconsideration of the first two centuries of the Jesus movement, transforming our understanding of the religion and its early dissemination. Christianity has endured for more than two millennia and is practiced by billions worldwide today. Yet that longevity has created difficulties for scholars tracing the religion’s roots, distorting much of the historical investigation into the first two centuries of the Jesus movement. But what if Christianity died in the fourth or fifth centuries after it began? How would that change how historians see and understand its first two hundred years? Considering these questions, three Bible scholars from the Westar Institute summarize the work of the Christianity Seminar and its efforts to offer a new way of thinking about Christianity and its roots. Synthesizing the institute’s most recent scholarship—bringing together the many archaeological and textual discoveries over the last twenty years—they have found: There were multiple Jesus movements, not a singular one, before the fourth century There was nothing called Christianity until the third century There was much more flexibility and diversity within Jesus’s movement before it became centralized in Rome, not only regarding the Bible and religious doctrine, but also understandings of gender, sexuality and morality. Exciting and revolutionary, After Jesus Before Christianity provides fresh insights into the real history behind how the Jesus movement became Christianity. After Jesus Before Christianity includes more than a dozen black-and-white images throughout.
It already happened in Europe, and now, it is happening in America. Christianity, once the dominant element of our culture is dying. Pastors are leaving their pulpits in droves. Churches are closing or see declining attendance. More and more people have little to no interest in attending church services even on Easter and Christmas! This decline is especially noticeable in the part of America where the Gospel first arrived—the northeast! Why is this happening, and can anything be done to reverse these critical trends? For over two thousand years, the Church of Jesus Christ has moved from its original bold, open-air, service-oriented outreach to a cloistered inside a building existence adversely impacting the Gospel. Christians rarely share their faith even with their loved ones. More and more being a Christian means to be an enemy of the progressive nature of our society. Whatever Happened to the Biblical Church? addresses the reasons for this departure from the New Testament church and Christianity and gives applicable, first-century solutions to avoid and overcome this lapse into the post-Christian culture. But in order to understand let alone accept these solutions Christians and especially Christian leaders must understand that the church as we know it today is not what is found in the New Testament. We must return to the local gathering, discipleship oriented and open-air ministries that existed when Christ commanded his followers to “be witnesses for me.”