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Christians In A Secular Age
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Book Synopsis Christians in a Secular Age by : Mike Willis
Download or read book Christians in a Secular Age written by Mike Willis and published by . This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the growth and tolerance of Islam and the attitude of everyone should be able to believe whatever they want to believe, it has become increasingly difficult to take a stand for the absolute truth as presented in God's word. What are Christians to do? This workbook helps answer this important question.
Download or read book A Secular Age written by Charles Taylor and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 889 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.
Download or read book Jesuit Post written by Patrick Gilger and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawn from the eponymous blog essays on faith, culture, and lives of Christian discipleship by young Jesuit priests and seminarians for young adult seekers.
Book Synopsis Religious Difference in a Secular Age by : Saba Mahmood
Download or read book Religious Difference in a Secular Age written by Saba Mahmood and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How secular governance in the Middle East is making life worse—not better—for religious minorities The plight of religious minorities in the Middle East is often attributed to the failure of secularism to take root in the region. Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges this assessment by examining four cornerstones of secularism—political and civil equality, minority rights, religious freedom, and the legal separation of private and public domains. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork in Egypt with Coptic Orthodox Christians and Bahais—religious minorities in a predominantly Muslim country—Saba Mahmood shows how modern secular governance has exacerbated religious tensions and inequalities rather than reduced them. Tracing the historical career of secular legal concepts in the colonial and postcolonial Middle East, she explores how contradictions at the very heart of political secularism have aggravated and amplified existing forms of Islamic hierarchy, bringing minority relations in Egypt to a new historical impasse. Through a close examination of Egyptian court cases and constitutional debates about minority rights, conflicts around family law, and controversies over freedom of expression, Mahmood invites us to reflect on the entwined histories of secularism in the Middle East and Europe. A provocative work of scholarship, Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges us to rethink the promise and limits of the secular ideal of religious equality.
Download or read book Christ Actually written by James Carroll and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestselling and widely admired Catholic writer explores how we can retrieve transcendent faith in modern times Critically acclaimed and bestselling author James Carroll has explored every aspect of Christianity, faith, and Jesus Christ except this central one: What can we believe about—and how can we believe in—Jesus in the twenty-first century in light of the Holocaust and other atrocities of the twentieth century and the drift from religion that followed? What Carroll has discovered through decades of writing and lecturing is that he is far from alone in clinging to a received memory of Jesus that separates him from his crucial identity as a Jew, and therefore as a human. Yet if Jesus was not taken as divine, he would be of no interest to us. What can that mean now? Paradoxically, the key is his permanent Jewishness. No Christian himself, Jesus actually transcends Christianity. Drawing on both a wide range of scholarship as well as his own acute searching as a believer, Carroll takes a fresh look at the most familiar narratives of all—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Far from another book about the “historical Jesus,” he takes the challenges of science and contemporary philosophy seriously. He retrieves the power of Jesus’ profound ordinariness, as an answer to his own last question—what is the future of Jesus Christ?—as the key to a renewal of faith.
Book Synopsis How (Not) to Be Secular by : James K. A. Smith
Download or read book How (Not) to Be Secular written by James K. A. Smith and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on.
Book Synopsis Calvinism for a Secular Age by : Jessica R. Joustra
Download or read book Calvinism for a Secular Age written by Jessica R. Joustra and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch Neo-Calvinist theologian, pastor, and politician, was well-known for having declared that there is "not a square inch" of human existence over which Jesus Christ is not its sovereign Lord. This principle is perhaps best reflected in Kuyper's writings on Calvinism originally delivered as the Stone Lectures in 1898 at Princeton Theological Seminary. These lectures reflecting on the role of the Christian faith in a variety of social spheres—including religion, politics, science, and art—have become a touchstone for contemporary Reformed theology. How might the lectures continue to inform the church's calling in a secular age? In this volume, Jessica Joustra and Robert Joustra bring together theologians, historians, scientists, and others to revisit Kuyper's original lectures and to critically consider both his ongoing importance and his complex legacy for today.
Book Synopsis Faith Formation in a Secular Age by : Andrew Root
Download or read book Faith Formation in a Secular Age written by Andrew Root and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Top Ten Book for Parish Ministry in 2017, Academy of Parish Clergy The loss or disaffiliation of young adults is a much-discussed topic in churches today. Many faith-formation programs focus on keeping the young, believing the youthful spirit will save the church. But do these programs have more to do with an obsession with youthfulness than with helping young people encounter the living God? Questioning the search for new or improved faith-formation programs, leading practical theologian Andrew Root offers an alternative take on the issue of youth drifting away from the church and articulates how faith can be formed in our secular age. He offers a theology of faith constructed from a rich cultural conversation, providing a deeper understanding of the phenomena of the "nones" and "moralistic therapeutic deism." Root helps readers understand why forming faith is so hard in our context and shows that what we have lost is not the ability to keep people connected to our churches but an imagination for how and where God could be present in their lives. He considers what faith is and what steps we can take to move into it, exploring a Pauline concept of faith as encounter with divine action. This is the first book in Root's Ministry in a Secular Age series.
Download or read book Believing Again written by Roger Lundin and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2009-02-05 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Believing Again Roger Lundin brilliantly explores the cultural consequences of the rather sudden nineteenth-century emergence of unbelief as a widespread social and intellectual option in the English-speaking world. / Lundin's narrative focuses on key poets and novelists from the past two centuries Dostoevsky, Dickinson, Melville, Auden, and more showing how they portray the modern mind and heart balancing between belief and unbelief. Lundin engages these literary luminaries through chapters on a series of vital subjects, from history and interpretation to beauty and memory. Such theologians as Barth and Balthasar also enter the fray, facing the challenge of modern unbelief with a creative brilliance that has gone largely unnoticed outside the world of faith. Lundin's Believing Again is a beautifully written, erudite examination of the drama and dynamics of belief in the modern world. In Believing Again Roger Lundin brilliantly explores the cultural consequences of the rather sudden nineteenth-century emergence of unbelief as a widespread social and intellectual option in the English-speaking world. Lundin s narrative focuses on key poets and novelists from the past two centuries Dostoevsky, Dickinson, Melville, Auden, and more showing how they portray the modern mind in tension between faith and doubt. Lundin engages these literary luminaries through chapters on a series of vital subjects, from history and interpretation to beauty and memory. Such theologians as Barth and Balthasar also enter the discussion, facing the challenge of modern unbelief with a creative brilliance that has gone largely unnoticed outside the world of faith. Lundin s Believing Again is a beautifully written, erudite examination of the drama and dynamics of belief in the modern world.
Book Synopsis Untimely Christianity by : Michael Edwards
Download or read book Untimely Christianity written by Michael Edwards and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christianity is always untimely, always foreign to our beliefs and contrary to our desires. It was untimely in Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome when Jesus and his early followers were killed. It is just as untimely now. But we have become deaf to its otherness, to the disruptive strangeness of Christian faith. If we are to hear it again, we must traverse the distance between our comfortable and overly conceptual Christianity and the true Christianity that "turns the whole world upside down." In Untimely Christianity, acclaimed poet and literary scholar Michael Edwards calls for a countercultural Christianity that recovers the Bible's radical otherness and renews our habits of attention to its message--to its revelation of a God who is not merely a set of doctrines but a person, someone we can know. Edwards's work is an eloquent, prophetic effort to recapture the revolutionary power of the Bible to transform the way humans view the world and how they live in it. Rich in theology, philosophy, poetry, biblical interpretation, and cultural criticism, Untimely Christianity invites readers of all kinds to encounter the Bible anew, as "a continuous questioning of the reader and a prodigious expansion of reality."
Book Synopsis Wisdom from Babylon by : Gordon T. Smith
Download or read book Wisdom from Babylon written by Gordon T. Smith and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to provide leadership for the church in an increasingly secular context? When religion is privatized and secularism reigns in the public square, Christians are often drawn toward either individualist escapism or constant cultural warfare. But might this context instead offer a fresh invitation for the church to adapt and thrive? Gordon Smith is passionate about the need for capable, mature leaders to navigate and respond to a changing society. In this book, he draws on his extensive experience as a university president, pastor, and international speaker to open a multidisciplinary conversation about the competencies and capacities essential for today's leaders. After analyzing the phenomenon of secularization in the West and charting common Christian responses, Smith introduces four sources of wisdom to help guide us through this new terrain: the people and prophets of Judah during the Babylonian exile, the early church in its pagan environment, contemporary churches across the Global South, and Christian thinkers in post-Christian Europe. From these resources he identifies practices and strategies—from liturgy and catechesis to mission and hospitality—that can give shape to faithful, alternative communities in such a time as this. In cultures fraught with fear and division, Smith calls for leaders who can effect change from the margins, promote unity and maturity among Christians, and provide a non-anxious presence grounded in the presence of Christ. Educators, church leaders, and those seeking to understand the times will find this book to be an indispensable resource for cultivating distinctively Christian leadership.
Book Synopsis Religious Freedom in a Secular Age by : Michael F. Bird
Download or read book Religious Freedom in a Secular Age written by Michael F. Bird and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover how to responsibly defend religious freedom for all without compromising your personal beliefs. Religious freedom is a bitterly contested issue that spills over into political, public, and online spheres. It's an issue that's becoming ever more heated, and neither of the global political polarities is interested in protecting it. While the political left is openly hostile toward traditional religion, the political right seeks to weaponize it. How can we ensure that "religious freedom" is truly about freedom of one's religion rather than serving an ethno-nationalist agenda? In Religious Freedom in a Secular Age, Michael Bird (New Testament scholar and author of Evangelical Theology) has four main goals: To explain the true nature of secularism and help us to see it as one of the best ways of promoting liberty and mutual respect in a multifaith world. To dismantle the arguments for limiting religious freedom. To outline a biblical strategy for maintaining a Christian witness in a post-Christian society. To encourage Christians to participate in a new age of apologetics by being prepared to defend not only their own believes but also the freedom of all faiths. While Bird does address the recent political administrations in the US, his focus is global. Bird—who lives in Melbourne, Australia—freely admits to his anxiety of the militant secularism surrounding him, but he also strongly critiques the marriage of national and religious identities that has gained ground in countries like Hungary and Poland. The fact is that religion has a lot to contribute to the common good. Religious Freedom in a Secular Age will challenge readers of all backgrounds and beliefs not only to make room for peaceable difference, but also to find common ground on the values of justice, mercy, and equality.
Book Synopsis Christianity and the Secular by : Robert A. Markus
Download or read book Christianity and the Secular written by Robert A. Markus and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2006-02-28 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Christianity has been marked by tension between ideas of sacred and secular, their shifting balance, and their conflict. In Christianity and the Secular, Robert A. Markus examines the place of the secular in Christianity, locating the origins of the concept in the New Testament and early Christianity and describing its emergence as a problem for Christianity following the recognition of Christianity as an established religion, then the officially enforced religion, of the Roman Empire. Markus focuses especially on the new conditions engendered by the Christianization of the Roman Empire. In the period between the apostolic age and Constantine, the problem of the relation between Christianity and secular society and culture was suppressed for the faithful; Christians saw themselves as sharply distinct in, if not separate from, the society of their non-Christian fellows. Markus argues that when the autonomy of the secular realm came under threat in the Christianised Roman Empire after Constantine, Christians were forced to confront the problem of adjusting themselves to the culture and society of the new regime. Markus identifies Augustine of Hippo as the outstanding critic of the ideology of a Christian empire that had developed by the end of the fourth century and in the time of the Theodosian emperors, and as the principal defender of a place for the secular within a Christian interpretation of the world and of history. Markus traces the eclipse of this idea at the end of antiquity and during the Christian Middle Ages, concluding with its rehabilitation by Pope John XXIII and the second Vatican Council. Of interest to scholars of religion, theology, and patristics, Markus's genealogy of an authentic Christian concept of the secular is sure to generate widespread discussion.
Book Synopsis Church, Faith, Future by : Louis J. Cameli
Download or read book Church, Faith, Future written by Louis J. Cameli and published by Liturgical Press. This book was released on 2017-04-28 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this challenging but hopeful new book, Church, Faith, Future: What We Face, What We Can Do, Father Louis J. Cameli renders a carefully composed portrait of the church in North America today. Drawing on philosophy, history, cultural analysis, and sociology, he offers a sobering picture of where church and faith stand in our society and where they seem to be headed. Identifying several possible ways forward, Fr. Cameli points out the way he sees as the most promising and most faithful to Catholic tradition. In a fascinating afterword to the book, Cardinal Blase Cupich enters into dialogue with Fr. Cameli’s thinking, describing how the Archdiocese of Chicago has begun to address the issues and the directions indicated.
Download or read book Disruptive Witness written by Alan Noble and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2018 WORLD Magazine Book of the Year - Accessible Theology 2018 ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award ★ Publishers Weekly starred review We live in a distracted, secular age. These two trends define life in Western society today. We are increasingly addicted to habits—and devices—that distract and "buffer" us from substantive reflection and deep engagement with the world. And we live in what Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls "a secular age"—an age in which all beliefs are equally viable and real transcendence is less and less plausible. Drawing on Taylor's work, Alan Noble describes how these realities shape our thinking and affect our daily lives. Too often Christians have acquiesced to these trends, and the result has been a church that struggles to disrupt the ingrained patterns of people's lives. But the gospel of Jesus is inherently disruptive: like a plow, it breaks up the hardened surface to expose the fertile earth below. In this book Noble lays out individual, ecclesial, and cultural practices that disrupt our society's deep-rooted assumptions and point beyond them to the transcendent grace and beauty of Jesus. Disruptive Witness casts a new vision for the evangelical imagination, calling us away from abstraction and cliché to a more faithful embodiment of the gospel for our day.
Book Synopsis The Congregation in a Secular Age (Ministry in a Secular Age Book #3) by : Andrew Root
Download or read book The Congregation in a Secular Age (Ministry in a Secular Age Book #3) written by Andrew Root and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Churches often realize they need to change. But if they're not careful, the way they change can hurt more than help. In this culmination of his well-received Ministry in a Secular Age trilogy, leading practical theologian Andrew Root offers a new paradigm for understanding the congregation in contemporary ministry. He articulates why congregations feel pressured by the speed of change in modern life and encourages an approach that doesn't fall into the negative traps of our secular age. Living in late modernity means our lives are constantly accelerated, and calls for change in the church often support this call to speed up. Root asserts that the recent push toward innovation in churches has led to an acceleration of congregational life that strips the sacred out of time. Many congregations are simply unable to keep up, which leads to burnout and depression. When things move too fast, we feel alienated from life and the voice of a living God. The Congregation in a Secular Age calls congregations to reimagine what change is and how to live into this future, helping them move from relevance to resonance.
Book Synopsis Preaching to Convert by : John Fletcher
Download or read book Preaching to Convert written by John Fletcher and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2013-11-13 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preaching to Convert offers an intriguing new perspective on the outreach strategies of U.S. evangelicals. Author John Fletcher frames these activities, from door-to-door proselytizing to the spirited sermons of superstar televangelists, as examples of activist performance, broadly defined here as acts performed before an audience in the hopes of changing hearts and minds. Most writing about activist performance has focused on left-progressive causes, events, and actors, and if evangelicals have appeared at all, they often appear as one-dimensional forces of ignorance or bigotry against which brave (left-leaning) activists must fight. Preaching to Convert argues against such a constricted view of activism and for a more nuanced understanding of U.S. evangelicalism as a movement defined by its desire to win converts and spread the gospel. In other words, evangelicals are activist performers par excellence. The book positions evangelicals as a diverse, complicated group confronting the loss of conservative Christianity’s default status in twenty-first–century U.S. culture. In the face of an increasingly secular age, evangelicals have been reassessing models of outreach. In acts like handing out Bible tracts to strangers on the street or going door-to-door with a Bible in hand, in elaborately staged horror-themed morality plays or multi-million-dollar creationist discovery centers, in megachurch services beamed to dozens of satellite campuses, and in controversial “ex-gay” ministries striving to return gays and lesbians to the straight and narrow, evangelicals are redefining what it means to be deeply committed in a pluralist world. The book’s engaging style and careful argumentation make it accessible and appealing to scholars and students across a range of fields.
