Christianity Books

Although the cry for justice in human society is an important theme in the Bible, in many church and academic circles action for and discourse about social justice is carried on without a thorough exploration of this theme in Scripture. This volume...

In a time when Charles Wesley's hymns, and even his name, are slowly fading from the purview of many Christians, this book is intended to recover the precious heritage of our past, and to bring to the reader's attention a sample of the massive body of...

Born of Water and the Spirit presents essays on the sacraments by the three major representatives of ""Mercersburg Theology,"" John Nevin, Philip Schaff, and Emanuel Gerhart. It focuses on Mercersburg's doctrine of baptism and Christian nurture, attempts...

Beginners scanning Leviticus will find much detail about rituals and sinful situations, but little enlightening context or rationale. This study explores how scholars imagine that these rituals and moral laws made sense to those living back then, even...

""Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. . . . And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and...

How do you juggle workplace emotions? Dark and stormy seasons blow your way. Spectacular new opportunities emerge. Grief and loss descend. Financial crises loom. Office politics and busyness press on your soul. What about romantic tensions, rivalry, and...

How do we create places and spaces for deepening our spiritual lives? For slowing down so we can notice what really matters to us? For taking time to attend to our own healing and growth? For meeting Jesus in life-transforming ways? And how do we keep...

The triune God of grace, James B. Torrance tirelessly insisted, is the true agent to transform worship, mission, and society. Unfortunately, the church often lapses into moralism and legalism, or exhortations and condemnations, rather than witnessing to...

Azusa, Rome, and Zion offers historical, theological, and spiritual reflections on major movements of the Holy Spirit in modern times. The author shows where the lived experience of these movements challenges received theological concepts and categories,...

Have you ever been frustrated with or perhaps even frightened about writing a religious research proposal? This book demythologizes the religious research design process by beginning with the writer's passion for ministry and then guiding the writer...

The jury is out on the virtue of humility. Most people find humility a more attractive character trait in others than its opposites of pride and arrogance. Yet many philosophers, be they ancient or modern, find little value in humility as a virtue. For...

Many readers of the Bible believe that interpreting the Scriptures well simply involves a two-way dialogue between themselves and the text. Implied in this view is the idea that we can simply jump over two thousand years of biblical interpretation...

In Christine Schirrmacher's postdoctoral thesis, for the first time one finds reviews of original voices coming from Islamic theology on the topic of religious freedom and apostasy. Arabic, English, French, and Urdu texts have been translated and...

The Orthodox Church has been characterized by some as ""the best-kept secret in North America."" Making use of personal interviews and correspondence, magazine and news articles, and other publications, Timothy Cremeens weaves the story of a spiritual...

The Church of God Reformation Movement (founded in 1881) has the distinction of having been founded on the two core principles of holiness and visible unity. Standard histories of the group proudly argue that the founder and pioneers exhibited a zeal for...

There is growing interest in the relationship between the arts and Christian faith. Much has been written about the arts and theology and the place of the arts in church life. Not as much has been written, however, about how the arts might actually...

Do bullies have free rein in our churches? Who are the bullies? What is scapegoating? Is it possible to practice the mercy and forgiveness demanded by Gospel ethics while also protecting people from emotional and professional damage?These are some of the...

But will it teach? The only good answer to this question often asked about a Christian theology is to teach it, which is to say, to teach according to it, to what it indicates, reflectively and critically, valid Christian teaching ought to be. This...

More often than not it's a class in the social sciences that challenges the faith of students, not a class in biology. Does critical understanding of our religious traditions, institutions, and convictions undercut them? Or can a modern social scientific...

Over the last four decades, the focus of M. Douglas Meeks' work has placed him at the center of many of the most important developments in theological reflection and education. As a political, ecclesial, and metaphorical theologian, Meeks has given...

What are human beings created for? How can we experience the well-being made possible in Christ? What does it mean to love God and our neighbor wholly? These questions go to the heart of what it means to live the Christian life. Happiness, Health, and...

Karl Barth famously argued that all theology is sermon preparation. But what if all sermon preparation is actually theology? This book pursues a thoroughgoing theological vision for the practice of preaching as a way of doing theology. The idea is not...

In his writings and his career Gregory of Nyssa assumes many roles. He is a Christian Platonist, a spiritual guide for ascetics and those seeking the vision of God, as well as one of those who shaped the Trinitarian doctrine of God espoused at...

Forty years ago the one thing that could be said about sermons was they were biblical. Unfortunately, they were sometimes tedious too. Narrative preaching aimed to fix that, advocating for a dynamic experience of the text over against a static lecture...

The adherents of Islam and Christianity comprise half of the world's population, or 3.5 billion people. Tension between them exists throughout the world and is increasing here in North America. In How Not to Kill a Muslim, Dr. Joshua Graves provides a...

What comes after reflective listening? What comes after the ministry of presence? Spiritual midwifery is a powerful framework for offering pastoral care in today's fast-paced environment. Midwifery offers ways of thinking about those who are served, the...

How can faith speak directly to people's real lives? How can conversation around Scripture make ""all the difference"" in the arenas of one's daily world? People who have heard the Bible many times--or for the first time--want to know in the terms and...

Something happens at the eucharistic table. When Jesus' story meets Jesus' presence, Jesus happens there, and the hungry are fed. Christians' beliefs--that they believe and what they believe--are formed by Jesus happening. This book explores the theology...

On the edge of medieval maps, monsters roam. In the west, pilgrims take well-traveled roads to Rome and Compostela. In the east, Old Testament history unfolds. And at the center, in the city of Jerusalem, Jesus saves the world.In A World Transformed,...

Mainstream American Protestantism is suffering from an identity crisis. We are not fundamentalists, but it is easy to define ourselves in reaction to them. Paralyzed by the shock of a cultural turn toward skepticism, we are tempted to make allies of the...

The telling of Mark's story of Jesus as the Messiah of peace in the decades following the Roman-Judean war announced a third way forward for Diaspora Judeans other than warfare against or separation from ""the nations."" Mark's Gospel was the story of...

A philosopher and a business leader have a friendly debate about whether it makes sense to speak of God having a strategy for the human race. What might a divine strategy look like, in light of the biblical portrait of God and the historical record of...

After five centuries of oppressions committed in the name of Jesus, many hearts have hardened toward the name of Christ on the part of many of those native or original to the lands we now call America and Canada. The imposition of residential schools,...

The Bible is a perplexing book. It blends primitive beliefs with timeless truths, swings between compassionate love and ruthless violence, and forms a sympathetic heavenly father from the remains of a savage tribal god. What are we to make of it...

Do atheists hate God? Many Christians seem to think so. For the last three centuries Christians have widely assumed that atheism is always a result of a rebellious, sinful rejection of God. According to this view, at some level atheists really do know...

The Imitation of Saint Paul takes us behind the headlines of his career and offers a fresh, compelling, contemporary look at the man who changed the world. When the exemplary apostle got into the face of his converts, he bluntly held up his own life as...

To many readers the book of Ezekiel is a hopeless riddle. We still find many features of the man and his message difficult and sometimes even shocking, if not offensive. The bizarre opening vision catches us off guard and tempts us to stop reading...

These essays represent William Campbell's ongoing challenge over the last two decades to a residual aspect of the paradigm of Paulinism, namely that of interpreting Paul in antithesis to his Jewish roots. Campbell has proposed a new approach to Paul...

To many readers the book of Ezekiel is a hopeless riddle. However, if we take the time to study it, we will discover that despite the strangeness of the man and his utterances this is the most clearly organized of the major prophetic books. If we...

Even on a bumper sticker, grace is irresistible.Grace Sticks: The Bumper Sticker Gospel for Restless Souls is light-hearted spiritual memoir and theological travel guidance for restless souls looking for more direction, more truth, and more life...

""If a leader is a Christian, what difference does it make?"" Giant strides have been made in secular leadership theory toward a Christian viewpoint. Priority is now given to character as well as competence, accountability as well as power,...

This book introduces Christian readers of the Bible to the otherworldly way in which the rabbis of ancient times interpreted sacred texts. You will discover how the rabbis sought to keep their congregations engaged by telling tales, parables about the...

The book offers an interpretation of a posthumously published poem by Edwin Muir (1887-1959), beginning "The heart could never speak / But that the Word was spoken." The poem is read as summing up Muir's lifelong struggle with fundamental questions about...