Christianity Books

Making Justice Our Business is the story of Darryl Hunt, and of those drawn to him who refused to give up on him, each other, and justice. Boyd tells the story of how one summer morning in 1985, an attractive, white newspaper editor named Deborah Sykes...

Against the Tide, Towards the Kingdom is the story of the Urban Vision community in New Zealand. This book recounts the story of a group of young Christian adults who over the last fifteen years have relocated to the colorful ends of their city to share...

For many Christians, spirituality and ethics are in separate mental and experiential compartments. Spirituality may be understood as an inner experience, while ethics is focused on decisions or positions on issues. Both of these views reduce spirituality...

Magisterial in scope and scrupulous in its investigation and attribution of sources, Church and Ethical Responsibility in the Midst of World Economy will take its place as an important document that contributes much in terms of prophetic praxis--it...

At a recent conference entitled Ancient Wisdom--Anglican Futures, theologians from across the denominational spectrum considered the question, ""What does it mean to inhabit the 'Great Tradition' authentically?"" As an expression of what C. S. Lewis...

This book argues that problems with recognizing the State of Israel lie at the heart of approaches to nationhood and unease over nationalism in modern Protestant theology, as well as modern social theory. Three interrelated themes are explored. The first...

There are few more loaded words in American life than "family." Jesus grew up in one and honored his parents in fulfillment of the commandments. But his teachings on family life stand among the most jarring things he ever said. Jesus invites serious...

To many people the law stands in opposition to the gospel. While it may be possible to read Paul's epistles this way, the book of Deuteronomy will not allow this reading. Like the book of Romans in the New Testament, Deuteronomy provides the most...

In The Text in Play, Mike Higton and Rachel Muers conduct a series of experiments in the reading of Scripture. They experiment in the first place with a form of Christian theological exegesis of the Bible that they call "serious play"--a form of reading...

Two parables that have become firmly lodged in popular consciousness and affection are the parable of the Good Samaritan and the parable of the Prodigal Son. These simple but subversive tales have had a significant impact historically on shaping the...

In "Thoughts Upon Methodism," John Wesley shared his hopes and fears for the future of his religious movement. The article contains this well-known passage: "I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or...

How do people think about God as they look death squarely in the face? This is the central question in The Spiritual Lives of Dying People. Here are the stories of fifteen people who confront death in their own ways and who find spiritual strength in...

At the same time as Catholic and evangelical Christians have increasingly come to agree on issues that divided them during the sixteenth-century reformations, they seem increasingly to disagree on issues of contemporary "morality" and "ethics." Do such...

This first volume of Sermons by Jonathan Edwards on the Matthean Parables contains a previously unpublished series by Edwards on Jesus' Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, as found in Matthew 25. Edwards preached these sermons in 1737-38, in the...

This second volume of Sermons by Jonathan Edwards on the Matthean Parables contains a previously unpublished series of six sermons by Edwards on Jesus' parable of the Sower and the Seed, as found in Matthew 13:3-7. Edwards preached these sermons in 1740...

Reading Scripture with a view to hearing its significance and challenge within its original, foreign context is the essence of exegesis and an anchor point for responsible hermeneutics. Reading Scripture alongside others from a significantly different...

Trying to articulate the ways in which one's life meshes with one's own time can be perilous, yet friends have encouraged me to do just that. Nevertheless, for one oriented to serving others as teacher and mentor in a context of faith, writing about...

Drawing from the fields of evolutionary neuroscience, psychology, and theology, Sandra Levy-Achtemeier considers what it might mean for humans, as embodied and spiritual selves, to flourish now, and how such flourishing can contribute to our final...

""Christianity, as faith centered in Jesus as the Christ came to be called, got a foothold in the world, and for a vital and vocal minority changed the world, because it proclaimed a message that awakened men and women to possibilities for human life...

Like many young people in his generation, Jesse Zink had long been eager to work overseas and make the world a better place. As a missionary working in a shantytown community in South Africa, he found all that and much more--in demanding, unexpected, and...

Throughout Walter Brueggemann's career, he has repeatedly found his way back to the David and royal traditions. From some of his earliest articles and essays to monographs, commentaries, and sermons, he has explored this rich field in literary, social,...

Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church in Seattle discovered that by forming the faith of new Christians and leading them to the waters of baptism, they as a parish were renewed and revitalized for mission in the world. Faith Forming Faith describes the year-long...

This book is a collection of prayers based on the Old Testament texts--a good resource for worship leaders or generally for those interested in spirituality. The Spirit breathes life into us as we breathe and pray, thus granting us the hope that the...

In A Faith Not Worth Fighting For, editors Justin Bronson Barringer and Tripp York have assembled a number of essays by pastors, activists, and scholars in order to address the common questions and objections leveled against the Christian practice of...

In this volume noted Evangelical historians and theologians examine the charge of the supposed ""ahistorical nature of Evangelicalism"" and provide a critical, historical examination of the relationship between the Protestant evangelical heritage and the...

Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) was one of the world's last great polymaths and one of the most important Christian thinkers of his time, engaging the world with a simplicity, sincerity, courage, and passion that few have matched. However, Ellul is an often...

From London to New York to Ann Arbor, people are gathering in pubs and bars to communicate, connect, and learn from one another over the topic of religion, of all things. In Pub Theology, pastor, writer, and pub theologian Bryan Berghoef draws from his...

What Jesus began on and around the Sea of Galilee, Paul continued on and around the Mediterranean Sea. With Acts as the stage, the biblical narrative shifts from land to sea. Paul is the central actor in this part of the drama. Luke, the playwright,...

The Old Testament is an ancient collection of theological reflections of life with God that the church has claimed as authoritative Scripture. Whereas most introductory books march from Genesis to Malachi, this book engages four important leadership...

Like the book of Romans in the New Testament, the book of Deuteronomy provides the most systematic and sustained presentation of theology in the Old Testament. And like the Gospel of John, it represents mature theological reflection on God's great acts...

Shame has many faces. From the pressing need to avoid "losing face" to the urge to scapegoat and blame, from the desire to exclude those who are different to the horrors of ethnic cleansing, from the obsession with body image to the abiding terrors of...

Although one often hears of the need to preach "the whole counsel of God," few resources have seriously and specifically attempted to assist the preacher and planner of worship to do just that--until now. Year D makes the case for the need and promise of...

It is hubris to claim answers to unanswerable questions. Such questions, however--as part of their burden and worth--must still be asked, investigated, and contemplated. How there can be a loving, all-powerful God and a world stymied by suffering and...

CONTENTSIntroductionPART ONE: The Social-Political Context of Apocalyptic and Wisdom Texts1. Ben Sira and the Sociology of the Second Temple2. The Politics of Cultural Production3. The Social Settings of the Components of 1 EnochPART TWO:...

Providing a comprehensive study of "oral tradition" in Israel, this volume unpacks the nature of oral tradition, the form it would have taken in ancient Israel, and the remains of it in the narrative books of the Hebrew Bible. The author presents cases...

Reclaiming Mission as Constructive Theology offers a compelling case for the need to integrate God's mission and missional church conversation with a public and post-colonial study of World Christianity. Driven by a commitment to publicly engaged...

""Those who serve as truth-tellers in the church, like those who listen to the truth-telling in the church, are a mix of yearning and fearfulness, of receptiveness and collusion. In the end, the work of truth-telling is not to offer a new package of...

Kierkegaard was a prophet who critiqued "Christendom," the perversion of authentic, New Testament Christianity into the institutionalized, materialistic, triumphalist, and flabby religion of modernism. Emergent Christianity is attempting to carve out a...

Approaching us in sovereign freedom, God comes alive to us, we come alive to God, and all creation comes alive as a sign pointing to God. In the gospel of Jesus Christ, God gives and discloses himself in this immediate way as our ultimate context and...

""In this dark, when we all talk at once, some of us must learn to whistle.""In this comprehensive collection of his work, Craig Keen's voice emerges as that of a theologian who has indeed learned to whistle. In a day when much of what passes for...

Drawing on their experiences as fathers, eleven men share what they have learned about parenting, living a Christian life, and the relationship between the two. As fathers to children ranging in age from the very young to adults, contributors reflect on...

American evangelicalism has recently experienced a new openness to Roman Catholicism, and many evangelicals, both famous and ordinary, have joined the Catholic Church or are considering the possibility. This book helps evangelicals who are exploring...

Karl Barth's 1922 The Epistle to the Romans is one of the most famous, notorious, and influential works in twentieth-century theology and biblical studies. It is also a famously and notoriously difficult and enigmatic work, especially as its historical...

Very few in the history of the church have not struggled with the dogma of the Trinity. Those who have not dismissed it as incomprehensible gibberish have found it a battlefield for division and misunderstanding. Even Christians, who adhere to the faith...

John Howard Yoder is most famous for arguing in The Politics of Jesus that a sound reading of the New Testament demonstrates the abiding relevance of Jesus to social ethics. However, it is seldom acknowledged that Yoder makes essentially the same...

Here for the first time in print is the story of a small group who dared to confront Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich with the love of Jesus Christ. Avoiding covert resistance on the one hand and complicity and compromise on the other, the Rhon...

This book focuses on worship in the letters of Paul in an effort to shed some light upon this key theme and bring the various dimensions of its significance into the foreground of Pauline studies. Each of the thirteen New Testament letters attributed to...

Is it possible to make a case that the Gospel of Mark was not composed by a single man from scattered accounts but in a process of people's telling Jesus' story over several decades? And what can we say about the tellers who were shaping this story for...