Christian Faith and the Welfare of the City PDF Download

Author: Johnston R. McKay
Publisher: CTPI (Edinburgh)
ISBN: 1870126467
Category : Christian life
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Author: Carolyn Custis James
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310555876
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Women comprise at least half the world, and usually more than half the church, but so often Christian teaching to women either fails to move beyond a discussion of roles or assumes a particular economic situation or stage of life. This all but shuts women out from contributing to God’s kingdom as they were designed to do. Furthermore, the plight of women in the Majority World demands a Christian response, a holistic embrace of all that God calls women and men to be in his world. The loudest voices speaking into women’s lives in the twenty-first century thus far come from either fundamentalist Islam or radical feminism. And neither can be allowed to carry the day. The Bible contains the highest possible view of women and invests women’s lives with cosmic significance regardless of their age, stage of life, social status, or culture. Carolyn Custis James unpacks three transformative themes the Bible presents to women that raise the bar for women and calls them to join their brothers in advancing God’s gracious kingdom on earth. These new images of what can be in Christ free women to embrace the life God gives them, no matter what happens. Carolyn encourages readers with a positive, kingdom approach to the changes, challenges, and opportunities facing women throughout the world today.

Author: Steven Bouma-Prediger
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802846920
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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This book is a brilliant use of metaphor that makes clear why the world leaves us feeling so uneasy!

Author: Michael Gerson
Publisher: Moody Publishers
ISBN: 1575679280
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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An era has ended. The political expression that most galvanized evangelicals during the past quarter-century, the Religious Right, is fading. What's ahead is unclear. Millions of faith-based voters still exist, and they continue to care deeply about hot-button issues like abortion and gay marriage, but the shape of their future political engagement remains to be formed. Into this uncertainty, former White House insiders Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner seek to call evangelicals toward a new kind of political engagement -- a kind that is better both for the church and the country, a kind that cannot be co-opted by either political party, a kind that avoids the historic mistakes of both the Religious Left and the Religious Right. Incisive, bold, and marked equally by pragmatism and idealism, Gerson and Wehner's new book has the potential to chart a new political future not just for values voters, but for the nation as a whole.

Author: Moyer V. Hubbard
Publisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 1441237097
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Background becomes foreground in Moyer Hubbard's creative introduction to the social and historical setting for the letters of the Apostle Paul to churches in Asia Minor and Europe. Hubbard begins each major section with a brief narrative featuring a fictional character in one of the great cities of that era. Then he elaborates on various aspects of the cultural setting related to each particular vignette, discussing the implications of those venues for understanding Paul's letters and applying their message to our lives today. Addressing a wide array of cultural and traditional issues, Hubbard discusses: • religion and superstition • education, philosophy, and oratory • urban society • households and family life in the Greco-Roman world This work is based on the premise that the better one understands the historical and social context in which the New Testament (and Paul's letters) was written, the better one will understand the writings of the New Testament themselves. Passages become clearer, metaphors deciphered, and images sharpened. Teachers, students, and laypeople alike will appreciate Hubbard's unique, illuminating, and well-researched approach to the world of the early church.

Author: Katie Day
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199366888
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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In a richly illustrated, revelatory study of Philadelphia's Germantown Avenue, home to a diverse array of more than 90 Christian and Muslim congregations, Katie Day explores the formative and multifaceted role of religious congregations within an urban environment. Germantown Avenue cuts through Philadelphia for eight and a half miles, from the affluent neighborhood of Chestnut Hill through the high crime section known as "the Badlands." The congregations along this route range from the wealthiest to the poorest populations in Philadelphia. Some congregants are immigrants who find safety and support in close fellowship, while others are long-time residents whose congregations work actively to provide social services. Cities undergo constant change, and their congregations change with them. As Day observes, some congregations have sprung up in former commercial strips, harboring new arrivals and recreating a sense of home, and others form an anchor for a neighborhood across generations, providing a connection to the past and a hope of stability for the future. Drawing on years of research, in-depth interviews with religious leaders and congregants, and a wealth of demographic data, Day demonstrates the powerful influence cities exert on their congregations, and the surprising and important impact congregations have on their urban environments.

Author: Lew Daly
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262262509
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Can religion cure poverty? The first book to explore the ideas about God and government behind the faith-based initiative. When the Bush administration's faith-based initiative was introduced in 2001 as the next stage of the "war on poverty," it provoked a flurry of protest for violating the church-state divide. Most critics didn't ask whether it could work. God and the Welfare State is the first book to trace the ideas behind George W. Bush's faith-based initiative from their roots in Catholic natural law theory and Dutch Calvinism to an American think tank, the Center for Public Justice. Comparing Bush's plan with the ways the same ideas have played out in Christian Democratic welfare policies in Europe, the author is skeptical that it will be an effective new way to fight poverty. But he takes the animating ideas very seriously, as they go to the heart of the relationship among religion, government, and social welfare. In the end Daly argues that these ideas—which are now entrenched in federal and state politics—are a truly radical departure from American traditions of governance. Although Bush's initiative roughly overlaps with more conventional conservative efforts to strengthen private power in economic life, it promises an unprecedented shift in the balance of power between secular and religious approaches to social problems and suggests a broader template for "faith-based governance," in which the state would have a much more limited role in social policy.

Author: Randy White
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830874992
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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God is at work in the city. And he invites his people to join him. But the city is not merely a mission field for Christians to target. The city is also the environment where Christians are discipled and lives are forged into the image of Jesus. Urban ministry veteran Randy White shows how God transforms you when you answer God's call to the city. Urban life peels away your sin and self-deception and challenges your unexamined assumptions about privilege, race, class and power. Experiential discipleship moves you from abstract theory to hands-on learning and on-the-ground action, revolutionizing your perspective and making a difference in local neighborhoods and beyond. Passionate and practical, White's vivid narratives of experiencing God in the city show you how your spiritual health is intertwined with the health of the metropolis. Seek the welfare of the city, and both you and the city will be transformed.

Author: Timothy Keller
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525954155
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.

Author: James Davison Hunter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199745390
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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The call to make the world a better place is inherent in the Christian belief and practice. But why have efforts to change the world by Christians so often failed or gone tragically awry? And how might Christians in the 21st century live in ways that have integrity with their traditions and are more truly transformative? In To Change the World, James Davison Hunter offers persuasive--and provocative--answers to these questions. Hunter begins with a penetrating appraisal of the most popular models of world-changing among Christians today, highlighting the ways they are inherently flawed and therefore incapable of generating the change to which they aspire. Because change implies power, all Christian eventually embrace strategies of political engagement. Hunter offers a trenchant critique of the political theologies of the Christian Right and Left and the Neo-Anabaptists, taking on many respected leaders, from Charles Colson to Jim Wallis and Stanley Hauerwas. Hunter argues that all too often these political theologies worsen the very problems they are designed to solve. What is really needed is a different paradigm of Christian engagement with the world, one that Hunter calls "faithful presence"--an ideal of Christian practice that is not only individual but institutional; a model that plays out not only in all relationships but in our work and all spheres of social life. He offers real-life examples, large and small, of what can be accomplished through the practice of "faithful presence." Such practices will be more fruitful, Hunter argues, more exemplary, and more deeply transfiguring than any more overtly ambitious attempts can ever be. Written with keen insight, deep faith, and profound historical grasp, To Change the World will forever change the way Christians view and talk about their role in the modern world.