Soong-Chan Rah calls the North American church to escape its Western cultural captivity and to embody a next evangelicalism that is diverse and multiethnic. This prophetic report casts a vision for a dynamic evangelicalism that fully embodies the cultural realities of the twenty-first century.
The United States is currently undergoing the most rapid demographic shift in its history. By 2050, white Americans will no longer comprise a majority of the population. Instead, they'll be the largest minority group in a country made up entirely of minorities, followed by Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans. Past shifts in America's demographics always reshaped the county's religious landscape. This shift will be no different. Soong-Chan Rah's book is intended to equip evangelicals for ministry and outreach in our changing nation. Borrowing from the business concept of "cultural intelligence," he explores how God's people can become more multiculturally adept. From discussions about cultural and racial histories, to reviews of case-study churches and Christian groups that are succeeding in bridging ethnic divides, Rah provides a practical and hopeful guidebook for Christians wanting to minister more effectively in diverse settings. Without guilt trips or browbeating, the book will spur individuals, churches, and parachurch ministries toward more effectively bearing witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good News for people of every racial and cultural background. Its message is positive; its potential impact, transformative.
In this book, I would like you to come on a journey with me. It is a journey that I have been on, and I want to retrace the route that I have taken. Some parts of the journey may be familiar to you, but other parts may be new and sometimes scary. My journey is by no means at its end yet, but the delight that I have experienced beckons me to tell others and to take others along this journey. Many times along the way, I had to discard the cultural baggage that I had carried along because they became burdensome and prevented me from going further. I then had to adorn a totally new attire and at times change my lenses to see things clearer. I was reluctant to do that at first, but the moment I tried on the new lenses, I saw things that I had never seen before. That was exciting. Things came into much sharper focus. However, the distant view remained hazy, but this only made me more determined to journey on. With each new step I took, I saw a little more. Somehow the haze of the distant hills never lifted. It remained. I was only given a clear view of the immediate surroundings. Over time I became contended with that view knowing that in this journey the delight is limitless. (S K Tham) Those who have struggled with cross-cultural communication of the Word of God will find this book a great assistance. It is not that here at last is a method we can employ that will remove the barriers we face, but there is an explanation and one that is not restricted to any particular Christian cultural group. Siew Kiong Tham has argued that the basic problem is not anthropological or culturalit is theological. Knowing the triune God and having that knowledge effect Christian living and relationships lies at the heart of all we are about as believers and proclaimers. (Rev Dr Ian Pennicook, New Creation Teaching Ministry, NSW) We see our own culture as inviolable. Apart from Christ, it represents our lasting and sacred endeavours. It fits us with the way things are done. Dr Tham shows us that we may not simply overlay our culture with a form of external Christianity. The delivery of grace by the present reigning Lord Jesus can never be drooped over our culture as a better moral system that simply tidies up some minor cultural loose ends. The culture of the Fathers family must break through as the culture of love seen and known only in the Cross. Only there do we discover the Fathers lasting and sacred endeavours to form His culture within humanity. (Brian Arthur, Pastor, Bethel Christian Church)
In Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey offers a razor-sharp analysis of the split between public and private, fact and feelings. She reveals the strategies of secularist gatekeepers who use this division to banish biblical principles from the cultural mainstream, stripping Christianity of its power to challenge and redeem the whole of culture. // How can we overcome this divide? Unify our fragmented lives? Recover authentic spirituality? With compelling examples from the struggles of real people, Pearcey shows how to liberate Christianity from its cultural captivity. She walks readers through practical, hands-on steps for developing a full-orbed Christian worldview. Finally, she makes a passionate case that Christianity is not just religious truth but truth about total reality. It is total truth.
Together, and separately, black and white Baptists created different but intertwined cultures that profoundly shaped the South. Adopting a biracial and bicultural focus, Paul Harvey works to redefine southern religious history, and by extension southern c
Everyday theology is the reflective and practical task of living each day as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. In other words, theology is not just for Sundays, and it's not just for professional theologians. Everyday Theology teaches all Christians how to get the theological lay of the land. It enables them to become more conscious of the culture they inhabit every day so that they can understand how it affects them and how they can affect it. If theology is the ministry of the Word to the world, everyday theologians need to know something about that world, and Everyday Theology shows them how to understand their culture make an impact on it. Engaging and full of fresh young voices, this book is the first in the new Cultural Exegesis series.
Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (October 1520) was the second of the three major treatises published by Martin Luther in 1520, coming after the Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (August 1520) and before On the Freedom of a Christian (November 1520). It was a theological treatise, and as such was published in Latin as well as German, the language in which the treatises were written.In this work Luther examines the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church in the light of his interpretation of the Bible. With regard to the Eucharist, he advocates restoring the cup to the laity, dismisses the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation but affirms the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and rejects the teaching that the Mass is a sacrifice offered to God.
Winner of the Christianity Today Book of the Year Award (1995) “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism’s most respected historians. Unsparing in his indictment, Mark Noll asks why the largest single group of religious Americans—who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence—have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship. While nourishing believers in the simple truths of the gospel, why have so many evangelicals failed to sustain a serious intellectual life and abandoned the universities, the arts, and other realms of “high” culture? Over twenty-five years since its original publication, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind has turned out to be prescient and perennially relevant. In a new preface, Noll lays out his ongoing personal frustrations with this situation, and in a new afterword he assesses the state of the scandal—showing how white evangelicals’ embrace of Trumpism, their deepening distrust of science, and their frequent forays into conspiratorial thinking have coexisted with surprisingly robust scholarship from many with strong evangelical connections.