From Apostle to Apostate

From Apostle to Apostate

Author: Catherine Dunphy

Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA)

Published: 2015-07-21

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 1634310187

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What happens when your entire life and career are constructed around a religious faith that you no longer possess? Do you continue to promote a gospel that you have intellectually and emotionally rejected to maintain your livelihood and the support and respect you receive from your community? Or do you renounce your faith to your congregation and the public at large, putting yourself and your family at risk? From Apostle to Apostate offers a comprehensive introduction to the Clergy Project, established in 2011 to provide a safe space where clergy who have lost their faith can connect with others facing the exact same questions—often alone and in isolation. Charting the origins, growth, and goals of the project, the book draws on the author's own experience as a founding project member and on interviews with its founders. It also reveals the troubles and triumphs experienced by many of its members, whose numbers have grown from just over 50 to more than 500 in a few short years. As the book movingly demonstrates, despite the substantial personal and professional challenges nonbelieving clergy face, for many, a loss of faith has turned out not to be a loss at all—but a gain of newfound community, self-respect, and honesty with themselves and others.


Peter

Peter

Author: Robert H. Gundry

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2018-11-09

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1725240564

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A STUNNING, PROVOCATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON THE DISCIPLE PETER AS DEPICTED BY MATTHEW "In this highly controversial work on Peter, Robert Gundry's intellectual gifts and remarkable powers of analysis are displayed to an even higher degree than in his previous publications. . . One need not agree with Gundry's conclusions to acknowledge that the penetrating exegesis presented here and the nature of the argumentation as a whole demand serious reflection and engagement. Those who pay close attention to this brief but unusually weighty book will not be able to read Matthew in quite the same way that they did before." --MOISES SILVA author of Biblical Words and Their Meaning "Peter, long thought to be 'prince of the apostles' and one of the heroes of the Gospel of Matthew, is shown here to be neither. This extraordinarily closely argued volume by Robert Gundry offers a compelling case that Matthew constructs the figure of Peter as a failed disciple and an apostate. . . A courageous book that will require scholars to reassess how the Peter of Matthew came to be, in Gundry's words, 'airbrushed' and turned into a model of disciple and central figure in ecclesiastical memory." --JOHN S. KLOPPENBORG University of Toronto "If Bob Gundry is known for anything, it is for his dogged pursuit of the meaning of Scripture. Here he once again provides fresh, penetrating analysis--in the present case, leading to an unsettling conclusion. Provocative, as he can often be, Gundry is never boring but always instructive and well worth a careful reading." --DONALD A. HAGNER Fuller Theological Seminary


The Great Apostasy

The Great Apostasy

Author: James Edward Talmage

Publisher: Binker North

Published: 1909

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13:

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The Great Apostasy Considered in the Light of Scriptural and Secular History is a 1909 book by James E. Talmage that summarizes the Great Apostasy, Mormon doctrine, from the viewpoint of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Talmage wrote his book with the intention that it be used as a teaching tool within the LDS Church's Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association and the Young Women's Mutual Improvement Association. The book is "in many ways quite derivative" of B. H. Roberts's 1893 Outlines of Ecclesiastical History. Both writers borrowed heavily from the writings of Protestant scholars who argued that Roman Catholicism had apostatized from true Christianity. Talmage's book has been described as "the most recognizable and noted work on the topic" of Latter-day Saint views of the Great Apostasy.


Paul and Jesus

Paul and Jesus

Author: James D. Tabor

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-11-13

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1439134987

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In this “compulsively readable exploration of the tangled world of Christian origins” (Publishers Weekly), religious historian James Tabor illuminates the earliest years of Jesus’ teachings before Paul shaped them into the religion we know today. This fascinating examination of the earliest years of Christianity reveals how the man we call St. Paul shaped Christianity as we know it today. Historians know almost nothing about the two decades following the crucifixion of Jesus, when his followers regrouped and began to spread his message. During this time Paul joined the movement and began to preach to the gentiles. Using the oldest Christian documents that we have—the letters of Paul—as well as other early Chris­tian sources, historian and scholar James Tabor reconstructs the origins of Christianity. Tabor shows how Paul separated himself from Peter and James to introduce his own version of Christianity, which would continue to develop independently of the message that Jesus, James, and Peter preached. Paul and Jesus illuminates the fascinating period of history when Christianity was born out of Judaism.


Twelve Ordinary Men

Twelve Ordinary Men

Author: John F. MacArthur

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Published: 2006-05-08

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 141856737X

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You don't have to be perfect to do God's work. Look no further than the twelve disciples, whose many weaknesses are forever preserved throughout the pages of the New Testament. Join bestselling author John MacArthur in Twelve Ordinary Men as he draws principles from Christ's careful, hands-on training of the original disciples for today's modern disciple, you! Jesus chose ordinary men--fishermen, tax collectors, political zealots--and turned their weakness into strength, producing greatness from people who were otherwise unremarkable. The twelve disciples weren't the stained-glass saints we imagine. On the contrary, they were truly human, all too prone to mistakes, misstatements, wrong attitudes, lapses of faith, and bitter failure. Simply put, they were flawed people, just like us. But under Jesus' teaching and touch, they became a force that forever changed the world. MacArthur takes you into the inner circle of the disciples--their selection, their training, their personalities, and their incredible impact. As MacArthur took a closer look at the lives of the twelve disciples, he found himself asking difficult questions along the way, including: Why did Jesus pick each of the twelve disciples? How did Jesus teach them everything he could in just eighteen short months? Can the lessons that Jesus taught the disciples can still influence our faith today? In Twelve Ordinary Men, you'll learn that disciples are living proof that God's strength is made perfect in weakness. As you get to know the men who walked with Jesus, you'll see that if he can accomplish his purposes through them, he can do the same through you.


Apostate

Apostate

Author: Kevin Swanson

Publisher: Generations with Vision

Published: 2018-01-15

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780998444048

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Whatever happened to Western civilization? Christians have lost ground in every cultural area of leadership and influence in Europe and America since 1700. This is an indubitable fact. The remaining Christians search for an explanation. They want to know how it happened. Apostate story of the decline and fall of Western civilization as experienced through the lives and ideas of the great philosophers, writers, and cultural leaders most responsible for its demise.. Apostate is a story of demonic possession, insanity, suicide, mass-murder, adultery, homosexuality, cultural and social revolutions, and unbridled, maniacal apostasy. It is the story of apostasy on a massive scale. But it is also a story of hope and victory for the last men standing in the ashes of Western civilization. It will be a testimony to the inevitable triumph of Jesus Christ over the great men of renown who tried to oppose the King of kings and Lord of lords. This second edition of Apostate has been revised and expanded from the first edition. This new edition contains a new chapter on the influential economist John Maynard Keynes.


Paul the Convert

Paul the Convert

Author: Alan F. Segal

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1990-01-01

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780300052275

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In this revisionist work, Segal maintains that Paul's life can be better understood by taking his Jewishness seriously, and that Jewish history can be greatly illuminated by examining Paul's writings". . . . a blockbuster of a book about Paul that blazes a new trail".--New Theology Review.


The Fate of the Apostles

The Fate of the Apostles

Author: Sean McDowell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-09

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 131703189X

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The Book of Martyrs by John Foxe written in the 16th century has long been the go-to source for studying the lives and martyrdom of the apostles. Whilst other scholars have written individual treatments on the more prominent apostles such as Peter, Paul, John, and James, there is little published information on the other apostles. In The Fate of the Apostles, Sean McDowell offers a comprehensive, reasoned, historical analysis of the fate of the twelve disciples of Jesus along with the apostles Paul, and James. McDowell assesses the evidence for each apostle’s martyrdom as well as determining its significance to the reliability of their testimony. The question of the fate of the apostles also gets to the heart of the reliability of the kerygma: did the apostles really believe Jesus appeared to them after his death, or did they fabricate the entire story? How reliable are the resurrection accounts? The willingness of the apostles to die for their faith is a popular argument in resurrection studies and McDowell offers insightful scholarly analysis of this argument to break new ground within the spheres of New Testament studies, Church History, and apologetics.


Caught in the Pulpit

Caught in the Pulpit

Author: Daniel C. Dennett

Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA)

Published: 2015-05-01

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1634310225

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What is it like to be a preacher or rabbi who no longer believes in God? In this expanded and updated edition of their groundbreaking study, Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola comprehensively and sensitively expose an inconvenient truth that religious institutions face in the new transparency of the information age—the phenomenon of clergy who no longer believe what they publicly preach. In confidential interviews, clergy from across the ministerial spectrum—from liberal to literal—reveal how their lives of religious service and study have led them to a truth inimical to their professed beliefs and profession. Although their personal stories are as varied as the denominations they once represented, or continue to represent—whether Catholic, Baptist, Episcopalian, Methodist, Mormon, Pentecostal, or any of numerous others—they give voice not only to their own struggles but also to those who similarly suffer in tender and lonely silence. As this study poignantly and vividly reveals, their common journey has far-reaching implications not only for their families, their congregations, and their communities—but also for the very future of religion.