How did the movement founded by Jesus transform more in the first seventy-five years after his death than it has in the two thousand years since? This book tells the story of how the Christian movement, which began as relatively informal, rural, Hebrew and Aramaic speaking, and closely anchored to the Jewish synagogue, became primarily urban, Greek speaking, and gentile by the early second century, spreading through the Greco-Roman world with a mission agenda and church organization distinct from its roots in Jewish Galilee. It also shows how the early church's witness can encourage the church today.
L. Michael White, one of the world’s foremost scholars on the origins of Christianity, provides the complete, astonishing story of how Christianity grew from the personal vision of a humble Jewish peasant living in a remote province of the Roman Empire into the largest organized religion in the world. Rather than reading the New Testament straight through in its traditional, or “canonical” order, From Jesus to Christianity takes a historical approach. Looking at the individual books chronologically, in the sequence in which they were actually written, readers can see what they divulge about the disagreements, shared values, and unifying mission of the earliest Christian communities. White digs through layers of archaeological excavations, sifts through buried fragments of largely unknown texts, and examines historical sources to discover what we can know of Jesus.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From one of the world’s most influential spiritual thinkers, a long-awaited book exploring what it means that Jesus was called “Christ,” and how this forgotten truth can restore hope and meaning to our lives. “Anyone who strives to put their faith into action will find encouragement and inspiration in the pages of this book.”—Melinda Gates In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Is the word simply Jesus’s last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understandings have been limited by culture, religious debate, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the center. Drawing on scripture, history, and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. “God loves things by becoming them,” he writes, and Jesus’s life was meant to declare that humanity has never been separate from God—except by its own negative choice. When we recover this fundamental truth, faith becomes less about proving Jesus was God, and more about learning to recognize the Creator’s presence all around us, and in everyone we meet. Thought-provoking, practical, and full of deep hope and vision, The Universal Christ is a landmark book from one of our most beloved spiritual writers, and an invitation to contemplate how God liberates and loves all that is.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.
Did Jesus intend to found a church separate from Judaism? Who were the very first followers of Jesus? And how did a clash between two families--the family of Jesus on one hand and the family of high priest Annas and their aristocratic allies on the other--eventually lead to the formation of Christianity? In this study, best-selling author Craig A. Evans looks at how a tumultuous chain of events from 30-70 CE--beginning with Jesus's entry into Jerusalem and subsequent crucifixion and ending with the destruction of the temple--led to the separation between the followers of Jesus and other Jews. Topics include the following: 1) whether Jesus actually intended to found the Christian Church; 2) the ways in which Jesus's proclamation of the “Kingdom of God†relate to the Christian Church; 3) the role of James, brother of Jesus, in the new movement in Jerusalem; 4) the tension between James and Paul in the matter of law and works; 5) the conflict between the families and followers of Jesus and those of the high priest Annas before the destruction of the temple; and 6) the aftermath of the Jewish rebellion, whereby the Church moved away from its Jewish roots. An appendix further explores the reasons behind the rift between the Jesus movement and the synagogue. This fascinating volume is suitable for historical Jesus and early church studies, along with anyone else interested in learning about the very first followers of Jesus.
From the creative minds of the scholarly group behind the groundbreaking Jesus Seminar comes this provocative and eye-opening look at the roots of Christianity that offers a thoughtful reconsideration of the first two centuries of the Jesus movement, transforming our understanding of the religion and its early dissemination. Christianity has endured for more than two millennia and is practiced by billions worldwide today. Yet that longevity has created difficulties for scholars tracing the religion’s roots, distorting much of the historical investigation into the first two centuries of the Jesus movement. But what if Christianity died in the fourth or fifth centuries after it began? How would that change how historians see and understand its first two hundred years? Considering these questions, three Bible scholars from the Westar Institute summarize the work of the Christianity Seminar and its efforts to offer a new way of thinking about Christianity and its roots. Synthesizing the institute’s most recent scholarship—bringing together the many archaeological and textual discoveries over the last twenty years—they have found: There were multiple Jesus movements, not a singular one, before the fourth century There was nothing called Christianity until the third century There was much more flexibility and diversity within Jesus’s movement before it became centralized in Rome, not only regarding the Bible and religious doctrine, but also understandings of gender, sexuality and morality. Exciting and revolutionary, After Jesus Before Christianity provides fresh insights into the real history behind how the Jesus movement became Christianity. After Jesus Before Christianity includes more than a dozen black-and-white images throughout.
"A devastating attack upon the dominance of atheism in science today." Giovanni Fazio, Senior Physicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics The debate over the ultimate source of truth in our world often pits science against faith. In fact, some high-profile scientists today would have us abandon God entirely as a source of truth about the universe. In this book, two professional astronomers push back against this notion, arguing that the science of today is not in a position to pronounce on the existence of God—rather, our notion of truth must include both the physical and spiritual domains. Incorporating excerpts from a letter written in 1615 by famed astronomer Galileo Galilei, the authors explore the relationship between science and faith, critiquing atheistic and secular understandings of science while reminding believers that science is an important source of truth about the physical world that God created.
Nolan's portrait introduces readers to Jesus as He was before He became enshrined in doctrine, dogma, and ritual, a man deeply involved with the real problems of His time, which are the real problems of our time as well. In a new preface, Nolan reflects on recent work in Christology and how a book written in South Africa in 1976 still has a message for people today.
Most of us are regular people who have good days and bad days. Our lives are radically ordinary and unexciting. That means they're the kind of lives God gets excited about. While the world worships beauty and power and wealth, God hides his glory in the simple, the mundane, the foolish, working in unawesome people, things, and places.In our day of celebrity worship and online posturing, this is a refreshing, even transformative way of understanding God and our place in his creation. It urges us to treasure a life of simplicity, to love those whom the world passes by, to work for God's glory rather than our own. And it demonstrates that God has always been the Lord of the cross--a Savior who hides his grace in unattractive, inglorious places.Your God Is Too Glorious reminds readers that while a quiet life may look unimpressive to the world, it's the regular, everyday people that God tends to use to do his most important work.
In his recent book How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee historian Bart Ehrman explores a claim that resides at the heart of the Christian faith— that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, God. According to Ehrman, though, this is not what the earliest disciples believed, nor what Jesus claimed about himself. The first response book to this latest challenge to Christianity from Ehrman, How God Became Jesus features the work of five internationally recognized biblical scholars. While subjecting his claims to critical scrutiny, they offer a better, historically informed account of why the Galilean preacher from Nazareth came to be hailed as “the Lord Jesus Christ.” Namely, they contend, the exalted place of Jesus in belief and worship is clearly evident in the earliest Christian sources, shortly following his death, and was not simply the invention of the church centuries later.
