There are more Christian martyrs today than there were in ad 100--in the days of the Roman Empire. Now in the twenty-first century, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, more than 150,000 Christians are martyred around the world every year. "Remember the Lord's people who are in jail and be concerned for them. Don't forget those who are suffering, but imagine that you are there with them." Hebrews 13:3 cev Their stories must be told.
Spend Today As If It Were Your Last For those who've read Jesus Freaks, this book is the next step. Focusing on life application, the book features practical ideas for putting faith to work, challenging questions for deepening your life, and readings that will help you sustain your passion. Live Like a Jesus Freak defines what it means to believe, pray, worship, study, love, stand, forgive, rejoice, serve, and witness like a true Jesus Freak!
Late in the Reagan years, three young men at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University formed the Christian rap group dc Talk. The trio put out a series of records that quickly secured their place at the forefront of contemporary Christian music. But, with their fourth studio album Jesus Freak (1995), dc Talk staked a powerful claim on the worldly market of alternative music, becoming an evangelical group with secular selling power. This book sets out to study this mid-90s crossover phenomenon-a moment of cultural convergence between Christian and secular music and an era of particular political importance for American evangelicalism. Written by two queer scholars with evangelical pasts, Jesus Freak explores the importance of a multifarious album with complex ideas about race, sexuality, gender, and politics-an album where dc Talk wonders, “What will people do when they hear that I'm a Jesus freak?” and evangelical fans stake a claim for Christ-like coolness in a secular musical world.
Approximately 100,000 Christians are martyred every year--more than in the days of the Roman Empire--and their stories must be told. In this revised and updated edition of the classic book, you will discover poignant stories of modern and historic martyrs who have made the ultimate sacrifice to follow Jesus, and the inspiration to give your all for the Lord.
The year is 26 C.E. A young Nazarean carpenter is having some trouble adjusting to the violent world around him and finding his place within it. He knows he's different, but he doesn't know why. Not yet, anyway. A bloody, two-fisted tale of historical heroic fiction brought to you by JOE CASEY (SEX, BUTCHER BAKER, THE RIGHTEOUS MAKER, MCMLXXV) and BENJAMIN MARRA (Night Business, Terror Assaulter: O.M.W.O.T.).
The incredible story of a lead singer's rise to fame and his crushing fall when he lost his singing voice, his career, and his marriage--and then found a new calling more in tune with God than he ever thought possible. Mark Stuart was the front man of popular Christian rock band, Audio Adrenaline, at a time when the Christian music scene exploded. Advancing from garage band to global success, the group sold out stadiums all over the world, won Grammy Awards, and even celebrated an album going certified Gold. But after almost twenty years, Mark's voice began to give out. When doctors diagnosed him with a debilitating disease, the career with the band he'd founded and dedicated his life to building was gone. Then to his shock, his wife ended their marriage, and Mark believed he'd lost everything. Unsure of his future, Mark traveled to Haiti to help with the band's ministry, the Hands and Feet Project. When the devastating 2010 earthquake hit, media learned he was present and sought him out for interviews. Ironically, Mark became the scratchy voice for the struggling Haitians, drawing the world's attention to their dire circumstances. In the process, Mark found a greater purpose than he'd ever known before. In this gripping, compelling new book, Mark Stuart overlays his story with passages from the gospel of John, urging his readers to listen for God's voice and to embrace his big love that calls us into a big life.
An artist in every sense of the word, Lhasa de Sela wowed audiences around the globe with her multilingual songs and spellbinding performances, mixing together everything from Gypsy music to Mexican rancheras, Americana and jazz, chanson française, and South American folk melodies. In Canada, her album La Llorona won the Juno Award and went gold, and its follow-up, The Living Road, won a BBC World Music Award. Tragically, de Sela succumbed to breast cancer in 2010 at the age of thirty-seven after recording her final album, Lhasa. Tracing de Sela’s unconventional life and introducing her to a new generation, Why Lhasa de Sela Matters is the first biography of this sophisticated creative icon. Raised in a hippie family traveling between the United States and Mexico in a converted school bus, de Sela developed an unquenchable curiosity, with equal affinities for the romantic, mystic, and cerebral. Becoming a sensation in Montreal and Europe, the trilingual singer rejected a conventional path to fame, joining her sisters’ circus troupe in France. Revealing the details of these and other experiences that inspired de Sela to write such vibrant, otherworldly music, Why Lhasa de Sela Matters sings with the spirit of this gifted firebrand.
In the '60s and '70s, America's music scene was marked by raucous excess, reflected in the tragic overdoses of young superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. At the same time, the uplifting harmonies and sunny lyrics that propelled Karen Carpenter and her brother, Richard, to international fame belied a different sort of tragedy—the underconsumption that led to Karen's death at age thirty-two from the effects of an eating disorder. In Why Karen Carpenter Matters, Karen Tongson (whose Filipino musician parents named her after the pop icon) interweaves the story of the singer’s rise to fame with her own trans-Pacific journey between the Philippines—where imitations of American pop styles flourished—and Karen Carpenter’s home ground of Southern California. Tongson reveals why the Carpenters' chart-topping, seemingly whitewashed musical fantasies of "normal love" can now have profound significance for her—as well as for other people of color, LGBT+ communities, and anyone outside the mainstream culture usually associated with Karen Carpenter’s legacy. This hybrid of memoir and biography excavates the destructive perfectionism at the root of the Carpenters’ sound, while finding the beauty in the singer's all too brief life.
A different kind of dating book, She's Got the Wrong Guy not only details why these are the wrong guys, but also helps single Christian women better understand why they "settle" for less than God intends. Instead, they will be encouraged to put their hope and happiness in Jesus, not marriage
Popular music in the twenty-first century is increasingly divided into niche markets. How do fans, musicians, and music industry executives define their markets’ boundaries? What happens when musicians cross those boundaries? What can Christian music teach us about commercial popular music? In God Rock, Inc., Andrew Mall considers the aesthetic, commercial, ethical, and social boundaries of Christian popular music, from the late 1960s, when it emerged, through the 2010s. Drawing on ethnographic research, historical archives, interviews with music industry executives, and critical analyses of recordings, concerts, and music festival performances, Mall explores the tensions that have shaped this evolving market and frames broader questions about commerce, ethics, resistance, and crossover in music that defines itself as outside the mainstream.
