Hauerwas and Willimon call for a radical new understanding of the church. By renouncing the emphasis on personal psychological categories, they offer a vision of the church as a colony, a holy nation, a people, a family standing for sharply focused values in a devalued world.

    All injustice affects others, so talking about justice that isn't social is like talking about water that isn't wet or a square with no right angles. But the Bible's call to seek justice is not a call to superficial, kneejerk activism. We are not merely commanded to execute justice, but to "truly execute justice." The God who commands us to seek justice is the same God who commands us to "test everything" and "hold fast to what is good."Drawing from a diverse range of theologians, sociologists, artists, and activists, Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth, by Thaddeus Williams, makes the case that we must be discerning if we are to "truly execute justice" as Scripture commands. Not everything called "social justice" today is compatible with a biblical vision of a better world. The Bible offers hopeful and distinctive answers to deep questions of worship, community, salvation, and knowledge that ought to mark a uniquely Christian pursuit of justice. Topics addressed include:RacismSexualitySocialismCulture WarAbortionTribalismCritical TheoryIdentity PoliticsConfronting Injustice without Compromising Truth also brings in unique voices to talk about their experiences with these various social justice issues, including:Michelle-Lee BarnwallSuresh BudhaprithiEddie ByunFreddie CardozaBecket CookBella DanusiarMonique DusonOjo OkeyeEdwin RamirezSamuel SeyNeil ShenviWalt SobchakIn Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth, Thaddeus Williams transcends our religious and political tribalism and challenges readers to discover what the Bible and the example of Jesus have to teach us about justice. He presents a compelling vision of justice for all God's image-bearers that offers hopeful answers to life's biggest questions.

    With prophetic relevance, New York Times bestselling author Preston Sprinkle tackles the controversy surrounding violence and grapples with surprising conclusions. Anyone who has struggled with the morality of violence will appreciate this convincing biblical guide.

    As a result, it's easy for Christians to grow disillusioned with civic engagement or fall back into tribal extremes. This state of affairs has damaged Christian public witness and divided the church.The authors of this book represent the AND Campaign, which exists to educate and organize Christians for faithful civic and cultural engagement. They insist that not only are we called to love our neighbors through the political process but also that doing so requires us to transcend the binary way the debates are usually framed. In simple, understandable language, they lay out the biblical case for political engagement and help Christians navigate the complex world of politics with integrity, from political messaging and the politics of race to protests, advocacy, and more. The book includes a study guide for classroom use and group discussion.When we understand our civic engagement as a way to obey Christ's call to love our neighbor, we see that it is possible to engage the political process with both love and truth--compassion and conviction.

    Our public discourse is polarized and hateful. Ethnic minorities face systemic injustices and the ever-present fear of violence and deportation. Economic inequalities are widening.In this book, Jake Meador diagnoses our society's decline as the failure of a particular story we've told about ourselves: the story of modern liberalism. He shows us how that story has led to our collective loss of meaning, wonder, and good work, and then recovers each of these by grounding them in a different story—a story rooted in the deep tradition of the Christian faith.Our story doesn't have to end in loneliness and despair. There are reasons for hope—reasons grounded in a different, better story. In Search of the Common Good reclaims a vision of common life for our fractured times: a vision that doesn't depend on the destinies of our economies or our political institutions, but on our citizenship in a heavenly city. Only through that vision—and that citizenship—can we truly work together for the common good.

    Voices on all sides argue strongly for action and change. Christians find themselves torn between the desire to uphold laws and the call to minister to the vulnerable. In this book World Relief staffers Matthew Soerens and Jenny Yang move beyond the rhetoric to offer a Christian response to immigration. They put a human face on the issue and tell stories of immigrants' experiences in and out of the system. With careful historical understanding and thoughtful policy analysis, they debunk myths and misconceptions about immigration and show the limitations of the current immigration system. Ultimately they point toward immigration reform that is compassionate, sensible and just, as they offer concrete ways for you and your church to welcome and minister to your immigrant neighbors.

    One is living life apart from God in comfortable corporate America while the other is living for Christ under intense persecution in China. This stunning page-turner will convict the hearts of readers to live in the light of eternity. Royalties from sales of this book will be donated to support the persecuted Church.

    In Evolution Impossible, Dr. John Ashton uses discoveries in genetics, biochemistry, geology, radiometric dating, and other scientific disciplines to explain why the theory of evolution is a myth. Regardless of your level of scientific education, you will finish this book able to cite 12 reasons why evolution cannot explain the origin of life.

    Terrorism. Hate crimes. In a world where racism is far from dead, is unity amidst diversities even remotely possible?Sharing from his own experiences growing up in the segregated South, pastor John Piper thoughtfully exposes the unremitting problem of racism. Instead of turning finally to organizations, education, famous personalities, or government programs to address racial strife, Piper reveals the definitive source of hope--teaching how the good news about Jesus Christ actively undermines the sins that feed racial strife, and leads to a many-colored and many-cultured kingdom of God.Learn to pursue ethnic harmony from a biblical perspective, and to relate to real people different from yourself, as you take part in the bloodline of Jesus that is comprised of "every tongue, tribe, and nation."

    But when he realized he was gay, those hopes were called into question. The Bible, he’d been taught, condemned gay relationships. Feeling the tension between his understanding of the Bible and the reality of his same-sex orientation, Vines devoted years of intensive research into what the Bible says about homosexuality. With care and precision, Vines asked questions such as: • Do biblical teachings on the marriage covenant preclude same-sex marriage or not? • How should we apply the teachings of Jesus to the gay debate? • What does the story of Sodom and Gomorrah really say about human relationships? • Can celibacy be a calling when it is mandated, not chosen? • What did Paul have in mind when he warned against same-sex relations? Unique in its affirmation of both an orthodox faith and sexual diversity, God and the Gay Christian is likely to spark heated debate, sincere soul searching, even widespread cultural change. Not only is it a compelling interpretation of key biblical texts about same-sex relations, it is also the story of a young man navigating relationships with his family, his hometown church, and the Christian church at large as he expresses what it means to be a faithful gay Christian.

    These two trends define life in Western society today. We are increasingly addicted to habits―and devices―that distract and "buffer" us from substantive reflection and deep engagement with the world. And we live in what Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls "a secular age"―an age in which all beliefs are equally viable and real transcendence is less and less plausible. Drawing on Taylor's work, Alan Noble describes how these realities shape our thinking and affect our daily lives. Too often Christians have acquiesced to these trends, and the result has been a church that struggles to disrupt the ingrained patterns of people's lives. But the gospel of Jesus is inherently disruptive: like a plow, it breaks up the hardened surface to expose the fertile earth below. In this book Noble lays out individual, ecclesial, and cultural practices that disrupt our society's deep-rooted assumptions and point beyond them to the transcendent grace and beauty of Jesus. Disruptive Witness casts a new vision for the evangelical imagination, calling us away from abstraction and cliché to a more faithful embodiment of the gospel for our day.

    Maybe we don't want to ask it. But viral videos, digital images, and other spectacles surround us in every direction--competing for our time, our attention, our lust, and our money. So we let our lazy eyes feed on whatever comes our way. As a result, we never stop to consider the consequences of our visual diet on our habits, desires, and longings.Journalist Tony Reinke asked these hard questions himself--critiquing his own habits--and now invites us along to see what he discovered as he investigated the possibilities and the pitfalls of our image-centered world. In the end, he shares the beauty of a Greater Spectacle--capable of centering our souls, filling our hearts, and stabilizing our gaze in this age of the digital spectacle.

    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.This new Study Guide Edition of Total Truth is filled with fresh stories, examples, and illustrations. Based on questions and comments raised by readers of the book, it is ideal for individual or group study.

    You need only observe the world around you to discover how substantially the ideas of history's thinkers affect us still. You can hear it in the beliefs of your non-Christian friends. In the media, your music, your children's classrooms. You can see it in our public policies, on every bookstore shelf, in the way we understand our very existence--even in the church. We like to believe that we create our little worlds from scratch and then live in them. But the reality is, we step into an environment that already exists, and we learn to interact with it. The game has been conceived long before us; the rules and boundaries already decided. We may be amused when Rene Descartes labors so long in order to conclude that he exists, or puzzled by Immanuel Kant spending his life analyzing how we know anything. Yet these men were not simply contemplating minutiae. The foundational thinking of philosophy tries to lay bare all of our assumptions, revealing our false and sometimes dangerous beliefs so that we may arrive at a coherent worldview. The greater our familiarity with the ideas that have shaped our culture over the centuries, the greater our ability to understand--and influence--that culture for Christ. From ancient Greek thinkers like Plato and Aristotle to Christian philosophers like Augustine and Aquinas to the molders of modern thought such as Kant and Nietszche, R. C. Sproul traces the contours of Western philosophy throughout history and demonstrates the massive consequences these ideas have had on world events, theology, the arts, and culture--as well as in our everyday lives.

    Drawing on a wide range of sources, both critical and literary, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies is an engaging address to everyone concerned with preserving the vitality and precision of the spoken and written word.  “If every literate person in the United States read this book, the result could dramatically transform our society. . . . Written with modesty, keen insight, and grace, Marilyn McEntyre’s Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies proposes a revolution of human expression that would bring precision, honesty, and felicity to the spoken and written discourse of contemporary culture.