Religious apostasy is now rife in the land. Do not be misled. No human has a corner on the word of God. Do not look to man for truth: look to God. Dr. Richard Murphy is a native New Yorker. His ministry as a Christian compels him to be present in dialogue at this time. Reading and rereading the Bible, as well as Bible study in church, church seminars, the use of reference books and commentaries, church membership, singing in the choir, summer church camp, and church committee work have qualified him to write this commentary even though it is many years later than was his expectation. He received Jesus Christ as Lord in junior high school. As a practicing physician in New York City he learned first hand about the plight of young and old who are culturally driven and thereby lacking in fellowship with Jesus Christ. Dr. Karen Murphy, growing up in the South and having a childhood dream of being a missionary, began piano lessons at the age of four. With music always being a part of her life, her understanding increased as God guided her into this field. In mid-life after her children became teenagers, she returned to graduate school earning two more degrees in piano. With her doctorate, she joined the music faculty in 2008 at Mississippi State University. Karen's future plans include writing, from a Biblical perspective, a practical step-by-step health plan with satisfying recipes and simple exercise ideas.

This 50th-anniversary edition, with a new foreword by the distinguished historian Martin E. Marty, who regards this book as one of the most vital books of our time, as well as an introduction by the author never before included in the book, and a new preface by James Gustafson, the premier Christian ethicist who is considered Niebuhr’s contemporary successor, poses the challenge of being true to Christ in a materialistic age to an entirely new generation of Christian readers.

Many Christians today tend to view the story of medieval faith as a cautionary tale. Too often, they dismiss the Middle Ages as a period of corruption and decay in the church. They seem to assume that the church apostatized from true Christianity after it gained cultural influence in the time of Constantine, and the faith was only later recovered by the sixteenth-century Reformers or even the eighteenth-century revivalists. As a result, the riches and wisdom of the medieval period have remained largely inaccessible to modern Protestants. Church historian Chris Armstrong helps readers see beyond modern caricatures of the medieval church to the animating Christian spirit of that age. He believes today's church could learn a number of lessons from medieval faith, such as how the gospel speaks to ordinary, embodied human life in this world. Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians explores key ideas, figures, and movements from the Middle Ages in conversation with C. S. Lewis and other thinkers, helping contemporary Christians discover authentic faith and renewal in a forgotten age.

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.

What does art have to do with faith? For many Christians, paintings, films, music, and other forms of art are simply used for wall decoration, entertaining distraction, or worshipful devotion. But what if the arts played a more prominent role in the Christian life? In Discovering God through the Arts, discover how the arts can be tools for faith-building, life-changing spiritual formation for all Christians. Terry Glaspey, author of 75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know, examines: How the arts assist us in prayer and contemplation How the arts help us rediscover a sense of wonder How the arts help us deal with emotions How the arts aid theological reflection and so much more. Let your faith be enriched, and discover how beauty and creativity can draw you nearer to the ultimate Creator.

Fear has taken on an outsized role in our current cultural and political context. Manufactured threats are advanced with little to no evidence of danger, while real threats are exaggerated for self-interested gain. This steady diet of fear produces unhealthy moral lives, leading many Christians to focus more on the dangers we wish to avoid than the goods we wish to pursue. As a fearful people, we are tempted to make safety our highest good and to make virtues of suspicion, preemption, and accumulation. But this leaves the church ill-equipped to welcome the stranger, love the enemy, or give to those in need. This timely resource brings together cultural analysis and theological insight to explore a Christian response to the culture of fear. Laying out a path from fear to faithfulness, theologian Scott Bader-Saye explores practices that embody Jesus's call to place our trust in him, inviting Christian communities to take the risks of hospitality, peacemaking, and generosity. This book has been revised throughout, updated to connect with today's readers, and includes new discussion questions.

Traditionalist Christians who oppose same-sex marriage and other cultural developments in the United States wonder why they are being forced to bracket their beliefs in order to participate in public life. This situation is not new, says Steven D. Smith: Christians two thousand years ago faced very similar challenges. Picking up poet T. S. Eliot’s World War II–era thesis that the future of the West would be determined by a contest between Christianity and “modern paganism,” Smith argues in this book that today’s culture wars can be seen as a reprise of the basic antagonism that pitted pagans against Christians in the Roman Empire. Smith’s Pagans and Christians in the City looks at that historical conflict and explores how the same competing ideas continue to clash today. All of us, Smith shows, have much to learn by observing how patterns from ancient history are reemerging in today’s most controversial issues.

Religious apostasy is now rife in the land. Do not be misled. No human has a corner on the word of God. Do not look to man for truth: look to God. Dr. Richard Murphy is a native New Yorker. His ministry as a Christian compels him to be present in dialogue at this time. Reading and rereading the Bible, as well as Bible study in church, church seminars, the use of reference books and commentaries, church membership, singing in the choir, summer church camp, and church committee work have qualified him to write this commentary even though it is many years later than was his expectation. He received Jesus Christ as Lord in junior high school. As a practicing physician in New York City he learned first hand about the plight of young and old who are culturally driven and thereby lacking in fellowship with Jesus Christ. Dr. Karen Murphy, growing up in the South and having a childhood dream of being a missionary, began piano lessons at the age of four. With music always being a part of her life, her understanding increased as God guided her into this field. In mid-life after her children became teenagers, she returned to graduate school earning two more degrees in piano. With her doctorate, she joined the music faculty in 2008 at Mississippi State University. Karen's future plans include writing, from a Biblical perspective, a practical step-by-step health plan with satisfying recipes and simple exercise ideas.

In 1951, theologian H. Richard Niebuhr published Christ and Culture, a hugely influential book that set the agenda for the church and cultural engagement for the next several decades. But Niebuhr's model was devised in and for a predominantly Christian cultural setting. How do we best understand the church and its writers in a world that is less and less Christian? Craig Carter critiques Niebuhr's still pervasive models and proposes a typology better suited to mission after Christendom.

Scorsese's 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ arguably generated more resistance and conflict upon its release than any film before or since, engendering intense debate and even hatred between religious conservative protesters and liberal progressive defenders of the picture. This is the first full examination of the controversy, its participants, and their claims concerning the film's religious meaning. This debate reflects deep levels of social and cultural insecurity produced by the shifting role of religion and religious language in an increasingly secularized society, and demonstrates how a popular film about Jesus captured, inflamed, and strengthened existing animosities. Providing new insights into film's significance as an indicator of the changing relationship between secular and religious domains, the work offers a thorough and fascinating historical analysis of the various interpretations of Last Temptation and its reception.