Social Theology

The end times have seen a great amount of interest within the last two decades. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Arab Spring, ISIS, and the Iranian stand-off have focused us on the future of the Middle East - the center of the Bible's prophecies about the last days. Yet there hasn't been a comprehensive overview of biblical prophecy and eschatology for more than five decades. Mark Hitchcock's book is that comprehensive resource for the 21st-century listener. The End will provide a solid biblical foundation for Christians to explore the essential truths.

In his reflections on God, Jesus, suffering, and liberation, James H. Cone relates the gospel message to the experience of the Black community. But a wider theme of the book is the role that social and historical context plays in framing the questions we address to God as well as the mode of the answers provided.

In What God Has to Say about Our Bodies, Sam Allberry explains that all of us are fearfully and wonderfully made, and should regard our physicality as a gift. He offers biblical guidance for living, including understanding gender, sexuality, and identity; dealing with aging, illness, and death; and considering the physical future hope that we have in Christ.

When it comes to same-sex relationships, this book by Karen Keen contains the most thoughtful, balanced, biblically grounded discussion you’re likely to encounter anywhere. With pastoral sensitivity and respect for biblical authority, Keen breaks through current stalemates in the debate surrounding faith and sexual identity.

In a culture in which science is believed to hold the answers to every question, spiritual realities like the soul are often ignored or ridiculed. We are told that neuroscience holds the key to explaining every aspect of human behavior. Yet Christian philosopher J. P. Moreland argues that scripture, sound philosophical reasoning, and everyday experience all point to the reality of an immaterial soul.

When Thomas Aquinas addressed the best arguments against God in his masterwork, the Summa Theologica, he listed only two. The first was the problem of evil: How can God—who is perfectly good—exist alongside that which is against Him? His second: Is God needed to explain the world? Patrick Flynn presents the best arguments for God while also addressing the strongest objections. This book is destined to become the apologetic gold standard for defending classical theism against atheistic naturalism.

Today we are told to be true to ourselves, look within for answers, and follow our hearts. But when we put our own happiness first, we experience record-breaking levels of aimlessness, loneliness, depression, and anxiety. Self-centeredness always fails to deliver the fulfillment we're seeking.

Despite Jesus' prayer that all Christians "be one", divisions have been epidemic in the body of Christ from the beginning to the present. We cluster in theological groups, gender groups, age groups, ethnic groups, educational, and economic groups. We criticize freely those who disagree with us, don't look like us, don't act like us, and don't even like what we like. With a personal touch and the trained eye of a social psychologist, Cleveland brings to bear the latest studies and research on the unseen dynamics at work that tend to separate us from others.

As news reports of the horrific December 2004 tsunami in Asia reached the rest of the world, commentators were quick to seize upon the disaster as proof of either God’s power or God’s nonexistence, asking over and over, How could a good and loving God - if such exists - allow such suffering? In The Doors of the Sea, David Bentley Hart speaks at once to those skeptical of Christian faith and to those who use their Christian faith to rationalize senseless human suffering.

Our current culture seems to be increasingly divided on countless issues, including those affecting the church. But for centuries, theological disagreements, political differences, and issues relating to church leadership have made it challenging for Christians to foster unity and love for one another. In this book, author Tim Cooper explores this polarization through the lives of two oppositional figures in church history: John Owen and Richard Baxter.

From the former faith adviser to President Obama comes a fresh manifesto for those who seek to promote positive change and build a more diverse and just democracy. The goal of social change work is not a more ferocious revolution; it is a more beautiful social order. It is harder to organize a fair trial than it is to fire up a crowd, more challenging to build a good school than it is to tell others they are doing education all wrong.

Africa has played a decisive role in the formation of Christian culture from its infancy. Some of the most decisive intellectual achievements of Christianity were explored and understood in Africa before they were in Europe. If this is so, why is Christianity so often perceived in Africa as a Western colonial import? How can Christians in Northern and sub-Saharan Africa, indeed, how can Christians throughout the world, rediscover and learn from this ancient heritage?

Intolerance is a beautiful thing...when you understand it from God's point of view. There is a spiritual struggle for the hearts and minds of our young people. Cultural tolerance is pervasive in today's world. It seems to show up everywhere - in education, government, society...even within the church.

Jack Miles's book is a provocative and revisionary look at the life of Jesus, in which many of the most well-worn truths about Christ are recontextualized and revisited. It does not look for the historical Jesus, but takes the Gospels as the sole source about his life.

A witty and devastating takedown of the "new" atheist position, Inside the Atheist Mind debunks the theories of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and others, revealing how inconsistent, illogical, and frankly ludicrous their conclusions truly are. Poking fun at atheists in a clever and intelligent way, Anthony DeStefano demonstrates just how full of holes the new atheism is and reveals that it is actually a "religion" of its own, complete with a creed, a set of commandments, a rigid moral code, and rewards and punishments.

Author David Bennett came out to his parents as gay when he was 14 and entered Sydney's active gay community a few years later. In A War of Loves, he shares his growing desire as a gay rights activist to see justice for LGBTQI people, his journey through new age religions and French existentialism, and his university years as a postmodernist - before Jesus Christ showed up in his life in a highly unexpected way, leading him down a path he never would have imagined or predicted.

Christianity is more than a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It is also a worldview that answers life's basic questions and shows us how we should live as a result of those answers. How Now Shall We Live? equips Christians to confront false worldviews and live redemptively in contemporary culture.

The modern conception of sacrifice is at once cast as a victory of self-discipline over desire and condescended to as destructive and archaic abnegation. But even in the Old Testament, the dual natures of sacrifice, embodying both ritual slaughter and moral rectitude, were at odds. In this analysis, Terry Eagleton makes a compelling argument that the idea of sacrifice has long been misunderstood. Pursuing the complex lineage of sacrifice in a lyrical discourse, Eagleton focuses on the Old and New Testaments, offering a virtuosic analysis of the crucifixion.

A survey of the various ways--often unrecognized and overlooked--whereby Christianity has impacted the world, making the world a better place and enriching our everyday living.

Profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, Iranian-born scholar Vali Nasr has become one of America's leading commentators on current events in the Middle East, admired and welcomed by both media and government for his "concise and coherent" analysis (Wall Street Journal). In this "smart, clear and timely" book (Washington Post), Nasr brilliantly dissects the political and theological antagonisms within Islam. He provides a unique and objective understanding of the 1,400-year bitter struggle between Shias and Sunnis, and sheds crucial light on its modern-day consequences—from the nuclear posturing of Iran's President Ahmadinejad to the recent U.S.-enabled shift toward Shia power in Iraq and Hezbollah's continued dominance in Lebanon.