Social Justice Religion

Zealous Love is a response to some of the world's urgent needs in light of Christ's great love. Through first-hand accounts and up-to-date facts about eight global issues, Zealous Love uniquely provides readers with the information, inspiration, and involvement they crave to personally make a difference in their world.

Offering 25 mindfulness practices and activities, The Mindfulness Effect provides specific strategies for healing, empowerment, and social justice so we can live our lives fully and freely, with intention, connection, excellence, innovation, and meaning.

For five hundred years, Latina/o culture and identity have been shaped by their challenges to the religious, socio-economic, and political status quo, whether in opposition to Spanish colonialism, Latin American dictatorships, US imperialism in Central America, the oppression of farmworkers, or the current exploitation of undocumented immigrants. Christianity has played a significant role in that movement at every stage. Robert Chao Romero, the son of a Mexican father and a Chinese immigrant mother, explores the history and theology of what he terms the "Brown Church."

The 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, an African American teenager in Florida, and the subsequent acquittal of his killer, brought public attention to controversial "Stand Your Ground" laws. The verdict, as much as the killing, sent shock waves through the African American community, recalling a history of similar deaths, and the long struggle for justice. On the Sunday morning following the verdict, black preachers around the country addressed the question, "Where is the justice of God? What are we to hope for?"

In this audiobook, World Relief immigration experts 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.

Racial and ethnic hostility is one of the most pervasive problems the church faces. It hinders our effectiveness as one body of believers. It damages our witness. Why won't this problem just go away? Because it is a spiritual battle. In response, we must employ spiritual weapons - prayer, repentance, forgiveness. In this book Brenda Salter McNeil and Rick Richardson provide a model of racial reconciliation, social justice, and spiritual healing that creates both individual and communal transformation.

Christian, we are against a lot of things, but will you stand for what matters, when it matters most? You are in the midst of the greatest attack on Christianity in your life. Make no mistake, the war is coming for you. The question is, will you be ready for it and will you fight or fold? This easy-to-understand book clarifies the change you’re sensing in our culture, at your church, your job, or your school and gives you tools to stand faithfully against this aggressive and heretical attack on the gospel.

What should Christians think about Donald Trump? His policies, his style, his personal life? Thirty evangelical Christians wrestle with these tough questions. They are Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. They don't all agree, but they seek to let Christ be the lord of their political views. They seek to apply biblical standards to difficult debates about our current political situation. Don't listen to this audiobook to find support for your views. Listen to it to be challenged - with facts, reason, and biblical principles.

The American church avoids lament. But lament is a missing, essential component of Christian faith. Lament recognizes struggles and suffering, that the world is not as it ought to be. Lament challenges the status quo and cries out for justice against existing injustices. Soong-Chan Rah's prophetic exposition of the book of Lamentations provides a biblical and theological lens for examining the church's relationship with a suffering world. It critiques our success-centered triumphalism and calls us to repent of our hubris. And it opens up new ways to encounter the other.

As the cultural conversation around race, gender, and sexuality has evolved, straight white men are becoming increasingly aware of their privilege. But many may be left thinking, "OK, what am I supposed to do about it?" "We need a way forward beyond feelings of guilt, overwhelmingness, anger, and denial." Straight white male pastor Chris Furr offers a guide to deconstructing that privilege in Straight White Male. With an emphasis on confession and redemption, Furr invites other privileged men to reconsider the ways they live, work, believe, and interact with others.

Becoming Brave offers a distinctly Christian framework for addressing systemic injustice. It challenges Christians to be everyday activists who become brave enough to break the silence and work with others to dismantle systems of injustice and inequality.

Our culture wants you to be happy. It rewards those who smile through the pain, who pretend everything's fine, who compartmentalize grief and get on with life. But everything's not fine. And God does not expect us to pretend it is. He wants all of us—including our pain.

Privilege is a social consequence of our unwillingness to reckon with and turn from sin. But stewarded, it can help us see and participate in God's inbreaking kingdom. Scripture repeatedly affirms that privilege is real and declares that, rather than exploiting it for selfish gain or feeling immobilized by it, Christians have a responsibility to leverage it. Subversive Witness asks us to grapple with privilege, indifference, and systemic sin in new ways by using biblical examples to reveal the complex nature of privilege and Christians' responsibility in stewarding it well.

Two of the world's greatest crises, systemic racism and environmental destruction, share the same origin story. The two are rooted in economic forces that exploit and oppress both people and land. Swanson shows how we can become communities of caretakers, the way to restore our relationship with creation and each other, and the holistic justice that can result.

Ordinary Heroes of Racial Justice is a beacon of hope for understanding America's complex racial landscape. Through rigorous historical research and compelling narrative storytelling, this book illuminates the past's intersections of Christianity, race, and place, offering profound insights for today's world. Beyond history, Ordinary Heroes of Racial Justice empowers listeners with practical recommendations, encouraging them to rethink and reshape their own communities for justice.

The church needs a new perspective on its responsibility for the deep racial brokenness at the heart of American culture. This book makes a compelling historical and theological case for the church's obligation to provide reparations for the oppression of African Americans. Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson articulate the church's responsibility for its promotion and preservation of white supremacy throughout history, investigate the Bible's call to repent and make restitution, and offer concrete examples of the work of reparation at the local level.

If God designed us to experience true happiness and abundant life, why do so many Christians feel dissatisfied and purposeless? We try to make our lives better by chasing our own dreams, but that only makes the problem worse. Instead, the path to a just life that’s satisfying and permeated with meaning leads us alongside the orphan, the widow, and the powerless. Using clear evangelical theology and compelling narratives drawn from two decades of global ministry and travel, Ken Wytsma, the founder of The Justice Conference, shows God's unchanging love for all His children.

We live in a world of oppositional relationships and increasing in-group/out-group divisions. Christian sociologist Matthew Vos explains how the problem of the stranger lies at the root of many problems humanity faces, such as racism, sexism, and nationalism. He applies classic sociological theory on "the stranger" to matters of faith and social justice, showing that an identity in Christ frees us to love strangers as neighbors and friends. The book also includes two guest chapters, one on intersex persons and the church and one on stranger-making in the "correctional" system.

Following the way of Jesus should lead us into authentic and life-giving relationships. The Jesus Way calls us into community with others to form a new kind of family—a forged family. In an era when our relationships with our families of origin are more complicated than ever, pastor T. C. Moore shows us how following the way of Jesus can lead us to forged families that are authentic and life-giving.

This book offers a close reading of Romans that treats Paul as a radical political thinker by showing the relationship between Paul's perspective and that of secular political theorists. Turning to both ancient political philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero) and contemporary post-Marxists (Agamben, Badiou, Derrida, and Žižek),