Social Theology

In this landmark work of emerging African American womanist theology, Delores Williams finds in the biblical figure of Hagar-mother of Ishmael, cast into the desert by Abraham and Sarah, but protected by God - a prototype for the struggle of African-American women. African slave, homeless exile, surrogate mother, Hagar's story provides an image of survival and defiance appropriate to black women today.

In Counter Culture, New York Times best-selling author David Platt shows Christians how to actively take a stand on such issues as poverty, sex trafficking, marriage, abortion, racism, and religious liberty—and challenges us to become passionate, unwavering voices for Christ. Drawing on compelling personal accounts from around the world, Platt presents an unapologetic yet winsome call for Christians to faithfully follow Christ into the cultural battlefield in ways that will prove both costly and rewarding.

In today’s age of descent, many Christians feel discouraged and overwhelmed by the cultural sentiment that the truth has become unknowable. Yet despite this widespread uncertainty, God’s truth remains firm and unchanging, and when you turn to His Word seeking wisdom, you’ll find it extends even to the controversial topics of our day.

It is commonly thought in secular society that the Bible is one of the greatest hindrances to doing justice. Isn't it full of regressive views? Didn't it condone slavery? Why look to the Bible for guidance on how to have a more just society? But Timothy Keller sees it another way. In Generous Justice, Keller explores a life of justice empowered by an experience of grace: a generous, gracious justice. Here is a book for believers who find the Bible a trustworthy guide as well as those who suspect that Christianity is a regressive influence in the world.

For thousands of years, religious messages have been used to either uphold the status quo or upend it. And while we are all very familiar with the kind of conservative Christianity that suppresses liberation and justifies oppression, progressive Christians are just as guilty of upholding unjust systems when we prioritize harmony and unity over justice. True justice requires us to choose sides. True justice requires action. When we look at Scripture, we see that the God of the Bible was never neutral. Again and again, God chooses the side of the oppressed.

Pornography may seem inescapable, but God can free us from its destructive power. The gospel replaces the dehumanizing lies of pornography with this surprising truth: God created us as royalty. How then can we reclaim our God-given identity to take a stand against - and ultimately starve - the predatory porn industry? In The Death of Porn, Ray Ortlund writes six personal letters, as from a father to his son.

This first new translation of Kierkegaard's masterwork in a generation brings an essential work of modern philosophy to vivid life. While the majority of Kierkegaard's work leading up to The Concept of Anxiety dealt with the intersection of faith and knowledge, here the renowned Danish philosopher turns to the perennial question of sin and guilt. First published in 1844, this concise treatise identified - long before Freud - anxiety as a deep-seated human state, one that embodies the endless struggle with our own spiritual identities.

Secunda Secundae is the longest part in this immense undertaking by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). His purpose was nothing less than to survey the theological teachings of the Catholic Church, while absorbing, controversially for his time, many other strands of learning and philosophy, varying from ancient Greek (particularly Aristotle) to Muslim writers (Averroes and Avicenna) and the Sephardic Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides.

In a refreshing challenge to the common presumption that knowing involves amassing information, this book offers an eight-step approach that begins with love and pledge and ends with communion and shalom. Everyday adventures of knowing turn on a moment of insight that transforms and connects knower and known. No matter the field - science or art, business or theology, counseling or athletics - this little manual offers a how-to for knowing ventures.

In this powerful classic, the eminent Swiss philosopher Max Picard argues that though the “flight from God” is not a phenomenon unique to this age, man has nevertheless put himself and society in an extremely dangerous situation with the progressive secularization of Western culture. In the age of faith, Picard says, a man had to make a conscious decision to separate himself from the world of faith. Today, the world, not just the individual, is in flight, and men must extricate themselves from modernity and make a deliberate decision to find and affirm faith.

A book of everyday ethics by a man whom Pope St. John Paul II called “one of the great ethicists of the 20th century”, The Art of Living is Dietrich von Hildebrand’s essential guide to the moral life. In just over four hours, Dietrich von Hildebrand, with his wife Alice, presents a distinctive view of the virtuous life that begins with reverence, “the mother of all virtues”, and includes chapters on “Faithfulness”, “Goodness”, “Hope”, “The Human Heart”, and many others.

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.

Why has Christianity, a religion premised upon neighborly love, failed in its attempts to heal social divisions? In this ambitious and wide-ranging work, Willie James Jennings delves deep into the late medieval soil in which the modern Christian imagination grew, to reveal how Christianity's highly refined process of socialization has inadvertently created and maintained segregated societies.

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 this timely audiobook, award-winning author Kevin DeYoung challenges each of us - the skeptic, the seeker, the certain, and the confused - to take a humble look at God's Word. Examining key biblical passages in both the Old and New Testaments and the Bible's overarching teaching regarding sexuality, DeYoung responds to popular objections raised by Christians and non-Christians alike - offering listeners an indispensable resource for thinking through one of the most pressing issues of our day.

This in-depth discussion of New Testament scholarship and the challenges of history as a whole proposes Bayes's Theorem, which deals with probabilities under conditions of uncertainty, as a solution to the problem of establishing reliable historical criteria. The author demonstrates that valid historical methods - not only in the study of Christian origins but in any historical study - can be described by, and reduced to, the logic of Bayes's Theorem. Conversely, he argues that any method that cannot be reduced to this theorem is invalid and should be abandoned.

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.

In contrast to the oppressive Roman military occupation of the first century, Crossan examines the meaning of the non-violent Kingdom of God prophesized by Jesus and the equality advocated by Paul to the early Christian churches. Crossan contrasts these messages of peace with the misinterpreted apocalyptic vision from the Book of Revelation, which has been misrepresented by modern right-wing theologians and televangelists to justify US military actions in the Middle East.

Why You Think the Way You Do traces the development of the worldviews that underpin the Western world. Professor and historian Glenn S. Sunshine demonstrates the decisive impact that the growth of Christianity had in transforming the outlook of pagan Roman culture into one that—based on biblical concepts of humanity and its relationship with God—established virtually all the positive aspects of Western civilization.

The evolution of the Sacred Worship of Sophia, Mary Magdalene, and Mother Mary are traced through the Gnostic Scriptures. Sophia would come to be considered a force or conduit of the Holy Spirit, in part due to the fact that the Holy Spirit was also considered a feminine and creative force from the Supreme God. As the emerging orthodox church became more and more oppressive to women, later even labeling them "occasions of sin", the Gnostics countered by raising women to equal status.