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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Christian institutions & organizations
Greg Livingstone has spent a lifetime planting churches in Muslim
communities and can testify to the life-changing power of the
gospel in even the most unpromising circumstances. This is his
autobiography. Unwanted at birth and born out of wedlock no-one
would have considered that Greg Livingstone would become a pioneer
in missions to unreached Muslim peoples. You've Got Libya charts
his journey and his adventures. This first-hand narrative is full
of compelling humor and self-depreciating honesty as Livingstone
travels all over the world proclaiming the Gospel. The result is a
page turning tour de force that urges the reader to pursue God
unreservedly and to join with Him in the adventure of pursuing the
lost. Greg's burden for the millions of Muslims who had no gospel
witness amongst them led to the launching of Frontiers, a mission
agency focusing exclusively on church planting amongst Muslim
communities. Today, Frontiers is a movement of more than 1,000
field workers in nearly 50 countries.
A total of 57 lectures of George Whitefield, one of the most
celebrated preachers of England and the American colonies in the
18th century, are presented here. Together, these lectures offer a
profound insight into an innovative and often controversial
preacher. A man of immense gifts for expression, George Whitefield
would commonly drive an audience to tears with his sincere
expressions of faith. Pushing the boundaries of his era, Whitefield
rebelled against church authority and claimed that God himself
permitted that he preach itinerant indoors and in the open air.
Whitefield rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most
pivotal Christians of his era. Too poor to afford tutelage, the
young Whitefield managed to avoid tuition by acting as a servant to
other students; assisting them to wash; cleaning their quarters;
and carrying their books and satchels. Such menial work appeared to
fire George Whitefield's spirit; he converted to Christianity and
fervently attended to his studies thereafter.
Although many refer to the American South as the "Bible Belt," the
region was not always characterized by a powerful religious
culture. In the seventeenth century and early eighteenth century,
religion-in terms both of church membership and personal piety-was
virtually absent from southern culture. The late eighteenth century
and early nineteenth century, however, witnessed the astonishingly
rapid rise of evangelical religion in the Upper South. Within just
a few years, evangelicals had spread their beliefs and their
fervor, gaining converts and building churches throughout Virginia
and North Carolina and into the western regions. But what was it
that made evangelicalism so attractive to a region previously
uninterested in religion?
Monica Najar argues that early evangelicals successfully
negotiated the various challenges of the eighteenth-century
landscape by creating churches that functioned as civil as well as
religious bodies. The evangelical church of the late eighteenth
century was the cornerstone of its community, regulating marriages,
monitoring prices, arbitrating business, and settling disputes. As
the era experienced substantial rifts in the relationship between
church and state, the disestablishment of colonial churches paved
the way for new formulations of church-state relations. The
evangelical churches were well-positioned to provide guidance in
uncertain times, and their multiple functions allowed them to
reshape many of the central elements of authority in southern
society. They assisted in reformulating the lines between the
"religious" and "secular" realms, with significant consequences for
both religion and the emerging nation-state.
Touching on the creationof a distinctive southern culture, the
position of women in the private and public arenas, family life in
the Old South, the relationship between religion and slavery, and
the political culture of the early republic, Najar reveals the
history behind a religious heritage that remains a distinguishing
mark of American society.
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