The Emerging Church movement developed in the mid-1990s among primarily white, urban, middle-class pastors and laity who were disenchanted with America's conservative Evangelical sub-culture. It is a response to the increasing divide between conservative Evangelicals and concerned critics who strongly oppose what they consider overly slick, corporate, and consumerist versions of faith. A core feature of their response is a challenge to traditional congregational models, often focusing on new church plants and creating networks of related house churches. Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork, James S. Bielo explores the impact of the Emerging Church movement on American Evangelicals. He combines ethnographic analysis with discussions of the movement's history, discursive contours, defining practices, cultural logics, and contentious interactions with conservative Evangelical critics to rethink the boundaries of "Evangelical" as a category. Ultimately, Bielo makes a novel contribution to our understanding of the important changes at work among American Protestants, and illuminates how Emerging Evangelicals interact with the cultural conditions of modernity, late modernity, and visions of "postmodern" Christianity.

Missio Alliance Essential Reading List One of Seedbed's 10 Notable Books The gospel of Jesus has not always been good news for Native Americans. The history of North America is marred by atrocities committed against Native peoples. Indigenous cultures were erased in the name of Christianity. As a result, to this day few Native Americans are followers of Jesus. However, despite the far-reaching effects of colonialism, some Natives have forged culturally authentic ways to follow the way of Jesus. In his final work, Richard Twiss provides a contextualized Indigenous expression of the Christian faith among the Native communities of North America. He surveys the painful, complicated history of Christian missions among Indigenous peoples and chronicles more hopeful visions of culturally contextual Native Christian faith. For Twiss, contextualization is not merely a formula or evangelistic strategy, but rather a relational process of theological and cultural reflection within a local community. Native leaders reframe the gospel narrative in light of post-colonization, reincorporating traditional practices and rituals while critiquing and correcting the assumptions of American Christian mythologies. Twiss gives voice to the stories of Native followers of Jesus, with perspectives on theology and spirituality plus concrete models for intercultural ministry. Future generations of Native followers of Jesus, and those working crossculturally with them, will be indebted to this work.

This book brings together lectures and articles by the renowned historian of world Christianity, making them available, many for the first time, to scholars and students of world mission. While examining the many aspects that have characterized mission, indigenous Christianity, and colonialism in modern Africa, The Missionary Movement in Christian History has a far broader reach. Essays such as "The Gospel as the Prisoner and Liberator of Culture" reveal the paradoxes of the Christian movement as a whole in discussing how different primitive Mediterranean Christianity is from early Catholicism, from Celtic monasticism, from Reformation Protestantism, and from Nigerian Spirit Christianity. Andrew Walls shows how the central question for Christianity has always been one of identity in many different forms, a phenomenon revealed at each stage of its history by the missionary movement. What this means for theology, however, has hardly been explored. This is the subtext of Walls' work, providing extraordinary insights and successful counters to secular critiques of world Christianity.

Culture affects how we make disciples. We often unconsciously bring our own cultural assumptions into ministry and mission, not realizing that how we think and operate is not necessarily the best or only way to do things. In today's global environment, disciplemaking requires the cultural humility and flexibility to adapt between different cultural approaches. Charles Davis, former director of TEAM, provides a framework for missional disciplemaking across diverse cultural contexts. He shows how we can recalibrate our ministry efforts, like adjusting sound levels on a mixer board, to accommodate different cultural assumptions. With on-the-ground stories from a lifetime of mission experience, Davis navigates such tensions as knowledge and behavior, individualism and collectivism, and truth and works to help Christian workers minister more effectively. Ministry teams, church planters, pastors and missionaries working interculturally at home or overseas can be part of God's movement of making disciples. Discover how the body of Christ grows in the unity and diversity of the global church.

Schleiermacher maintained that "to make proselytes out of unbelievers is deeply engrained in the character of religion." But why do religions proselytize? Do all religions seek conversions? How are religions adapting their proclamations in a deeply plural world? This book provides a detailed analysis of the missionary impulse as it is manifested across a range of religious and irreligious traditions. World Religions and Their Missions systematically compares the motives and methods of the "missions" of Atheism, the Baha'i Faith, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Mormonism. The text also develops innovative frameworks for interreligious encounters and comparative mission studies.

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aEspecially valuable for religious studies and womenas studies scholars and sociologists of religion interested in gender and/or women in religious movements.a
--"Nova Religios"

"It is the trend in scholarship these days to argue that women find empowerment in restriction. Ingersoll argues, however, that an alternative interpretation may be that subordinate living may empower a form of relational power."
--"Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion"

"The feminist resistance [Ingersoll] documents, if able to assert itself, could have profound consequences not only for evangelical women but for the rest of us as well, by opening up the door for a detente in our current culture wars."--"The Women's Review of Books"

aIngersoll has done the sociology of religion an enormous service by providing a more nuanced description of the ongoing personal and institutional struggles of the minority of conservative Protestants who identify themselves both evangelical and feminist.a."-- Sally K. Gallagher, Oregon State University

"This highly accessible book should be required reading across all denominations."
--"Christianity Today"

Evangelical Christian Women draws on two years of ethnographic research nationwide to shed new light on the gender conflict faced by women in evangelical Christianity. Julie Ingersoll goes beyond previous attempts to find avenues of empowerment for fundamentalist women to offer a more nuanced look at the challenges they face when they occupy positions of leadership which violate traditional gender norms. She looks where other studies do not--at women who, while remaining entrenched in andcommitted to evangelical Christianity, are also resisting accepted gender roles.

Evangelical Christian Women offers a look at conservative women who challenge gender norms within their religious traditions, the fallout they experience as part of the ensuing conflict, and the significance of the conflict over gender for the development and character of culture. In the face of a growing number of scholarly studies of conservative religious women that argue that submission is somehow "really" empowerment, this book seeks to get at the other side of the story; to document and explore the experiences of the women caught in the middle of the conservative Christian culture war over gender.

We are enamored with stories about cops, but rarely do we get a chance to walk in the shoes of one while reading about the personal and spiritual battles waged when one is fighting crime. Jim's narrative will pull you into the moment of each crisis. These stories are the material of movies but they happened in real life. Jim will weave his experiences into the truth taught in Scripture. Whether or not you are part of the law enforcement community, you will be entertained by the adventures. Regardless of your relationship with Christ, you will be challenged to do something with the claims made by Jesus. There is engaging action in this book, but the serious purpose is that it will serve as a challenging devotional guide and bring you closer to Christ.

"No other man in history was so mightily used of God in revival as Asahel Nettleton. He labored amidst more revivals of religion than Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield One can learn much about how God moves in revival by studying Nettleton's life, therefore this book will be a useful tool for any serious student of revival. Secondly, the role that Nettleton played as a defender of the faith against the 'New Measures' and the 'New Haven Theology' reveals how theology in America shifted from its Puritan roots of Calvinism to a more Federalized man-centered theology" (from Introduction by author E.A. Johnston).

Leaving Christendom for Good argues that the solution to some of the most troubling tensions in the life of the Catholic Church since Vatican II can be found in the council's document Gaudium et spes. This text's view of the church's mission and social relationships as dialogical has the capacity to liberate. Part One studies the contemporary place of religion-with particular reference to Charles Taylor's groundbreaking work, A Secular Age-and examines Gaudium et spes's dialogical view of the church-world relationship. Part Two explores what true dialogue entails and how it is best understood theologically, engaging critically with Joseph Ratzinger's view of the church-world relationship. The book's final chapter considers two practical implications of its argument: how evangelization can be best understood today, and how the church can best approach issues in the public sphere.