A must-read for Christians struggling with the present political conversation Citizen helps Christians find our place in the politics of the world. In these pages, Bishop Andy Doyle offers a Christian virtue ethic grounded in fresh anthropology. He offers a vision of the individual Christian within the reign of God and the life of the broader community. He adds to the conversation in both church and culture by offering a renewed theological underpinning to the complex nature of Christianity in a post-modern world. How did we get here? Is this the way it has to be? Are there implications for conversations about politics within the church? Doyle contends that our current debates are not about one partisan narrative winning, but communities of diversity being unified by a relationship with God's grand narrative. Crafting a deep theological conversation with a unified approach to the Old and New Testament, Citizen asks, what does it truly mean to live in community?

For all who are displaced. For all who are weary of the way things are. For all who long for a more beautiful world. Preemptive Love founder Jeremy Courtney has seen the very worst of war. He's risked his life saving lives on the front lines. He's come face to face with ISIS, been targeted by death threats, and narrowly escaped airstrikes. Through it all, the most powerful thing he's learned is this: we're not just at war with each other. We're at war with ourselves. But the way things are is not the way they have to be. There is a more beautiful world. To find it, we have to we confront our fear--and end war where it starts: in our own heads and hearts. With stories of people who have lived through war and terrorism, Love Anyway will inspire you to confront your deepest fears and respond to our scary world with the kind of love that seems a little crazy. Because when we do, we become agents of hope who unmake violence and unfurl the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. Love Anyway is the story of Jeremy's incredible journey--and an invitation to discover the more beautiful world on the front lines where you live.

Why is the city a battleground of hostile principalities and powers? What is the mission of the church in the city? How can the church be supported in accomplishing that mission? These are the questions that Robert Linthicum treats in his comprehensive and probing biblical theology of the city. In the Bible the city is depicted both as a dwelling place of God and his people and as a center of power for Satan and his minions. The city is one primary stage on which the drama of salvation is played out. And that is no less the case at the end of this pivotal century as megacities become the focal point of most human activity and aspirations around the world. This is a timely theology of the city that weaves the theological images of the Bible and the social realities of the contemporary world into a revealing tapestry of truths about the urban experience. Its purpose is to define clearly the mission of the church in the midst of the urban realities and to support well the work of the church in the urban world.

Whose lives count as fully human? The answer matters for everyone, disabled or not. The ancient Greek ideal linked physical wholeness to moral wholeness - the virtuous citizen was "beautiful and good." It's an ideal that has all too often turned deadly, casting those who do not measure up as less than human. In the pre-Christian era, infants with disabilities were left on the rocks; in modern times, they have been targeted by eugenics. Much has changed, thanks to the tenacious advocacy of the disability rights movement. Yesteryear's hellish institutions have given way to customized educational programs and assisted living centers. Public spaces have been reconfigured to improve access. Therapies and medical technology have advanced rapidly in sophistication and effectiveness. Protections for people with disabilities have been enshrined in many countries' antidiscrimination laws. But these victories, impressive as they are, mask other realities that collide awkwardly with society's avowals of equality. Why are parents choosing to abort a baby likely to have a disability? Why does Belgian law allow for euthanasia in cases of disability, even absent a terminal diagnosis or physical pain? Why, when ventilators were in short supply during the first Covid wave, did some states list disability as a reason to deny care? On this theme: - Heonju Lee tells how his son with Down syndrome saved another child's life. - Molly McCully Brown and Victoria Reynolds Farmer recount their personal experiences with disability. - Amy Julia Becker says meritocracies fail because they value the wrong things. - Maureen Swinger asks six mothers around the world about raising a child with disabilities. - Joe Keiderling documents the unfinished struggle for disability rights. - Isaac T. Soon wonders if Saint Paul's "thorn in the flesh" was a disability. - Leah Libresco Sargeant reviews What Can a Body Do? and Making Disability Modern. - Sarah C. Williams says testing for fetal abnormalities is not a neutral practice. Also in the issue: - Ross Douthat is brought low by intractable Lyme disease. - Edwidge Danticat flees an active shooter in a packed mall. - Eugene Vodolazkin finds comic relief at funerals, including his own father's. - Kelsey Osgood discovers that being an Orthodox Jew is strange, even in Brooklyn. - Christian Wiman pens three new poems. - Susannah Black profiles Flannery O'Conner. - Our writers review Eyal Press's Dirty Work, Steve Coll's Directorate S, and Millennial Nuns by the Daughters of Saint Paul. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.

In 2017 five-year-old Julia traveled with her mother, Guadalupe, from Honduras to the United States. Her harrowing journey took her through Mexico in the cargo section of a tractor trailer. Then she was separated from her mother, who was held hostage by smugglers who exploited her physically and financially. At the United States border, Julia came through the processing center as an unaccompanied minor after being separated from her stepdad who was deported. Gena Thomas tells the story of how Julia came to the United States, what she experienced in the system, and what it took to reunite her with her family. A Spanish-speaking former missionary, Gena became Julia's foster mother and witnessed firsthand the ways migrant children experience trauma. Weaving together the stories of birth mother and foster mother, this book shows the human face of the immigrant and refugee, the challenges of the immigration and foster care systems, and the tenacious power of motherly love.

Author and pastor David Kim shares his experiences with loneliness as a Korean American immigrant and delivers compelling research about belonging that includes the revolutionary five anchors for developing meaningful relationships. Even though we are connected more than ever--through social media, video calls and texts, and advanced travel opportunities--we're also drowning in loneliness and isolation. As discipleship pastor of WestGate Church in Silicon Valley, David Kim decided to research the reasons why--and uncovered surprising answers. When Kim moved to America from South Korea as a child, he experienced isolation during his school years. Differences in language, food, and culture spiked an immense desire for an accepting, supportive community. As an adult, he read widely about belonging, and in his survey of more than 1,300 Christians, he discovered that the number-one struggle shared by them is loneliness. Left to ourselves, Kim says, we naturally drift away from God and others, and we begin to believe the lies of the enemy: You are all alone. No one else feels this way. No one cares about you. How could they? God has abandoned you. You were just imagining things before. In Made to Belong, Kim combats those lies with the incredible hope found in the revolutionary Five Practices for Meaningful Connection: Priority: People first, no regrets. Chemistry: What, you too? Vulnerability: Dangerously safe. Empathy: I hear and see you. Accountability: I can't carry it, but I can carry you. True belonging takes intentional effort, but Kim reminds us that we are made to belong--to each other and to Jesus. Through sound wisdom from the Bible, proven research from the social sciences and his own data, and examples from his pastoral ministry and moving personal anecdotes, Kim shows us that we are uniquely designed by God to belong to one another for our flourishing.

The Slave Metaphor and Gendered Enslavement in Early Christian Discourse adds new knowledge to the ongoing discussion of slavery in early Christian discourse. Kartzow argues that the complex tension between metaphor and social reality in early Christian discourse is undertheorized. A metaphor can be so much more than an innocent thought figure; it involves bodies, relationships, life stories, and memory in complex ways. The slavery metaphor is troubling since it makes theology of a social institution that is profoundly troubling. This study rethinks the potential meaning of the slavery metaphor in early Christian discourse by use of a variety of texts, read with a whole set of theoretical tools taken from metaphor theory and intersectional gender studies, in particular. It also takes seriously the contemporary context of modern slavery, where slavery has re-appeared as a term to name trafficking, gendered violence, and inhuman power systems.

Mere Science and Christian Faith holds out a vision for how it can lead us more deeply into the conversations around science and faith that confront the church today.

Emerging adults want to believe that science and faith can coexist peacefully, and Greg Cootsona argues that they can. In his book Mere Science and Christian Faith he holds out a vision for the integration of science and faith and how it can lead us more deeply into the conversations that confront the church today.

Many Christians have been brought up under the assumption that mainstream science is incompatible with genuine Christian faith—so when they see compelling evidence for biological evolution, for example, they feel forced to choose between science and their faith. The devastating effects of this dilemma are plain to see, as emerging adults either leave the faith or shut themselves off to the findings of the scientific community. But it’s a false dilemma. In this book, Greg Cootsona argues against the idea that science and faith are inherently antagonistic. We don't have to keep them scrupulously separated—instead, we can bring them into dialogue with one another. Cootsona brings this integration to a number of current topics in science and faith conversations, including hermeneutics, the historical Adam and Eve, cognitive science, and the future of technology. His insights are enhanced by his work with Fuller Seminary's STEAM research project. Emerging adults want to believe that science and faith can coexist peacefully. Mere Science and Christian Faith holds out a vision for how that integration is possible and how it can lead us more deeply into the conversations around science and faith that confront the church today.

Since his election in 2013, Pope Francis has tackled many issues of urgent reform within the church. Mercy in Action explores Pope Francis's efforts to renewCatholic social teaching-the guidance the church offers on matters that pertain to social justice in the world. The book examines what Pope Francis has said, done, and written on six critical social issues today-economic inequality, worker justice, preserving the environment, healthy family life, the plight of refugees, and peacemaking. The book also highlights both continuity and change in Catholic social teaching. Author Thomas Massaro illustrates how on each social issue-from expressing solidarity with unemployed workers to writing an encyclical addressing environmental degradation and climate change-Pope Francis has worked to update the church's message of social justice and mercy.

Learn to leverage privilege. Privilege is a social consequence of our unwillingness to reckon with and turn from sin. But properly 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. Dominique DuBois Gilliard highlights several people in the Bible who understood this kingdom call. Through their stories, you will discover how to leverage privilege to: Resist Sin Stand in Solidarity with the Oppressed Birth Liberation Create Systemic Change Proclaim the Good News Generate Social Transformation By embodying Scripture's subversive call to leverage--and at times forsake--privilege, readers will learn to love their neighbors sacrificially, enact systemic change, and grow more Christlike as citizens of God's kingdom.

In Inherit the Holy Mountain, historian Mark Stoll introduces us to the religious roots of the American environmental movement. Religion, he shows, provided environmentalists both with deeply-embedded moral and cultural ways of viewing the world and with content, direction, and tone for the causes they espoused. Stoll discovers that specific denominational origins corresponded with characteristic sets of ideas about nature and the environment as well as distinctive aesthetic reactions to nature, as can be seen in key works of art analyzed throughout the book. Stoll also provides insight into the possible future of environmentalism in the United States, concluding with an examination of the current religious scene and what it portends for the future. By debunking the supposed divide between religion and American environmentalism, Inherit the Holy Mountain opens up a fundamentally new narrative in environmental studies.

"Freedom begins in the ear before it reaches the mouth." Every once in a while a book comes along that profoundly makes the most original thoughts immediately familiar. The Divine Voice is such a book. Stephen Webb challenges readers to take sound seriously. Not only did God's first "sounds" speak the world into being, but sound and voice have also played an undeniably central role in biblical revelation, prophetic proclamation, and the New Testament call to verbal witness. Webb goes on to make the surprising claim that the obligation of all Christians to witness to their faith is "inseparable from the need to acquire and practice the rhetorical skills of public speaking." While the very words "public speaking" might strike terror in many readers' hearts, Webb confronts the issues of stage fright and speaking disabilities head-on, pointing his readers to the biblical narratives concerning difficult speaking. The Divine Voice performs its own significant insight: the life of the pilgrim is not just a spatial journey, but is an audition of sorts, in which we take the Bible's words as our own. As Webb points out, the good news is that we've already been cast in the play. Now, we can embrace a life of witness by rehearsing and "inhabiting the sounds of faith." An indispensable book for preachers, students of homiletics, and all concerned to see (and hear) sound in new ways.

"It's not a process," one pastor insisted, "rehabilitation is a miracle." In the face of addiction and few state resources, Pentecostal pastors in Guatemala City are fighting what they understand to be a major crisis. Yet the treatment centers they operate produce this miracle of rehabilitation through extraordinary means: captivity. These men of faith snatch drug users off the streets, often at the request of family members, and then lock them up inside their centers for months, sometimes years. Hunted is based on more than ten years of fieldwork among these centers and the drug users that populate them. Over time, as Kevin Lewis O'Neill engaged both those in treatment and those who surveilled them, he grew increasingly concerned that he, too, had become a hunter, albeit one snatching up information. This thoughtful, intense book will reframe the arc of redemption we so often associate with drug rehabilitation, painting instead a seemingly endless cycle of hunt, capture, and release.

Climate change-related effects and aftermaths of natural disasters, such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, have wreaked havoc on local peoples' lives and livelihoods, especially in impoverished coastal communities. This book looks at local-level responses to the effects of climate change from the perspective of ecological theology and feminism, which provides a solution-based and gender-equitable approach to some of the problems of climate change. It examines how local social and religious action workers are partnering with local communities to transform and reconstruct their lives and livelihoods in the 21st century.

Why should Christians care about animals? Is there a biblical basis for abstaining from eating animals? Is avoiding companies that use (and misuse) animals a viable way for Christians to live out the message of God? Sarah Withrow King makes the argument that care for all of creation is no 'far-fetched' idea that only radical people would consider, but rather a faithful witness of the peaceful kingdom God desires and Jesus modelled. This includes all living and breathing creatures that share this earth with us. King uses her decade-plus of experience as a vegan, her seminary education, her evangelical Christian faith, and her years working with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to call Christians to examine how we treat and view the nonhuman animals with whom we share a finite planet.

Outreach Magazine Resource of the Year Foreword INDIES Award Finalist For a generation or so, society has tried to be colorblind. People say they don't see race. But this approach has limitations. In our broken world, ethnicity and racial identity are often points of pain and injustice. We can't ignore that God created us with our ethnic identities. We bring all of who we are, including our ethnicity and cultural background, to our identity and work as God's ambassadors. Ethnicity and evangelism specialist Sarah Shin reveals how our brokenness around ethnicity can be restored and redeemed, for our own wholeness and also for the good of others. When we experience internal transformation in our ethnic journeys, God propels us outward in a reconciling witness to the world. Ethnic healing can demonstrate God's power and goodness and bring good news to others. Showing us how to make space for God's healing of our ethnic stories, Shin helps us grow in our crosscultural skills, manage crosscultural conflict, pursue reconciliation and justice, and share the gospel as ethnicity-aware Christians. Jesus offers hope for healing, both for ourselves and for society. Discover how your ethnic story can be transformed for compelling witness and mission.

Illustrates the hidden challenges embedded within the evangelical adoption movement. For over a decade, prominent leaders and organizations among American Evangelicals have spent a substantial amount of time and money in an effort to address what they believe to be the "Orphan Crisis" of the United States. Yet, despite an expansive commitment of resources, there is no reliable evidence that these efforts have been successful. Adoptions are declining across the board, and both foster parenting and foster-adoptions remain steady. Why have evangelical mobilization efforts been so ineffective? To answer this question, Samuel L. Perry draws on interviews with over 220 movement leaders and grassroots families, as well as national data on adoption and fostering, to show that the problem goes beyond orphan care. Perry argues that evangelical social engagement is fundamentally self-limiting and difficult to sustain because their subcultural commitments lock them into an approach that does not work on a practical level. Growing God's Family ultimately reveals this peculiar irony within American evangelicalism by exposing how certain aspects of the evangelical subculture may stimulate activism to address social problems, even while these same subcultural characteristics undermine their own strategic effectiveness. It provides the most recent analysis of dominant elements within the evangelical subculture and how that subculture shapes the engagement strategies of evangelicals as a group.