It's time for everyone who cares about the state of our nation to heed the call and join forces to redeem the soul of America. It's time to come together and renounce the politics of rejection, division, and greed. It's time to lift up the common good, move up to higher ground, and revive the heart of democracy. In a single, rousing sermon, the celebrated Reverend William J. Barber II of the Poor People's Campaign makes an impassioned argument whose message could not be clearer: It's time for change, and the time needs you.

"I no sooner perceived myself in the world," wrote English philosopher John Locke, "than I found myself in a storm." The storm of which Locke spoke was the maelstrom of religious fanaticism and intolerance that was tearing apart the social fabric of European society. His response was A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), arguably the most important defense of religious freedom in the Western tradition. In God, Locke, and Liberty: The Struggle for Religious Freedom in the West, historian Joseph Loconte offers a groundbreaking study of Locke's Letter, challenging the notion that decisive arguments for freedom of conscience appeared only after the onset of the secular Enlightenment. Loconte argues that Locke's vision of a tolerant and pluralistic society was based on a radical reinterpretation of the life and teachings of Jesus. In this, Locke drew great strength from an earlier religious reform movement, namely, the Christian humanist tradition. Like no thinker before him, Locke forged an alliance between liberal political theory and a gospel of divine mercy. God, Locke, and Liberty suggests how a better understanding of Locke's political theology could calm the storms of religious violence that once again threaten international peace and security. To read an interview with the author about the book on Patheos.com, see here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2015/01/10/under-locke-and-key/

The author presents a theoretical-practical training manual with effective tools for everyone, especially counselors to improve their spiritual growth. The Speed Method, integrating Lonergan's theory with the practice of counseling, becomes a concrete opportunity in view of a new spiritual springtime for the Church and human care.

In this book Peter Sedgwick explores the relation of a theology of justice to that of human identity in the context of the market economy. He focuses on three main themes: how the market economy shapes personal identity, through consumption and the experience of paid employment in relation to the work ethic; the impact of the global economy on local cultures; and the effects of technology and global competition on poverty. Sedgwick recommends that the churches remain part of the debate in reforming and humanising the market economy.

Highly regarded preacher and teacher Bryan Chapell shows readers how he has prepared expository sermons according to the principles he developed in his bestselling "Christ-Centered Preaching." This companion volume provides concrete examples of how a redemptive approach to Scripture is fleshed out in various types of sermons and various genres of the Bible. The example sermons not only demonstrate different approaches but also are analyzed for pedagogical purposes, helping readers move from theory to practice. In essence, the book allows students and preachers to look over Chapell's shoulder as he prepares these messages to learn how to construct their own expository sermons that communicate grace and truth from both the Old and New Testaments.

The good news about injustice is that God is against it. God is in the business of using the unlikely to bring about justice and mercy. In Good News About Injustice, Gary Haugen offers stories of courageous Christians who have stood up for justice in the face of human trafficking, forced prostitution, racial and religious persecution, and torture. Throughout he provides concrete guidance on how ordinary Christians can rise up to seek justice throughout the world. This landmark work, featuring newly updated statistics, is now part of the IVP Signature Collection, which features special editions of iconic books in celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of InterVarsity Press. A five-session companion Bible study is also available.

Attitudes towards divorce have changed considerably over the past two centuries. As society has moved away from a Biblical definition of marriage as an indissoluble union, to that of an individual and personal relationship, secular laws have evolved as well. Using unpublished sources and previously inaccessible private collections, Holmes explores the significant role the Church of England has played in these changes, as well as the impact this has had on ecclesiastical policies. This timely study will be relevant to ongoing debates about the meaning and nature of marriage, including the theological doctrines and ecclesiastical policies underlying current debates on same-sex marriage.

Faith to Foster is a candid look into the life of ordinary foster parents TJ and Jenn Menn. It is a journey chronicling their decision making process, how the children arrived, the birth parents struggle to rehabilitate, help from friends and family, emotional goodbyes, and how faith in Jesus empowered them through it all. This is a story they wished they'd read before starting their foster parenting adventure. TJ and Jenn share their experiences and feelings in a way that encourages any reader to serve their neighbors, not just foster parents. Faith to Foster reminds Christians how God can use them to make a difference in their community.

During the early twentieth century in China, a number of key economic leaders converted to Christianity. Whilst strongly influenced by cultural heritage, powerful modernizing forces and tumultuous political changes, the new Christian identity inculcated by Protestant missionaries motivated these entrepreneurs to modify their business practices, improve their social environment and extend the influence of Christianity. Protestant and Catholic sojourners likewise made significant contributions into their adopted communities. With unprecedented economic growth in China today, a fascinating contemporary parallel can be seen, particularly through the influence of Pentecostal, charismatic and evangelical training. Previous research has explored the emergence of the urban Christian lite in modern China. However, this systematic study provides new understanding of how Christian identity motivates Chinese business Christians toward economic, social and religious contribution.

Every year, an estimated 1.6 million Americans participate in short-term mission trips, spending over one billion dollars figures that have increased exponentially in the last two decades. About one third of U.S. congregations sponsor such trips each year. While they are referred to as mission trips, many trips focus not on conversion or evangelism, but on service projects building a playground, providing medical care, or serving free meals to the poor. Short-term mission participants have a genuine desire to transform conditions of poverty, yet they don't always know how to go about it; many people involved in short-term mission work virtually reinvent the wheel when they design and plan their service projects. Here is a guide for leaders of such trips presenting clear insight and research from anthropologists and development professionals that will help them have a greater impact on the communities they are serving. The framework for planning short-term mission trips outlined here provides a firm foundation for maximizing their effectiveness. Laurie A. Occhipinti draws in her reader with personal anecdotes, using case studies to illustrate her points, and engages them with thoughtful analysis of the work that is done during short-term missions. Filled with practical suggestions for creating effective volunteer opportunities, this handbook is a vital resource for any potential mission volunteer."

Taking inspiration from the Spanish word for retirement--jubilacion-- veteran minister Bruce Epperly challenges and empowers clergy to see retirement as a celebration of new possibilities and not an inexorable diminishment towards irrelevance. Similar in spirit to the Jubilee year described in scripture, retirement can be a time of transformation and exploration, of freedom to try on new versions of yourself and new paths of service. In that spirit, clergy can embrace creative transformation in their relationships, neighborhoods, religious communities, and politics. No longer tethered to the politics and administrative duties of congregational leadership, they can now freely commit themselves to relational, intellectual, and spiritual growth. They can also focus on personal, community, and planetary healing and transformation. Retired clergy can become sages and wisdom givers sharing their insights and energy with seminarians and novice pastors, congregations, and communities. Bringing together the fruits of conversations with more than 100 retired clergy, theological reflection, and spiritual practices, this text provides a way forward for clergy considering retirement and retired clergy. Based on interviews from persons from diverse denominations, theological perspectives, and ethnic and racial backgrounds, this text garners wisdom from pastors on their retirement journeys, from personal preparation and public announcement to first steps following retirement and long-term adventures.

"The first step in the reconciliation process," Spencer Perkins writes, "is admitting that the race problem exists and that our inability to deal with race has weakened the credibility of our gospel." When longtime ministry partners and friends Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice began writing More Than Equals in the early 1990s, their goal was to offer an example of how racial reconciliation is possible-and also critical to Christian discipleship. This landmark book tells the stories of two men from very different backgrounds embarking on the complex, costly journey of healing across racial divides. Perkins, who witnessed repeated hypocrisy from white Christians and witnessed his bloodied pastor-activist father after a brutal police beating, wondered how it was possible to love white people. Rice, who grew up as a white missionary kid and thought of himself as progressive, was surprised by the tensions he encountered as a volunteer at a majority-black church-and by his own blind spots. As they served together in an intentionally multiracial ministry, both gained insight into why this work is so challenging and how Christians can do it well, in dependence on God. With biblical grounding, hopeful realism, and practical detail, More Than Equals provides a helpful framework for Christians engaged in the deep ongoing surgery of racial healing. Now available as part of the IVP Signature Collection, this edition includes a new preface by Rice and a study guide for group discussion.

The global crisis of forced displacement is growing every year. At the same time, Western Christians' sympathy toward refugees is increasingly overshadowed by concerns about personal and national security, economics, and culture. We urgently need a perspective that understands both Scripture and current political realities and that can be applied at the levels of the church, the nation, and the globe. In Refuge Reimagined, Mark R. Glanville and Luke Glanville offer a new approach to compassion for displaced people: a biblical ethic of kinship. God's people, they argue, are consistently called to extend kinship-a mutual responsibility and solidarity-to those who are marginalized and without a home. Drawing on their respective expertise in Old Testament studies and international relations, the two brothers engage a range of disciplines to demonstrate how this ethic is consistently conveyed throughout the Bible and can be practically embodied today. Glanville and Glanville apply the kinship ethic to issues such as the current mission of the church, national identity and sovereignty, and possibilities for a cooperative global response to the refugee crisis. Challenging the fear-based ethic that often motivates Christian approaches, they envision a more generous, creative, and hopeful way forward. Refuge Reimagined will equip students, activists, and anyone interested in refugee issues to understand the biblical model for communities and how it can transform our world.

In the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Fuller Seminary theologian William Pannell decried the sentiment among white evangelicals that racism was no longer an urgent matter. In The Coming Race Wars? he meticulously unpacked reasons why our nation-and the church-needed to come to terms with our complicity in America's racial transgressions before we face a more dire reckoning. Pannell was among a small number of Black evangelical leaders at the time who called the evangelical church to account on issues of racial justice. Now, nearly thirty years later, his words are as timely as ever. Some would even argue that the "race war" he predicted has arrived. In The Coming Race Wars: A Cry for Justice, from Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter, Pannell revisits his provocative book with an expanded edition that connects its message to current events. With a new introduction by bestselling historian Jemar Tisby and a new afterword by Pannell, this compelling, heartfelt plea to the church will help today's readers take a deeper look at the complexities of institutional racism and the unjust systems that continue to confound us. This new edition of The Coming Race Wars will inspire you to open your eyes wider, discover a more holistic view of Christ's gospel, and become an active participant in addressing America's racial injustices.

This is a major contribution to scholarly debates on the chronology and nature of secularization in modern Britain. Combining historical and social scientific insights, it analyses a range of statistical evidence for the 'long 1950s', testing (and largely rejecting) Callum Brown's claims that there was a religious resurgence during this period.

How is theology liberating? In this post-Gorbachev world in which many demand freedom, and which the West seems ill-equipped to deliver, can we even envisage a liberative theology? Taking as his starting point the Marxist complaint that Christianity is ideological, Dr Scott argues that it is not enough for Christian theology to talk about liberation. It must be liberative. Stressing with feminist and liberation theologies the embodied, contextual nature of theology, the constructive proposal made here locates God's liberating abundance towards society in an interpretation of resurrection as social. Only in this way can a trinitarian Christian account of liberation be adequately grounded. This study will be of interest to those who wish to know if theology may speak truthfully about the transformation of society. In a period of crisis and hope, the book offers the shape of a liberative theology that might nerve Christian practice towards social freedom.

"Let every student be plainly instructed . . . to consider well the main end of . . . life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life . . . and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning." -Harvard College Laws, 1642 There was a time when Harvard was considered a holy place and Princeton trained prophets, when students and professors could not help but pray because there were certain questions that could only be answered by an Intellect greater than our own. There was a time when student leaders galvanized campus movements, when young revolutionaries defied the status quo of their generation and engaged in sacrificial service that reshaped society and transformed culture. There was a time . . . God on Campus traces a remarkable legacy of spiritual awakening that stretches from the founding of the earliest colleges in the United States to a global movement of nonstop student prayer spreading across campuses today. "This is a book to help you remember your roots," Trent Sheppard writes, "ordinary people like you and me--bold and timid, brilliant and insecure, disillusioned and dangerous, ambitious and naive, holy and fallen, fearless and afraid--people who prayed, people who conspired together with their friends in faith and action, people who believed their lives could actually help shape the unfolding narrative of history." From the establishment of early American campuses during the Great Awakening to the rapidly spreading collegiate movements of the twenty-first century, Sheppard shows how students can integrate their passion in prayer with practical Christ-like living in culture. "The goal," he explains, "is not for us to abandon our studies in economics or education and all become preachers instead. The goal is to live like Jesus in the very soul of society." Culminating in a movement to mobilize prayer on every college and university campus in the United States throughout 2010, God on Campus is an invitation for students to find their place in the story of God today.

This book gathers the voices of four local Hong Kong theologians to reflect on the 2014 democracy protests in the city from the perspectives of Catholic social teaching, feminist and queer intersectionality, Protestant liberation, and textual exegesis. The volume also includes an extended primer on Hong Kong politics to aid readers as they reflect on the theology underlying the democracy protests. September 28, 2014 is known as the day that political consciousness in Hong Kong began to shift. As police fired eighty-seven volleys of tear gas at protesters demanding "genuine universal suffrage" in Hong Kong, the movement (termed the "Umbrella Movement") ignited a polarizing set of debates over civil disobedience, government collusion with private interests, and democracy. The Umbrella Movement was also a theological watershed moment, a time for religious reflection. This book analyzes the role that religion played in shaping the course of this historic movement.