There are twenty-seven books in the traditional New Testament, but the early-Christian community was far more vibrant than that small number might lead you to think. In fact, many more scriptures were written and were just as important as the New Testament in shaping early-Christian communities and beliefs. Over the past century, many of those texts that were lost have been found and translated, yet they are rarely read in contemporary churches; they are discussed mainly by scholars or within a context only of gnostic gospels. In A New New Testament Hal Taussig seeks to change that.

A new kind of Christianity is emerging at the grass roots. Full of heart-felt expression, artistic creativity, and liberal social values, progressive churches and small Christian communities have established themselves across the denominational spectrum. Reporting on a national research study that undercuts the impression that right-wing Christianity is the only new development on the contemporary American religious landscape, Hal Taussig identifies thousands of progressive churches and para-churches and describes five characteristics of this new movement. He then proceeds to analyze its blind spots, project its future, and suggest how to start a progressive church

What difference does scholarship on the historical Jesus make for the way we think about the meaning of Christian faith in the twenty-first century? In "The Historical Jesus Goes To Church, biblical scholars--Fellows of the Jesus Seminar--speak directly to the ways in which new knowledge of the Jesus of history requires and enables us to think differently about the significance of Jesus and about the reliability and authority of the Bible. They also imagine what these new understandings imply for public worship, preaching, prayer and practice, and life in community. These articles evoke the spirit of Paul, Christianity's first theologian, who like us found himself standing at the intersection of two eras and knew that he had to let go of his past if he hoped to have a future.