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Showing posts with the label Christianity

THE KINGDOM, the POWER, and THE GLORY: AMERICAN EVANGELICALS in an AGE of EXTREMISM (audiobook) by Tim Alberta

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Published by HarperAudio in December of 2023. Read by the author, Tim Alberta. Duration: 18 hours, 16 minutes. Unabridged. Tim Alberta is a writer for The Atlantic and also an Evangelical. He grew up in the faith, but is very troubled by the tendency towards Christian Nationalism. He was inspired to write this book after an incident at his father's funeral at the church he grew up in.  Alberta embarked on a cross-country exploration of the intersection of Evangelicals and politics at Christian Nationalism - and how this combination is changing Evangelicals and they way they are perceived. Alberta does not come at this as an outsider. As I already noted, he grew up in the church - and still belongs to a church. To me, this is important. I read another book with a similar theme ( The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism ) that just didn't hit the right tone and answer the right questions because the author was coming from the outside. She didn

ON GETTING OUT of BED: THE BURDEN and GIFT of LIVING (audiobook) by Alan Noble

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  Published in April of 2003 by  Christianaudio.com Alan Noble is a college professor and a Christian writer who writes for Christian and non-Christian publications.  He also struggles with a mental illness that he does not identify in this short book. This book is all about dealing with the depression and struggles that come with mental illness, thus the title. Noble's powerful description of overwhelming depression demonstrates that he understands the issue and how it effects people well. This is important because it shows that he is coming from a place of understanding and that is vitally important. His advice is not easy advice, but it is realistic advice. One of my relatives was advised by well-meaning church members that the best way to deal with depression and suicidal ideation was prayer for God to help with these thoughts. I cannot stress enough that this was sincerely intended to be helpful advice, it was taken as, "If you only had enough faith, God would lift this

THE GREAT DECHURCHING: WHO'S LEAVING, WHY ARE THEY GOING, and WHAT WILL IT TAKE to BRING THEM BACK? (audiobook) by Jim Davis and Michael Graham with Ryan P. Burge.

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Published by Zondervan in August of 2013. Read by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan P. Burge. Duration: 7 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. America's church members are dropping out of church at a record pace - millions upon millions over the last 2 decades and, according to the stats, the only thing that will slow the pace is the fact that Christianity in America will be so much smaller that it will statistically impossible to lose so many people without completely emptying the pews. The authors started out to identify a number of things such as: a) Who is leaving - is it the old, the young, the middle-aged? b) Who is staying? c) Why are they leaving? Is it toxic politics? Sex scandals? Abuse? Lost interest? No connection? d) Will they be willing to come back? What would it take? This book draws heavily from a religious attitude survey administered by Baylor University from time to time. I recently r ead another book on Christian Nationalism that used the same surveys and these boo

TAKING AMERICA BACK for GOD: CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM in the UNITED STATES (audiobook) by Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry

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Published by Tantor Audio in 2020. Read by Tom Parks. Duration: 6 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. Whitehead and Perry are the first sociologists who set out to do an in-depth study of Christian Nationalism and Christian Nationalists. Whitehead (Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis) and Perry (University of Oklahoma) both hail from states where Christian Nationalism plays a strong role in the political and cultural realms. First, you need a working definition of Christian Nationalism. Whitehead describes it as:    "a cultural framework that is all about trying to advocate for a fusion between Christianity — as they define it — and American civic life." I also like this description by a completely unrelated person,  Rev. Skye Jethani :  "Christians participating in politics or influencing society with their values is NOT Christian Nationalism.  Christians believing they have a God-given right to dominate the government & society by excluding & dimin

PATHOGENESIS: A HISTORY of the WORLD in EIGHT PLAGUES (audiobook) by Jonathan Kennedy

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  Published by Random House Audio in April of 2023. Read by the author, Jonathan Kennedy. Duration: 9 hours, 23 minutes. Unabridged. Kennedy presents a compelling argument that disease has had a profound impact on world history by just telling a history of Europe from the days of cavemen up until now. The first 45 minutes or so of this audiobook seemed to be wandering around and not going anywhere, but Kennedy was laying a strong foundation for the rest of the book. The book makes it painfully obvious that humanity has bounced from one biological disaster to another. Humanity has adapted (either by behavior - like building sanitation systems to deal with body waste to control cholera) or biologically by simply having a large body count until those with immunity can rebuild (the Black Plague is a prime example.) Kennedy persuasively argues that infection and disease helped the rise of Christianity, the rise of Islam, the end of feudalism, the rise of capitalism, and the European conques

THE POWER WORSHIPPERS: INSIDE the DANGEROUS RISE of RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM (audiobook) by Katherine Stewart

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  Published by Bloomsbury Publishing LLC. Read by Tosca Hoskins. Duration: 11 hours, 26 minutes. Unabridged. The book is a detailed look at the Christian Nationalist movement in America. The strength of the book is its meticulous research. It ties together famous names and organizations with less famous names pulling the strings through not-for-profits and political action committees across the country. The author, Katherine Stewart I come to this book as a lifelong, politically aware Christian. I vote, I read about politics and religion, I post about politics and religion and I listen to podcasts that discuss politics and religion. That being said, I am all for keeping politics and religion separate because politics taints and corrupts religion every time and twists it into something it is not meant to be. The book does have its weaknesses, though. One is that the author, Katherine Stewart, does have some degree of anti-religious bias. She is really bothered by religious groups rentin

LOSING OUR RELIGION: AN ALTAR CALL for EVANGELICAL AMERICA (audiobook) by Russell Moore

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  Published in 2023 by Penguin Audio in July of 2023. Read by the author, Russell Moore. Duration: 6 hours, 46 minutes. Unabridged. Russell Moore is currently a theologian for the magazine Christianity Today , but he is more famous for being one of the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) for the last 20 years - both as a professor and at the national level. He's also a prolific author and very media friendly. In many ways, Moore was the perfect media face for the Southern Baptist Convention - smart, likable, pleasant and often funny. But, he butted heads on a variety of topics with the rest of the leadership. He was against gay conversion therapy and he wanted the SBC to listen to women who accused men in church leadership of sexual abuse. He especially wanted Southern Baptists to talk about racism and its complicity in upholding Jim Crow laws and distance themselves from Confederate symbols like the flag.  The biggest thing they disagreed about and the thing that rea

THE MAKING of BIBLICAL WOMANHOOD: HOW the SUBJUGATION of WOMEN BECAME GOSPEL TRUTH (audiobook) by Beth Allison Barr

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  Published by Christianaudio.com in 2021. Read by Sarah Zimmerman. Duration: 7 hours, 26 minutes. Unabridged. Beth Allison Barr is a professor of medieval and church history at Baylor University. She has written a lot about women in the medieval world. She is also an evangelical Christian and a youth pastor's wife. This puts her in a rather unique position to comment on the role of women in the evangelical church and topics like complementarianism in the more conservative churches. Complementarianism is a church teaching that men and women have very distinct roles in family life, marriage, and the church. These roles are distinct, but of equal value, but men are given leadership roles. In more conservative churches, women are never put into any sort of leadership roles over men. They will not be pastors. They will not lead a board. They won't even teach older boys or men in Sunday school. In some interpretations, they will not teach men or older boys any topic at all. The more

RED LETTER REVOLUTION: WHAT IF JESUS REALLY MEANT WHAT HE SAID? by Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo

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  Published in 2012 by Thomas Nelson. Very simply put, the two authors are advocates of Christians focusing their attention of the Red Letter verses in the Bible and endeavoring to live their lives by those verses. If you are not familiar, since 1899 some publishers have decided to print the words of Jesus in red ink. Claiborne and Campolo have decided to take those words very seriously - Jesus is the model of how they try to live.  This emphasis on the Red Letters means that their version of Christianity has a lot of emphasis on verses like Matthew 25: 31-46: 3 1   When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:   32   And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:   33   And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.   34   Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye bles

WHITE EVANGELICAL RACISM: THE POLITICS of MORALITY in AMERICA (audiobook) by Anthea Butler

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  Published by Tantor Audio in 2021. Read by Allyson Johnson. Duration: 3 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. This book takes a short look at how the people that refer to themselves as Evangelicals and their forebears have dealt with race over time. An interracial marriage protest. The signs claim that interracial marriage is Communist and a sign of the anti-Christ. The book starts with the justifications that religious leaders used to defend slavery. After the Civil War, they modified those justifications slightly to defend the Jim Crow system. Butler contends that the Evangelical movements in the 1900's were worried about things like Communism, but it usually had a racial overtone to it - like when Martin Luther King was accused of spreading Communism to Black communities all over the country when he was just asking for the rights that White Americans already had. The heart of her book is about Billy Graham and what she calls out as a wishy-washy approach to racism. I am a bit more fo

TEN CAESARS: ROMAN EMPERORS from AUGUSTUS to CONSTANTINE (audiobook) by Barry Strauss

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  Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2019. Read by Arthur Morey. Duration: 12 hours, 52 minutes. Unabridged. Barry Strauss is a professor of the history of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. As the title clearly says, Strauss tells his reader/listeners about what he judges to be the ten most important Roman emperors and ends up telling a decent political history of the Roman Empire along the way. Bronze statue erected c.175 AD of  Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD), one of the Roman Emperors featured in  this book. When I say he chose the ten most important emperors, that doesn't mean he chose the ten best emperors. He has more than one emperor that demonstrates how a bad leader can abuse the political consensus, damage the political system, and leave a lot of confusion in his/her wake. But, change is not necessarily a bad thing - especially when handled by talented leaders like Augustus and Constantine.  This was an interesting listen and well-read by Arthur Morey. I did enjoy how

LITTLE RICHARD: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

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Published by Hourly History in January of 2023. Hourly History  publishes histories and biographies that you can read in about an hour. That can be a tough job for big topics in history like "The Industrial Revolution" or "The Roman Empire" but it is just about right for a short biography.  Little Richard (1932-2020) was an early rock and roll singer with a series of top 40 hits from 1956-1958, including songs like "Tutti Frutti", "Lucille," and "Long Tall Sally." His style was raucous and loud compared to most singers, except maybe for Jerry Lee Lewis. He also was one of the first black artists to cross over to white audiences.   Unlike most singers from that era, Little Richard never really disappeared from the public eye. He had a series of comebacks and kept on showing up with comeback tours, songs on movie soundtracks, live greatest hits albums and TV and movie appearances.  Little Richard was known as a flamboyant showman. He wore