Christians Against Christianity

Christians Against Christianity
Author: Obery M. Hendricks, Jr.
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2021-07-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0807057401

A timely and galvanizing work that examines how right-wing evangelical Christians have veered from an admirable faith to a pernicious, destructive ideology. Today’s right-wing Evangelical Christianity stands as the very antithesis of the message of Jesus Christ. In his new book, Christians Against Christianity, best-selling author and religious scholar Obery M. Hendricks Jr. challenges right-wing evangelicals on the terrain of their own religious claims, exposing the falsehoods, contradictions, and misuses of the Bible that are embedded in their rabid homophobia, their poorly veiled racism and demonizing of immigrants and Muslims, and their ungodly alliance with big business against the interests of American workers. He scathingly indicts the religious leaders who helped facilitate the rise of the notoriously unchristian Donald Trump, likening them to the “court jesters” and hypocritical priestly sycophants of bygone eras who unquestioningly supported their sovereigns’ every act, no matter how hateful or destructive to those they were supposed to serve. In the wake of the deadly insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol, Christians Against Christianity is a clarion call to stand up to the hypocrisy of the evangelical Right, as well as a guide for Christians to return their faith to the life-affirming message that Jesus brought and died for. What Hendricks offers is a provocative diagnosis, an urgent warning that right-wing evangelicals’ aspirations for Christian nationalist supremacy are a looming threat, not only to Christian decency but to democracy itself. What they offer to America is anything but good news.

Is God anti-gay?

Is God anti-gay?
Author: Sam Allberry
Publisher: The Good Book Company
Total Pages: 85
Release: 2013-07-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1909559318

A practical and sensitive exploration of the Bible's teaching on homosexuality. A practical and sensitive exploration of the Bible's teaching on homosexuality. It's the hot topic of the moment. Christians, the church and the Bible seem to be out of step with modern attitudes towards homosexuality. And there is growing hostility towards those who hold a different view to the culture's. So is God homophobic? And how do we relate to both Christians and non-Christians who experience same-sex attraction? In this short, simple book, Sam Allberry wants to help confused Christians understand what God has said about these questions in the scriptures. Drawing on his own experience, he offers a positive and liberating way forward through the debate. This revised and updated version includes answers to some new questions, including: * Should Christians attend gay weddings? * Isn't the Christian view of sexuality dangerous and harmful? * Is it sinful to experience same-sex attraction?

Recommendation Whether to Confiscate, Destroy, and Burn All Jewish Books

Recommendation Whether to Confiscate, Destroy, and Burn All Jewish Books
Author: Johann Reuchlin
Publisher: Paulist Press
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2000
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780809139729

While he was condemned himself for his stand, the book opened the eyes of scholars and political leaders to the need to understand and appreciate the wealth of religious truth and insight in the Talmud and other works. Reuchlin did not stop anti-Semitism in the Reformation by either Catholics or Protestants, but he stemmed the advance of those vowed to wipe Judaism out in Europe and began the long, slow movement in the West to appreciate and learn what Judaism really was."--BOOK JACKET.

Against the Galilaeans

Against the Galilaeans
Author: Juilan the Apostate
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-04-20
Genre:
ISBN: 9781915645197

Against the Galileans (where "Galileans" meant the followers of the man from Galilee, or Christians) was written by the last pagan Emperor of Rome, Flavius Claudius Julianus, who lived from 331-363 AD, as part of his attempts to reverse the Empire's conversion to Christianity started by Emperor Constantine in 313 AD. This work was acknowledged by one of Julian's greatest critics, Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria, as one of the most powerful books of its sort ever written. Even though Cyril was Patriarch nearly 90 years after Julian's death, he was motivated to write a refutation titled Contra Iulianum ("Against Julian"). For more than 200 years, Julian's book remained the standard criticism of Christianity. Finally, in an attempt to suppress the work, the Emperor Justinian I (527-565) ordered all copies of the book destroyed. As a result, the only record of Julian's book remained in the parts quoted from in it in Cyril's criticism. It was only more than 1,200 years later that the English classical scholar Thomas Taylor (1758-1835) first translated Cyril's work into English-and from that, attempted a reconstruction of Julian's book based on Julian's quotes from Cyril's work. Taylor titled this manuscript "The Arguments of the Emperor Julian against the Christians, translated from the Greek fragments preserved from the Greek fragments preserved by Cyril Bishop of Alexandria, to which are added, Extracts from the other works of Julian relative to the Christians" and privately published his reconstruction in 1809 for a very limited circle of friends. Taylor's reconstruction was finally published for a larger audience by William Nevis in 1873. This new edition contains the full Taylor reconstruction, along with his original appendices. From 1913 to 1923, British-American classical philologist and Professor of Greek at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, Wilmer Cave Wright, retranslated all of Julian's works. Wright included a new translation of the exact quotes only from Julian, as reproduced by Cyril, and some other remaining fragments. Wright's original manuscript is also included in this new edition, making it to be the most complete reconstruction of Julian's book ever printed.

Against Christianity

Against Christianity
Author: Peter J. Leithart
Publisher: Canon Press & Book Service
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2003
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1591280060

How could a conservative Christian-an ordained minister with a beard, no less-be against not only Christianity, but theology, sacraments, and ethics as well? Yet that is the stance Peter Leithart takes in this provocative "theological bricolage." Seeking to rethink evangelical notions of culture, church, and state, Leithart offers a series of short essays, aphorisms, and parables that challenge the current dichotomies that govern both Christian and non- Christian thinking about church and state, the secular and the religious. But his argument isn't limited to being merely "against." Leithart reveals a much larger vision of Christian society, defined by the stories, symbols, rituals, and rules of a renewed community-the city of God.

Lost Christianities

Lost Christianities
Author: Bart D. Ehrman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2005-09-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199756686

The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs. Some groups of Christians claimed that there was not one God but two or twelve or thirty. Some believed that the world had not been created by God but by a lesser, ignorant deity. Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human. In Lost Christianities, Bart D. Ehrman offers a fascinating look at these early forms of Christianity and shows how they came to be suppressed, reformed, or forgotten. All of these groups insisted that they upheld the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, and they all possessed writings that bore out their claims, books reputedly produced by Jesus's own followers. Modern archaeological work has recovered a number of key texts, and as Ehrman shows, these spectacular discoveries reveal religious diversity that says much about the ways in which history gets written by the winners. Ehrman's discussion ranges from considerations of various "lost scriptures"--including forged gospels supposedly written by Simon Peter, Jesus's closest disciple, and Judas Thomas, Jesus's alleged twin brother--to the disparate beliefs of such groups as the Jewish-Christian Ebionites, the anti-Jewish Marcionites, and various "Gnostic" sects. Ehrman examines in depth the battles that raged between "proto-orthodox Christians"--those who eventually compiled the canonical books of the New Testament and standardized Christian belief--and the groups they denounced as heretics and ultimately overcame. Scrupulously researched and lucidly written, Lost Christianities is an eye-opening account of politics, power, and the clash of ideas among Christians in the decades before one group came to see its views prevail.

When God Spoke Greek

When God Spoke Greek
Author: Timothy Michael Law
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2013-08-15
Genre: Bibles
ISBN: 0199781729

Most readers do not know about the Bible used almost universally by early Christians, or about how that Bible was birthed, how it grew to prominence, and how it differs from the one used as the basis for most modern translations. Although it was one of the most important events in the history of our civilization, the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the third century BCE is an event almost unknown outside of academia. Timothy Michael Law offers the first book to make this topic accessible to a wider audience. Retrospectively, we can hardly imagine the history of Christian thought, and the history of Christianity itself, without the Old Testament. When the Emperor Constantine adopted the Christian faith, his fusion of the Church and the State ensured that the Christian worldview (which by this time had absorbed Jewish ideals that had come to them through the Greek translation) would leave an imprint on subsequent history. This book narrates in a fresh and exciting way the story of the Septuagint, the Greek Scriptures of the ancient Jewish Diaspora that became the first Christian Old Testament.

The Case Against Miracles

The Case Against Miracles
Author: John W. Loftus
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-11-22
Genre:
ISBN: 9781839193064

For as long as the idea of "miracles" has been in the public sphere, the conversation about them has been shaped exclusively by religious apologists and Christian leaders. The definitions for what a miracles are have been forged by the same men who fought hard to promote their own beliefs as fitting under that umbrella. It's time for a change. Enter John W. Loftus, an atheist author who has earned three master's degrees from Lincoln Christian Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Loftus, a former student of noted Christian apologist William Lane Craig, got some of the biggest names in the field to contribute to this book, which represents a critical analysis of the very idea of miracles. Incorporating his own thoughts along with those of noted academics, philosophers, and theologians, Loftus is able to properly define "miracle" and then show why there's no reason to believe such a thing even exists. Addressing every single issue that touches on miracles in a thorough and academic manner, this compilation represents the most extensive look at the phenomenon ever displayed through the lens of an ardent nonbeliever. If you've ever wondered exactly what a miracle is, or doubted whether they exist, then this book is for you.