Dispensational Modernism

Dispensational Modernism
Author: B. M. Pietsch
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190244089

Dispensational Modernism reexamines the origins of dispensationalism in early American fundamentalism, emphasizing the role of scientific rhetoric and engineering methods in developing new methods for interpreting the Bible and understanding the nature of time.

J.N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism

J.N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism
Author: Crawford Gribben
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2024-03-08
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0190932341

John Nelson Darby is best known as the architect of the most influential system of end-times thinking among the world's half-a-billion evangelicals. This book re-examines Darby's thought and argues that claims that Darby is the father of dispensationalism may need to be revised.

A Short History of Christian Zionism

A Short History of Christian Zionism
Author: Donald M. Lewis
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2021-08-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0830846980

Christian Zionism influences global politics, especially U.S. foreign policy, and has deeply affected Jewish–Christian and Muslim–Christian relations. With a fair-minded, longitudinal study of this dynamic yet controversial movement, Donald M. Lewis traces its lineage from biblical sources through the Reformation to various movements of today.

Old-Time Religion Embracing Modernist Culture

Old-Time Religion Embracing Modernist Culture
Author: Douglas Carl Abrams
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2016-12-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498545068

Old-Time Religion Embracing Modernist Culture focuses on the founding generation of American fundamentalism in the 1920s and 1930s and their interactions with modernity. While there were culture wars, there was also an embrace. Through a book culture, fostered by liberal Protestants, and thriving periodicals, they strengthened their place in American culture and their adaptation helps explain their resilience in the decades to come. The most significant adaptation to modernist culture was the embrace of the modern, secular university as a model for evangelical higher education. After political battles along sectarian lines in the twenties, fundamentalists learned to compete in a pluralist society. By the thirties they were among the strongest supporters of Jews and began working with Catholics to fight communism. In politics and higher education they encountered issues of race, gender, and class. While opposing higher critics of the Bible, their approaches to texts were in some cases similar: a focus on the original languages, commitment to scholarship, ambiguities about both the role of reason and the interpretation of key doctrines. Several had graduate training, some even in European universities. With their views of end times, they continued innovative approaches to prophetic texts from nineteenth-century dispensationalists. In response to evolution and prophetic texts, in a time-conscious age, they also had innovative ideas about biblical time. Fundamentalists engaged in debate with Freud and, while rejecting his ideas, absorbed elements of psychology. Some understood William James’ effort to accommodate religion and modern ideas. Although rejecting John Dewey’s pragmatism, fundamentalists found value in studying modern philosophy. They tapped a secular, Enlightenment philosophy to defend their supernatural Christianity. Between the wars they even participated in the interest in Nietzsche. Usually dismissed as fractious, they rose above core differences and cooperated among themselves across denominational lines in building organizations. In doing so, they reflected both the ecumenism of the liberal Protestants and the organizational impulse in modern urban, industrial society. This study, the first to focus on the founding generation, also covers a broad spectrum of fundamentalists, from the Northeast, Midwest, the South, and the West Coast, including some often overlooked by other historians

God's Word and Our Words

God's Word and Our Words
Author: W. Hulitt Gloer
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2019-09-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532646097

Written by nationally and internationally known homileticians and preachers, this book offers a fascinating survey of the significant developments in preaching, beginning with the Old Testament, moving through the history of preaching, and concluding with a look into the future, all while offering practical suggestions for meeting the challenges that lie ahead. In a unique way, it addresses both the academic issues raised during each period and the practical implications for preaching today and in the future.

Does Scripture Speak for Itself?

Does Scripture Speak for Itself?
Author: Jill Hicks-Keeton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2022-10-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1108655688

Is the Bible the unembellished Word of God or the product of human agency? There are different answers to that question. And they lie at the heart of this book's powerful exploration of the fraught ways in which money, race and power shape the story of Christianity in American public life. The authors' subject is the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC: arguably the latest example of a long line of white evangelical institutions aiming to amplify and promote a religious, political, and moral agenda of their own. In their careful and compelling investigation, Jill Hicks-Keeton and Cavan Concannon disclose the ways in which the Museum's exhibits reinforce a particularized and partial interpretation of the Bible's meaning. Bringing to light the Museum's implicit messaging about scriptural provenance and audience, the authors reveal how the MOTB produces a version of the Bible that in essence authorizes a certain sort of white evangelical privilege; promotes a view of history aligned with that same evangelical aspiration; and above all protects a cohort of white evangelicals from critique. They show too how the Museum collapses vital conceptual distinctions between its own conservative vision of the Bible and 'The Bible' as a cultural icon. This revelatory volume above all confirms that scripture – for all the claims made for it that it speaks only divine truth – can in the end never be separated from human politics.

Evangelicals Incorporated

Evangelicals Incorporated
Author: Daniel Vaca
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2019-12-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0674980115

A new history explores the commercial heart of evangelical Christianity. American evangelicalism is big business. For decades, the world’s largest media conglomerates have sought out evangelical consumers, and evangelical books have regularly become international best sellers. In the early 2000s, Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life spent ninety weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list and sold more than thirty million copies. But why have evangelicals achieved such remarkable commercial success? According to Daniel Vaca, evangelicalism depends upon commercialism. Tracing the once-humble evangelical book industry’s emergence as a lucrative center of the US book trade, Vaca argues that evangelical Christianity became religiously and politically prominent through business activity. Through areas of commerce such as branding, retailing, marketing, and finance, for-profit media companies have capitalized on the expansive potential of evangelicalism for more than a century. Rather than treat evangelicalism as a type of conservative Protestantism that market forces have commodified and corrupted, Vaca argues that evangelicalism is an expressly commercial religion. Although religious traditions seem to incorporate people who embrace distinct theological ideas and beliefs, Vaca shows, members of contemporary consumer society often participate in religious cultures by engaging commercial products and corporations. By examining the history of companies and corporate conglomerates that have produced and distributed best-selling religious books, bibles, and more, Vaca not only illustrates how evangelical ideas, identities, and alliances have developed through commercial activity but also reveals how the production of evangelical identity became a component of modern capitalism.

The Dispensational-covenantal Rift

The Dispensational-covenantal Rift
Author: R. Todd Mangum
Publisher: Paternoster
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2007
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

This groundbreaking study explores how the fight between dispensationalists and covenant theologians got started and how a unique dynamic of personalities and sociological factors enflamed it. Readers may be surprised to discover that even the terminology of dispensationalists and covenant theologians originated in the 1930s disputes; that the vast majority of the original protagonists on both sides were Presbyterians; and that soteriology, rather than eschatology, was the original bone of contention between them. This study examines how two respective strands of fundamentalism came to identify one another as theological rivals, as they each vied for position in their recently formed separatist bodies. The significance of disagreements over dispensationalism is explored in the founding of the Orthodox Presbyterian and Bible Presbyterian churches. And then, as the debate traveled southward, the response of the PCUS is examined, with special attention given to the consummative report of an ad hoc committee that found dispensationalism to be out of harmony with the Westminster doctrinal standards. Significant misunderstandings that impeded fruitful dialogue from the beginning are clarified, particularly those that have persisted most stubbornly to the present day. Perhaps most surprising of all, the reader will discover that nearly all of the original points of debate between dispensationalists and covenant theologians have since been resolved, as each side has honed its position in light of pertinent critiques. Why has this development gone almost unnoticed? This study suggests an answer, and proposes that understanding how the feud began may hold the key to rapprochement today.