The Politics of the Cross

The Politics of the Cross
Author: Daniel K. Williams
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2021-03-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 146746211X

Where do Christians fit in a two-party political system? The partisan divide that is rending the nation is now tearing apart American churches. On one side are Christian Right activists and other conservatives who believe that a vote for a Democratic presidential candidate is a vote for abortion, sexual immorality, gender confusion, and the loss of religious liberty for Christians. On the other side are politically progressive Christians who are considering leaving the institutional church because of white evangelicalism’s alliance with a Republican Party that they believe is racist, hateful toward immigrants, scornful of the poor, and directly opposed to the principles that Jesus taught. Even while sharing the same pew, these two sides often see the views of the other as hopelessly wrongheaded—even evil. Is there a way to transcend this deep-seated division? The Politics of the Cross draws on history, policy analysis, and biblically grounded theology to show how Christians can protect the unborn, advocate for traditional marriage, promote racial justice, care for the poor, and, above all, honor the gospel by adopting a cross-centered ethic instead of the idolatrous politics of power, fear, or partisanship. As Daniel K. Williams illustrates, both the Republican and Democratic parties are rooted in Christian principles, but both have distorted those principles and mixed them with assumptions that are antithetical to biblical truth. Williams explains how Christians can renounce partisanship and pursue policies that show love for our neighbors to achieve a biblical vision of justice. Nuanced, detailed, and even-handed, The Politics of the Cross tackles the thorny issues that divide Christians politically and offers a path forward with innovative, biblically minded political approaches that might surprise Christians on both the left and the right.

The Politics of the Crucifixion

The Politics of the Crucifixion
Author: C. L. Gammon
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2015-07-29
Genre:
ISBN: 9781515265948

The Politics of the Crucifixion is not a religious book in any way. I do know something about the dynamics of politics, however, and it was the political motivations of both supporters and opponents of Jesus that led me to author The Politics of the Crucifixion. Let me note one thing before going on. Here in the United States, we equate politics with popular elections. However, politics is just as prevalent in those nations that do not practice free elections as it is in those that do. In fact, it is often more prevalent. In those lands without popular elections, politicians are just as likely react to public pressures as are elected politicians elsewhere. Therefore, even though voters did not elect Roman Governors or Judean Kings, those rulers were not immune to politics. On the contrary, Roman and Judean rulers allowed ordinary citizens to sway them at every turn. The political pressures bearing down on Herod and Pilate made the execution of Jesus impossible to avoid. Herod feared that making Jesus a martyr and Pilate loathed executing an innocent man. Yet, the enemies of Jesus, and the mob they gathered around them, refused to allow these powerful men to leave Jesus alive. Politics infected those that followed Jesus as well. The Gospels illustrate the political motivations of the Apostles. The motivations the Apostles (often as petty and ugly as those of the opponents of Jesus) were in some ways just as much a cause of the crucifixion as were the motivations of the Judeans and the Romans. While I understand that writing about Jesus and the crucifixion in political terms may offend some Christians, I do not believe that the truth should ever offend anyone.

The Politics of the Crucified

The Politics of the Crucified
Author: John C. Peet
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2021-07-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1725288656

Jesus died, not peacefully in bed, but on the cross, the instrument of execution used by the Romans to keep potential disturbers of the established political order in their place. Until the pioneering work of Jürgen Moltmann, the cross has been the “elephant in the room” in Christian political theology. This book explores the difference Jesus’s crucifixion makes (or should make) to Christian political theology, by examining the crucifixion in the theologies of the Mennonite John Howard Yoder and the liberation theologians Leonardo Boff and Jon Sobrino. In the light of the cross and of the kenotic God revealed by the cross, questions of political power are explored, and a kenotic political ethic outlined. In conclusion, suggestions are made as to how the contemporary church can live out a cruciform, or cross–shaped, political spirituality and ecclesiology.

Hidden Politics of the Crucifixion

Hidden Politics of the Crucifixion
Author: Glenn Kimball
Publisher: Kimball
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1999
Genre: Bible
ISBN: 9781893548008

Glenn Kimball and David Stirland restore for us the forgotten letters of Pontius Pilate, Herod, and the Caesars at the time of the crucifixion of Jesus. There was blackmail in air and a forgotten belief among those we think might have wanted Him dead.

The Politics of Jesus

The Politics of Jesus
Author: Obery M. Hendricks Jr
Publisher: Three Leaves
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2007-08-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0385516657

Who was Jesus? And how was this first-century political revolutionary, whose teachings are meant to lead the way to freedom, turned into a meek and mild servant of the status quo? How is it possible to profess a belief in Jesus, yet ignore the suffering of the poor and the needy? Just how truly faithful to the vision of Jesus are the many politicians who claim to be Christian? These are the kinds of questions Obery Hendricks, a biblical scholar, activist, and minister, asks in this provocative new book. In this day and age of heated political debate, Hendricks’s The Politics of Jesus stands out as much for its brilliant re-creation of the life and mind of Jesus of Nazareth as for its scathing critique of modern politicians “of faith.”

Conflict, Holiness, and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus

Conflict, Holiness, and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus
Author: Marcus Borg
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1998-06-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567384063

Originally published in 1984, this extraordinary work has until now been available only in an expensive library edition. The present edition has been completely updated and redesigned, and includes an extended new introduction by Marcus Borg that relates the book's central arguments to subsequent Jesus scholarship. A foreword by N.T. Wright characterizes the book as one of the foundational works in the "third quest" for the historical Jesus. In the book, Marcus Borg argues that conflict between a politics of holiness and a politics of compassion, and their implications for Israel, resides at the center of Jesus' activity and teaching. He emphasizes several features that have since become central to Jesus scholarship: the importance of Jesus' inclusive meal practice, a non-apocalyptic paradigm for understanding Jesus, and Jesus as a social prophet and boundary-breaker. Marcus J. Borg is Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture in the Philosophy Department at Oregon State University. He is the author of nine books, including Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship, also published by Trinity Press.

Jesus and Justice

Jesus and Justice
Author: Peter Goodwin Heltzel
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2009-07-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300155735

This timely book investigates the increasing visibility and influence of evangelical Christians in recent American politics with a focus on racial justice. Peter Goodwin Heltzel considers four evangelical social movements: Focus on the Family, the National Association of Evangelicals, Christian Community Development Association, and Sojourners. The political motives and actions of evangelical groups are founded upon their conceptions of Jesus Christ, Heltzel contends. He traces the roots of contemporary evangelical politics to the prophetic black Christianity tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the socially engaged evangelical tradition of Carl F. H. Henry. Heltzel shows that the basic tenets of King's and Henry's theologies have led their evangelical heirs toward a prophetic evangelicalism in a shade of blue green--blue symbolizing the tragedy of black suffering in the Americas, and green symbolizing the hope of a prophetic evangelical engagement with poverty, AIDS, and the environment. This fresh theological understanding of evangelical political groups shines new light on the ways evangelicals shape and are shaped by broader American culture.

The Bible and The New York Times

The Bible and The New York Times
Author: Fleming Rutledge
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 245
Release: 1999-06-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0802847013

This collection of vividly illustrative sermons by a leading contemporary Episcopalian preacher eloquently heralds the Christian call to faith in the face of modern challenges. Widely known for their up-to-the-minute relevance to modern life, the sermons of Fleming Rutledge are always out on the edge, challenging the boundaries of contemporary thought and experience. No issue is too threatening, no event too shocking, no question too impertinent to be addressed. Following Karl Barth's dictum that sermons should be written with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, Rutledge weaves the changing events of the daily news together with the unchanging rhythms of the church seasons. Her book leads readers through the liturgical year, from All Saints to Pentecost, showing how the biblical story intersects with our own stories.

Jesus after the Crucifixion

Jesus after the Crucifixion
Author: Graham Simmans
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2007-02-21
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1591439108

Suggests that Jesus survived the crucifixion, went to Egypt, then settled in France • Reveals new discoveries that show the beginnings of Christianity in Egypt • Presents historical and archaeological research that proves a connection between Jerusalem, Egypt, and Rennes-le-Château in the south of France • Posits Rennes-le-Château as the actual location of Jesus Christ’s tomb, and that writings by him will be found there Jesus did not die on the cross. He survived and went to southern France with his wife, Mary. This possibility is proposed by Graham Simmans, who spent many years on a quest to find the real beginnings of Christianity. Simmans believes that the spread of Christianity beyond Jerusalem was tied to Jesus’s survival of the crucifixion and his subsequent emigration to Europe. Using Coptic and Jewish sources, including the Talmud, that allow a glimpse of the Christian philosophy espoused by Jesus, he contends that true Christianity was brought into France, Britain, and Spain from first century Egypt and Judea, not fourth- and fifth-century Rome. His investigation shows that after a time in Egypt, Jesus settled in Rennes-le-Château, a sophisticated and cosmopolitan center of spiritual diversity. It was a natural move for Jesus to settle in the Narbonne area of France--an area already heavily settled by Jewish and Gnostic groups. Here, safely outside the reach of the cultural dictatorship of the Roman Church, the Gnostic secrets he taught survived the centuries. Later, the Knights Templar centered their activity in the Languedoc region around Rennes-le-Château, where, within the Jewish communities, a well-connected and influential opposition to Rome already existed. This resistance to Rome gave rise to a religious culture that included elements of Gnostic, Pythagorean, and Kabbalistic teachings. Until the Crusades against the Cathar heretics reasserted the dominion of Rome, the culture that flourished around Rennes-le-Château embodied the true essence of Christ’s message.

The Crucifixion

The Crucifixion
Author: Fleming Rutledge
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 695
Release: 2015
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0802847323

Few treatments of the death of Jesus Christ have made a point of accounting for the gruesome, degrading, public manner of his death by crucifixion, a mode of execution so loathsome that the ancient Romans never spoke of it in polite society. Rutledge probes all the various themes and motifs used by the New Testament evangelists and apostolic writers to explain the meaning of the cross of Christ. She shows how each of the biblical themes contributes to the whole, with the Christus Victor motif and the concept of substitution sharing pride of place along with Irenaeus's recapitulation model.