Perspective: Life today

God in Public: How the Bible speaks truth to power today

God in Public: How the Bible speaks truth to power today

Posted by | Sep 5, 2020 | |

What has Christianity to do with power?
Why must the church remind those in authority of their responsibilities?
What can Christians do to act as the voice of the voiceless?
How can speaking of God in public help to create new structures of international justice and peace?

These are the central questions running through Tom Wright’s latest book, in which he demonstrates the many ways in which faithful exegesis of scripture can throw fresh light – God’s light – on the great philosophical and ethical problems of our day.

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For the Glory of God: How Monotheism led to Reformations, Science, Witch Hunts and the End of Slavery

For the Glory of God: How Monotheism led to Reformations, Science, Witch Hunts and the End of Slavery

Posted by | Sep 3, 2020 | |

Rodney Stark’s provocative new book argues that, whether we like it or not, people acting for the glory of God have formed our modern culture. Continuing his project of identifying the widespread consequences of monotheism, Stark shows that the Christian conception of God resulted–almost inevitably and for the same reasons–in the Protestant Reformation, the rise of modern science, the European witch-hunts, and the Western abolition of slavery. In the process, he explains why Christian and Islamic images of God yielded such different cultural results, leading Christians but not Muslims to foster science, burn “witches,” and denounce slavery.

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Flourishing

Flourishing

Posted by | Sep 2, 2020 | |

More than almost anything else, globalization and the great world religions are shaping our lives, affecting everything from the public policies of political leaders and the economic decisions of industry bosses and employees, to university curricula, all the way to the inner longings of our hearts. Integral to both globalization and religions are compelling, overlapping, and sometimes competing visions of what it means to live well.

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Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy

Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy

Posted by | Sep 2, 2020 | |

Evil threatens human reason, for it challenges our hope that the world makes sense. For eighteenth-century Europeans, the Lisbon earthquake was manifest evil. Today we view evil as a matter of human cruelty, and Auschwitz as its extreme incarnation. Examining our understanding of evil from the Inquisition to contemporary terrorism, Susan Neiman explores who we have become in the three centuries that separate us from the early Enlightenment. In the process, she rewrites the history of modern thought and points philosophy back to the questions that originally animated it.

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