Many Christians in the West sense that traditional Christian teaching is losing traction in the public square. What does faithful Christian witness look like in a post-Christian culture? Paul Williams, the CEO of one of the world's largest and oldest Bible societies, interprets the dissonance Christians often experience while trying to live out their faith in the 21st century. He provides constructive tools to help readers understand culture in myriad contexts and offer a missional response. Williams calls for a truly missional understanding of post-Christendom Christianity whereby local churches are reimagined as embassies of the kingdom of God and Christians serve as ambassadors in all spheres of life and work. This book invites readers to embrace the language of exile and imagine a hopeful mission of the scattered and gathered church in the post-Christian West. It shows a clear pathway for fruitful missional engagement for the whole people of God, helping Christians make sense of the world in which they live, more authentically integrate faith with everyday life, and orient all of their efforts within God's missional purpose for the world.

Considering the two distinct Polish immigrant groups after World War II - the Polish-American descendants of pre-war ecomomic migrants and polish refugees fleeing communism - this study explores the uneasy challenge to reconcile concepts of responsibility toward their homeland.

Spider-Man has fought Nazi bees. Batman has fought Superman at least 16 times. David Bowie nearly played Daredevil. The creator of Wonder Woman believed women should govern the world. Thor owns two killer goats. The Justice League have teamed up with He-Man. Stan Lee devised Iron Man to show that he could make the least likeable character successful. Originally, Aquaman had to make contact with water every hour or he died. Storm was meant to be called Black Cat and had the power to turn into a feline. Robin killed three people in his debut comic. There is a pig version of Gambit called Hambit. Flash can punch a person a billion times per second. Wolverine allied with Captain America during World War II. Green Arrow has a Nuclear Bomb arrow. Silver Surfer's surfboard is alive. Shazam popularized the phrase, "Holy moly!" The CIA tried to hire The Punisher to kill Osama Bin Laden.

Winner, 2022 Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize While the idea that successful missions needed Indigenous revolts and missionary deaths seems counterintuitive, this book illustrates how it became a central logic of frontier colonization in Spanish North America. Missions Begin with Blood argues that martyrdom acted as a ceremony of possession that helped Jesuits understand violence, disease, and death as ways that God inevitably worked to advance Christendom. Whether petitioning superiors for support, preparing to extirpate Native “idolatries,” or protecting their conversions from critics, Jesuits found power in their persecution and victory in their victimization. This book correlates these tales of sacrifice to deep genealogies of redemptive death in Catholic discourse and explains how martyrological idioms worked to rationalize early modern colonialism. Specifically, missionaries invoked an agricultural metaphor that reconfigured suffering into seed that, when watered by sweat and blood, would one day bring a rich harvest of Indigenous Christianity.

This book is an extraordinary first-hand account of the German Academy, which was established in 1936 as a platform for German intellectuals in America to speak out against Hitler. Its membership covered the leading German-speaking intellectuals who went into exile in opposition to Hitler's Nazi government -- including such eminent names as Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Prince zu Lowenstein and Bertolt Brecht. The main aim of the Academy was to show the world that Hitler and the Nazis were not representative of Germany and that their country could resume its place in the civilized and humane world. Together, its members helped to shape intellectual and cultural developments in the western world in the second half of the twentieth century.