Named one of the top religion books of 2002 by USA Today, Philip Jenkins's phenomenally successful The Next Christendom permanently changed the way people think about the future of Christianity. In that volume, Jenkins called the world's attention to the little noticed fact that Christianity's center of gravity was moving inexorably southward, to the point that Africa may soon be home to the world's largest Christian populations. Now, in this brilliant sequel, Jenkins takes a much closer look at Christianity in the global South, revealing what it is like, and what it means for the future. The faith of the South, Jenkins finds, is first and foremost a biblical faith. Indeed, in the global South, many Christians identify powerfully with the world portrayed in the New Testament--an agricultural world very much like their own, marked by famine and plague, poverty and exile, until very recently a society of peasants, farmers, and small craftsmen. In the global South, as in the biblical world, belief in spirits and witchcraft are commonplace, and in many places--such as Nigeria, Indonesia, and Sudan--Christians are persecuted just as early Christians were. Thus the Bible speaks to the global South with a vividness and authenticity simply unavailable to most believers in the industrialized North. More important, Jenkins shows that throughout the global South, believers are reading the Bible with fresh eyes, and coming away with new and sometimes startling interpretations. Some of their conclusions are distinctly fundamentalist, but Jenkins finds an intriguing paradox, for they are also finding ideas in the Bible that are socially liberating, especially with respect to women's rights. Across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, such Christians are social activists in the forefront of a wide range of liberation movements. It's hard to overstate how interesting, how eye-opening, how frequently surprising (and sometimes disturbing) Jenkins' findings are. Anyone interested in the implications of these trends for the major denominations, for Muslim-Christian conflict, and for global politics will find The New Faces of Christianity provocative and incisive--and indispensable.

Combining historical and ethnographic research methods, along with a thorough review of existing literature on the study of Latin American Christianity, New Faces of God in Latin America addresses the important question of how global religion and local culture interact, situating the experience of Latin American Christianity in the broader conversations in the field of world Christianity, particularly with respect to the growing understanding of Christianity as a non-Western religion. Through case studies of different Pentecostal experiences in Latin America, Virginia Garrard explores cross-pollination and interaction with indigenous religions and cultures, finding widely varied responses to the material and spiritual needs of Latin Americans. The author locates Latin American religious experience within a field known as the "history of non-Western Christianity." This focuses on the experience, perceptions, and adaptations of those who adopt Christianity outside the context of Western missionary or other colonizing projects. The book engages with the intersection of culture and spirit-filled religion, with an eye to how those interactions help frame an alternative religious modernity. Throughout the book, the author uses culture as both a heuristic lens and as a variable within the equation. She argues that culture helps us understand how people engage with and reconfigure global religious flows within their own imaginations and for their own parochial uses.

Over the past century, Christianity's place and role in the world have changed dramatically. In 1900, 80 percent of the world's Christians lived in Europe and North America. Today, more than 60 percent of the world's Christians live outside of that region. This change calls for a reexamination of the way the story of Christianity is told, the methodological tools for its analysis, and its modes of expression. Perhaps most significant is the role of Africa as the new Christian heartland. The questions and answers about Christianity and its contemporary mission now being developed in the African churches will have enormous influence in the years to come. This volume offers nine new essays addressing this sea-change and its importance for the future of Christianity. Some contributions consider the development of "non-Western" forms of Christianity, others look at the impact of these new Christianities in the West. The authors cover a wide range of topics, from the integration of witchcraft and Christianity in Nigeria and the peacemaking role of churches in Mozambique to the American Baptist reception of Asian Christianity. The Changing Face of Christianity shows the striking cultural differences between the new world Christianity and its western counterpart. But with so many new immigrants in Europe and North America, the faith's fault lines are not purely geographical. The new Christianity now thrives in American and European settings, and northerners need to know this faith better. At stake is their ability to be good neighbors-and perhaps to be good Christian citizens of the world.

Theological interpretation of Scripture is a growing trend in biblical interpretation, with an emphasis on the contexts of canon, creed, and church. This approach seeks to bridge the gap between biblical studies and theology, which grew wide with the ascendancy of critical approaches to Scripture. Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture is the first clear, systematic introduction to this movement for students. The book surveys the movement's history, themes, advocates, and positions and seeks to bring coherence to its various elements. Author Daniel Treier also explores what he sees as the greatest challenges the movement will have to address as it moves into the future. This helpful book is appropriate for pastors and lay readers interested in biblical interpretation.

Wealth, Health, and Hope in African Christian Religion offers a portrait of how contending narratives of modernity in both church and society play out in Africa today through the agency of African Christian religion. It explores the identity and features of African Christian religion and the cultural forces driving the momentum of Christian expansion in Africa, as well as how these factors are shaping a new African social imagination, especially in providing answers to the most challenging questions about poverty, wealth, health, human, and cosmic flourishing. It offers the academy a good road map for interpreting African Christian religious beliefs and practices today and into the future.

In this volume, thirty-seven first-rate evangelical scholars present a thorough study of biblical authority and a full range of issues connected to it. Recognizing that Scripture and its authority are now being both challenged and defended with renewed vigor, editor D.A. Carson assigned the topics that these select scholars address in the book. After an introduction by Carson to the many facets of the current discussion, the contributors present robust essays on relevant historical, biblical, theological, philosophical, epistemological, and comparative-religions topics. To conclude, Carson answers a number of frequently asked questions about the nature of Scripture, cross-referencing these FAQs to the preceding chapters. This comprehensive volume by a team of recognized experts will be the go-to reference on the nature and authority of the Bible for years to come. -- Amazon.

In this book Mark Noll makes the compelling case that how Americans have come to practice the Christian faith is just as globally important as what the American church has done in the world. He backs up this substantial claim with the scholarly attentiveness we've come to expect from him.

This introductory theology text helps students articulate basic Christian doctrines, think theologically so they can act Christianly in a diverse world, and connect Christian thought to their everyday lives of faith. Written from a solidly evangelical yet ecumenically aware perspective, this book models a way of doing theology that is generous and charitable. It attends to history and contemporary debates and features voices from the global church. Sidebars made up of illustrative quotations, key Scripture passages, classic hymn texts, and devotional poetry punctuate the chapters. The first edition of this book has been well received (over 25,000 copies sold). Updated and revised throughout, this second edition also includes a new section on gender and race as well as new end-of-chapter material connecting each doctrine to a spiritual discipline.

A “wonderful…highly comprehensive” (John Barton, author of A History of the Bible) global history of the world’s best-known and most influential book For Christians, the Bible is a book inspired by God. Its eternal words are transmitted across the world by fallible human hands. Following Jesus’s departing instruction to go out into the world, the Bible has been a book in motion from its very beginnings, and every community it has encountered has read, heard, and seen the Bible through its own language and culture. In The Bible, Bruce Gordon tells the astounding story of the Bible’s journey around the globe and across more than two thousand years, showing how it has shaped and been shaped by changing beliefs and believers’ radically different needs. The Bible has been a tool for violence and oppression, and it has expressed hopes for liberation. God speaks with one voice, but the people who receive it are scattered and divided—found in desert monasteries and Chinese house churches, in Byzantine cathedrals and Guatemalan villages. Breathtakingly global in scope, The Bible tells the story of this sacred book through the stories of its many and diverse human encounters, revealing not a static text but a living, dynamic cultural force.

While Christianity appears to be in decline in the West it is growing robustly in the global South. What does this mean for the Christianity that was once considered to be the religion of the West? The new contexts and trajectories require innovative responses and relevant theological reflection in the church. This volume addresses these changes through identifying and analyzing global shifts, highlighting practical innovations in the church that attempt to deal with new trajectories, and proposing theological positions intended to help face the issues and challenges of the twenty-first century. Contributors to this volume include Philip Jenkins (The Next Christendom, The New Faces of Christianity, God's Continent), Steven M. Studebaker, Gordon L. Heath, Bradley K. Broadhead, Christof Sauer, Lee Beach, Michael P. Knowles, Peter Althouse, Michael Wilkinson, John H. Issak, David K. Taurus, and Seongho Kang.