What should Christians think about Donald Trump? His policies, his style, his personal life? Thirty evangelical Christians wrestle with these tough questions. They are Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. They don't all agree, but they seek to let Christ be the Lord of their political views. They seek to apply biblical standards to difficult debates about our current political situation. Vast numbers of white evangelicals enthusiastically support Donald Trump. Do biblical standards on truth, justice, life, freedom, and personal integrity warrant or challenge that support? How does that support of President Trump affect the image of Christianity in the larger culture? Around the world? Many younger evangelicals today are rejecting evangelical Christianity, even Christianity itself. To what extent is that because of widespread evangelical support for Donald Trump? Don't read this book to find support for your views. Read it to be challenged—with facts, reason, and biblical principles With contributions from: Michael W. Austin Randall Balmer Vicki Courtney Daniel Deitrich Samuel Escobar John Fea Irene Fowler Mark Galli J. Colin Harris Stephen R. Haynes Matt Henderson Christopher A. Hutchinson Bandy X. Lee David S. Lim David C. Ludden Ryan McAnnally-Linz Steven Meyer Napp Nazworth D. Zac Niringiye Christopher Pieper Reid Ribble Ronald J. Sider Edward G. Simmons James R. Skillen James W. Skillen Julia K. Stronks Chris Thurman Miroslav Volf Peter Wehner George Yancey

In a series of ruminations, Edward G. Simmons brings a lifetime’s experiences, along with biblical and historical insights, to the ethical problems faced by Christians living under the impact of President Trump. Teaching values and respect for truth to college students and Christians of all varieties, he sometimes lectures on the Bible and sometimes writes sermons full of conviction. His combination of history, science, and biblical information is stimulating, encouraging, and often provocative for young and mature readers.

This book is an attempt to raise awareness of the importance of defining and describing qualities that are critical in the selection of a United States president. The qualities of character and pursuit of goals of the past president, Donald Trump, are thought by many to be far less than satisfactory. Some journalists even describe him as unqualified and an embarrassment to the U.S., and worthy of impeachment. Others find fault in the current president, Joe Biden, and believe there are needed qualities to describe his character and goals for the U.S. So the author attempts to lay out a series of ideal qualities based upon the assessment of journalists, politicians, and the author’s seventy year’s experiences in ministry, social services and politics.

This book chronologically analyzes fourteen key US Presidents, from Washington to Biden, to highlight how religion has informed or influenced their politics and policies. For years, leading scholars have largely neglected religion in presidential studies. Yet, religion has played a significant role in a number of critical presidencies in US history. This volume reveals the deep religious side to such presidents as Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan, among others, and the impact that faith had on their administrations. Now in its fourth edition, this work includes analysis of Joe Biden as the second Catholic president in United States history and provides a timely update to a key text in the study of religion and the presidency.

This is a study of how Donald J. Trump, his populist credentials notwithstanding, borrows without acknowledgment and stubbornly refuses to come to terms with his indebtedness. Taken together with mobility and conviviality, the principle of incompleteness enables us to distinguish between inclusionary and exclusionary forms of populism, and when it is fuelled by ambitions of superiority and zero-sum games of conquest. Nyamnjoh challenges the reader to reflect on how stifling frameworks of citizenship and belonging predicated upon hierarchies of humanity and mobility, and driven by a burning but elusive quest for completeness, can be constructively transcended by humility and conviviality inspired by taking incompleteness seriously. Nyamnjoh argues that the logic and practice of incompleteness is a healthy antidote to name-calling and scapegoating others as undesirable outsiders, depending on the brand of populism at play. Recognising incompleteness also helps to question sterile and problematic binaries such as those between elites and the impoverished masses among whom populists go to fish for political visibility, prominence and success.

Across the helping professions, and as a compassionate response to human suffering, spiritual care is a special process of companioning. Furthermore, all forms of spiritual care always consist in connecting diverse wisdom traditions with care receivers' spiritual resources, longings, and struggles in socio-cultural and contextually pertinent ways. This book thoroughly explicates such understanding with interdisciplinary lenses. Its main purpose is to offer a comprehensive response to the new challenges and opportunities for excellent care presented by increasing cultural and religious-spiritual pluralization. Practical guidelines and case studies are connected with models of spirituality, spiritual toxicity and injury, communication strategies for engaging difference, patterns of caregiving work, and profiles of professional competence. In addition to offering an overarching orientation to the field, the contents of this book invite further reflection, dialogue, and collaboration among clinical pastoral education and psychospiritual therapy students and supervisors; chaplains, pastors and other religious caregivers; counselors; psychotherapists; and others interested in spiritual care in our multifaith world. It thus reflects the shared hope and, indeed, the expectation that spiritual care theory and practice across traditions and disciplines will continue to be enhanced in the days ahead.

Christians who share similar faith convictions can arrive at different political conclusions. In this nonpartisan overview, Miranda Zapor Cruz shares ten theological approaches Christians throughout history have used to navigate political participation, helping us form a vision of faithful citizenship in an increasingly polarized society.

This book explores how polarised interpretations of America’s past influence the present and vice versa. A focus on competing Protestant reactions to President Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan evidences a fundamental divide over how America should remember historical racism, sexism and exploitation. Additionally, these Protestants disagree over how the past influences present injustice and equality. The 2020 killing of George Floyd forced these rival histories into the open. Rowley proposes that recovering a complex view of the past, confessing the bad and embracing the good, might help Americans have a shared memory that can bridge polarisation and work to secure justice and equality. An accessible and timely book, this is essential reading for those concerned with the vexed relationship of religion and politics in the United States, including students and scholars in the fields of Protestantism, history, political science, religious studies and sociology.

David Brooks wrote in The Second Mountain, “A pilgrimage is a journey undertaken in response to a story.” My life story has been lived in response to God’s story revealed in the Bible. This book is about the highways I have traveled in obedience to the Voice of the Holy breaking into my successes and failures, desires and doubts, and leading me by the power of grace in ever merciful and transforming ways. If you are drawn to my story, it is because the same Voice is calling you to share the adventure of a lifetime in following Jesus as he set his face to go up to Jerusalem. Through my story may you hear Aslan’s (Christ’s) invitation, “Come further in! Come further up!” This story travels by way of the “highways to Zion” (Ps 84:5–7). Those highways become deeply paved in the hearts and minds of those who work for the healing of the world and who bring the blessings of the reign of God to barren, dry, and thirsty lands.

A new movement in American Christianity calls itself “Matthew 25 Christians.” It follows a long train of new religious movements founded in a rediscovered biblical text that migrates to a new context and sets the church on a new course. Good news to the poor is Matthew’s story, grounded in the entire biblical witness. In Jesus’s famous last judgment story all the world is questioned whether they saw Christ, the king enthroned by way of the cross, in the least of these—the poor, the homeless, the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned. Are the “corporal works of mercy” Jesus requires to become new marks of the church in our times? Is Matthew 25 the new John 3:16, a new sign to be held up to the world at football games? Following this new social gospel comes another question. Will the American church succeed in “taking this public” as a new errand into the wilderness? Could the nonconforming resistance movement that is Christianity find a new voice in the public square, collaborate with the academy and politicians, and turn Matthew’s call for social justice into a new deal for social democracy? A “Bonhoeffer moment” in perilous times for the poor calls for no less.