“Christians and other people of good will are longing for a response that can lead the way out of the divisiveness and vitriol of our times. I wrote this book to provide some assistance to readers to discern a way out of the toxicity in which we live, and to stimulate courage and hope, so that all people can see the age in which we live more clearly and respond with the grace necessary to follow more fully the call God has spoken—a missionary call to deepen Christ’s incarnational movement in our world.”

By entering the culture wars, churchgoers in the United States have ushered the Left and the Right to even greater extremes. Battles over moral issues like abortion rights and homosexuality have now widened to include taxation and size of government, so that specific church affiliation has become an accurate predictor of political party affiliation. The extremists in American politics rely on Christians to be the engine that pushes the culture farther right or left. Allen Hilton believes that religion isn't inherently divisive, and he suggests a new role for Christianity. Jesus prayed that his disciples might all be one, and this book imagines a proper answer to that prayer in the context of American polarization. Rather than asking people to leave their political and theological beliefs at the church door, Hilton promotes a Christianity that brings people together with their differences. Through God's transforming work, he writes, we can create a house united that will help our nation come back together.

What does “missional” mean for small Christian communities in a deeply secular society? Leading missiologist Stefan Paas asks what missional spirituality could possibly mean for today’s local church. This fully revised new international edition will make this an important introduction to contemporary thinking on mission and the church.

American Millennials--the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s--have been leaving organized religion in unprecedented numbers. For a long time, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an exception: nearly three-quarters of people who grew up Mormon stayed that way into adulthood. In The Next Mormons, Jana Riess demonstrates that things are starting to change. Drawing on a large-scale national study of four generations of current and former Mormons as well as dozens of in-depth personal interviews, Riess explores the religious beliefs and behaviors of young adult Mormons, finding that while their levels of belief remain strong, their institutional loyalties are less certain than their parents' and grandparents'. For a growing number of Millennials, the tensions between the Church's conservative ideals and their generation's commitment to individualism and pluralism prove too high, causing them to leave the faith-often experiencing deep personal anguish in the process. Those who remain within the fold are attempting to carefully balance the Church's strong emphasis on the traditional family with their generation's more inclusive definition that celebrates same-sex couples and women's equality. Mormon families are changing too. More Mormons are remaining single, parents are having fewer children, and more women are working outside the home than a generation ago. The Next Mormons offers a portrait of a generation navigating between traditional religion and a rapidly changing culture.

It is no secret: the body of Christ in the United States is broken. While universality—and unity amid diversity—is a fundamental characteristic of Roman Catholicism, all-too-familiar issues related to gender, sexuality, race, and authority have rent the church. Healthy debates, characteristic of a living tradition, suffer instead from an absence of genuine engagement and dialogue. But there is still much that binds American Catholics. In naming the wounds and exploring their social and religious underpinnings, Polarization in the US Catholic Church underscores how shared beliefs and aspirations can heal deep fissures and the hurts they have caused. Cutting across disciplinary and political lines, this volume brings essential commentary in the direction of reclaimed universality among American Catholics.

This refreshingly accessible introduction to Karl Barth by Mark Galli takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the life and writings of this giant of twentieth-century theology. Galli pays special attention to themes and topics of concern for contemporary evangelicals, who may need Barth's acute critique as much as early-twentieth-century liberals did--and for surprisingly similar reasons.

This first of two volumes introduces the tradition of social Catholicism, not only in its earlier realizations, but regarding how a contemporary renewal might address the crisis in which constitutional democracies and the postwar liberal order are under assault by populist and even neo-fascist movements that could soon usher in a frighteningly dark future unless a broad movement in defense of constitutional democracy quickly arises. In this context, some of the most influential voices among American Catholics are focused on criticizing “liberal democracy,” on advocating a “postliberal order” and the establishment of a Catholic “integralist” state, or on insisting that abortion should be the primary sociopolitical concern for Catholics, treating these threats to democracy as largely irrelevant. This volume shows the rich tradition of social Catholicism, and how the Social Doctrine of the Church came to appreciate the key tenets of constitutional democracy. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote, this social doctrine leads us to “take a stand for the common good,” to take the “institutional” or “political path of charity,” to be “solicitous for” the “institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally.” It engages some of the most influential contemporary Catholic thinkers and argues that they too should recognize the grave threats facing the human family and join in working to defend and renew our constitutional democracy.