Tocqueville s thesis on the relation between religion and liberty, could hardly be timelier. Every day s newspaper, every college campus, many recent Supreme Court decisions raise the issue in one form or another. From events in the Middle East and the spread of Islamist violence in the name of religion, to the mandated coverage under the Affordable Care Act, the interaction between religion and politics has once again become central to our political life. Tocqueville, facing the coming of a new social and political order within the lingeringly traditional society that was France, faced this relation between politics and religion with freshness and relevance. He was particularly interested to report to his French compatriots on how the Americans had, in his opinion, successfully resolved what, to many Frenchmen, looked to be an insuperable conflict. He thought otherwise, and believed that the Americans had shown why not. His surprising thesis was that the right kind of arrangement of the relationa certain kind of separation of church and state that was not also at the same time a complete separation of religion and politicswas shown in 19th century America to be beneficial to both liberty and religion. Our volume investigates whether Tocqueville s depiction was valid for the America he investigated in the 1830 s, was theoretically plausible, and remains valid (if it ever was) in the 21st century."

A systemic problem plagues the local and global church: We habitually lose the gospel. In its place, we substitute personal prosperity, legalism, politics--and we end up paralyzing the mission of the church. Galatians contains Paul's passionate defense of the gospel. It shows us how to enjoy God's presence and everlasting peace, setting us free to love and be loved. In Live in Liberty, Daniel Bush and Noel Due help you apply the spiritual message of Galatians so that you may experience the liberating presence of God.

From one of the leading historians of Christianity comes this sweeping reassessment of religious freedom, from the church fathers to John Locke In the ancient world Christian apologists wrote in defense of their right to practice their faith in the cities of the Roman Empire. They argued that religious faith is an inward disposition of the mind and heart and cannot be coerced by external force, laying a foundation on which later generations would build. Chronicling the history of the struggle for religious freedom from the early Christian movement through the seventeenth century, Robert Louis Wilken shows that the origins of religious freedom and liberty of conscience are religious, not political, in origin. They took form before the Enlightenment through the labors of men and women of faith who believed there could be no justice in society without liberty in the things of God. This provocative book, drawing on writings from the early Church as well as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reminds us of how "the meditations of the past were fitted to affairs of a later day."

Composed of archaic traditions and obsolete practices, and masterminded by the enemy of our souls, the spirit of religion seeks to keep individual believers and the corporate church stagnant and unaware of the call of the Holy Spirit for change. We witnessed the spirit of religion when the Pharisees failed to recognize the coming of the Christ. Today, the spirit of religion can be so subtle that we are unaware of its impact, instead being deceived into believing that God is directing us. Only when we recognize the hold that this counterfeit religion has over Christianity can we be freed to experience the transformation of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the heart of the church. Join C. Peter Wagner and other dynamic Christian leaders as they unveil the dark influence of the spirit of religion.

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