Jonathan Leeman addresses the commonly asked (and often unanswered) question of, "Why should I join a church?" in a time when many are shunning the practice of organized religion. By offering a brief, straightforward explanation of what church membership is and why it's important, Leeman gives the local church its proper due and builds a case for committing to the local body. Church Membership is a useful tool for churches to distribute en masse to new and potential members of their congregation. This volume is part of the 9Marks: Building Healthy Churches series. Look for upcoming, quick-read formats of the following marks of a healthy church: expositional preaching, biblical theology, the gospel, conversion, evangelism, church discipline, discipleship and growth, and church leadership.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America professes to be a public church constituted by God for its public vocation. Moe-Lobeda explores what it means for the ELCA to play a role in public life today. Sections focus on what it means to be a public church, obstacles to being a public church in public life, power for being public church, and providing public leadership. For the followers of Jesus, the ''way of living'' in public is a gift of God to the church. It is costly and dangerous, but yet gives life abundant, now and forever.

Abortion. Physician-assisted suicide. Same-sex marriages. Embryonic stem-cell research. Poverty. Crime. What is a faithful Christian response? The God of the Bible is unquestionably a God of justice. Yet Christians have had their differences as to how human government and the church should bring about a just social order. Although Christians share many deep and significant theological convictions, differences that threaten to divide them have often surrounded the matter of how the church collectively and Christians individually ought to engage the public square. What is the mission of the church? What is the purpose of human government? How ought they to be related to each other? How should social injustice be redressed? The five noted contributors to this volume answer these questions from within their distinctive Christian theological traditions, as well as responding to the other four positions. Through the presentations and ensuing dialogue we come to see more clearly what the differences are, where their positions overlap and why they diverge. The contributors and the positions taken include Clarke E. Cochran: A Catholic Perspective Derek H. Davis: A Classical Separation Perspective Ronald J. Sider: An Anabaptist Perspective Corwin F. Smidt: A Principled Pluralist Perspective J. Philip Wogaman: A Social Justice Perspective This book will be instructive for anyone seeking to grasp the major Christian alternatives and desiring to pursue a faithful corporate and individual response to the social issues that face us.

One of the fundamental rights granted in the United States is religious freedom, but does this mean that religion should be entirely removed from politics or that all religious voices should be considered equally? The separation of church and state was established in the Constitution, but the fact that as of 2015, 84 percent of Americans hold some sort of religious belief means that this is easier said than done. Religious morality frequently colors debates surrounding various policy issues, ranging from reproductive rights to education. This volume exposes readers to the ways in which religion inflects policymaking and the varying perspectives about religion's role in politics.

How should the church relate to the public sphere? The body politic? The state? The economic order? The natural world? For too many Christians and churches, being "in the world but not of it" has resulted in either a theocratic impulse to seize the reins of secular power or a quietistic retreat from the world and its material concerns. The Church in the Public shows how this dualism has corrupted the church's social witness and allowed neoliberal and neocolonial ideas to assert control of public and political life. Dualism has rendered the church not only indifferent to but also complicitous with the state's bio- and power-politics. Because of this outdated framework of the church's political theology, the church has been reluctant to engage in challenging structural and systemic injustice in this world. But rather than counseling despair or making a case for Christendom, Ilsup Ahn argues for a public church, one that collaborates and cooperates with other public actors and entities in the promotion of a just social order. The book traces this "third way" back to the apostolic age and offers practical approaches for enacting it today. Central to this vision is the analogy of the rhizome--that strange, unique form of life that lives underground, grows horizontally, and is capable of regeneration. The Church in the Public draws on this image to develop a political theology for engaging the world, identifying with the oppressed, and binding up the broken.