Redeemed By Fire

This text addresses the history and future of homegrown, mass Chinese Christianity. Drawing on a collection of sources, the author traces the transformation of Protestant Christianity in the 20th-century China from a small 'missionary' church buffeted by antiforeignism to an indigenous opular religion energized by nationalism.

Cassanne Thomas returns to New Orleans to start her life over and becomes the target of a supernatural serial killer. Escaping her close call with death, Casi is the only witness to the crime and finds herself placed in protective custody by a handsome Cajun detective. But with her dark, troubled past, trusting the police is the last thing she wants to do. Detective Lucas Avery, the top homicide detective in NOLA, is unaware of the supernatural world surrounding him. With the killer stalking the streets, he vows to shield the beautiful, enigmatic Casi with his life while fighting his growing attraction to her. He's been burned before. Danger chases Lucas and Casi from the streets of the French Quarter to the wilds of the bayou. Will they be able to stop a monster, straight out of a nightmare or become victims themselves?

The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies represents more than a century of scholarship related to the theology, history, and methodology of the propagation of Christian faith and the engagement of Christians with cultures, religions, and societies worldwide. It contains more than 40 articles by experts from different disciplinary and ecclesial perspectives, who are from all continents. It not only offers a broad overview of key approaches and issues in mission studies but it also highlights current trends and suggests future developments. The Handbook builds on renewed interest in mission studies this century generated by recent key statements on mission from ecumenical, evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox sources, and by a spate of academic works on the topic. Western church leaders now apply insights from foreign missions (such as, inculturation, liberation, interfaith work, and power encounter) to today's multicultural societies. Meanwhile, there are new initiatives in mission from the Majority World, where most Christians live, so that sending is not only 'from the west to the rest' but 'from everywhere to everywhere'. Therefore, this volume aims to reflect the voices of the receivers of mission as well as its protagonists and to raise awareness of new movements. In a time of growing recognition of 'religions' more generally, this work examines and theorizes the missional dimensions of the world's largest religion: its agendas, growth, outreach, role in public life, effect on cultures, relevance for development, and its approaches to other communities.

Our perception of God makes a difference in every crevice of our character, from our inner anxieties to our public conversations. It determines whether we're trusting or suspicious, whether we're happy or discontent - and whether or not we can rely on God matters mightily on the day of our death. Mark Buchanan's third book continues his penetrating exploration of the God we worship. Bravely and honestly, he poses the direst question of human existence: Can God be trusted? It's life drunk deeply, lived to the hilt—where we walk with the God who is surprising, dangerous, and mysterious. It's the terrain where God doesn't make sense out of our disasters and our boredom, but keeps meeting us in the thick of them. But unless we trust in His character, we'll never venture in. We will sit at the stream all day, dying of thirst, but not daring to drink. To follow God is to drink and drink from the stream, even if it means—especially if it means—getting swallowed up. Let Mark Buchanan show you the entrance to the Holy Wild, where you can live face-to-face with the beautiful, dangerous God of creation.

Here, G. Douglas Atkins offers a fresh new reading of the past century's most famous poem in English, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1922). Using a comparatist approach that is both intra-textual and inter-textual, this book is a bold analysis of satire of modern forms of misunderstanding.

When the Eternal Can Be Met excavates the philosophy behind the theology of the twentieth century's most prominent Christian writers: C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden. These three literary giants converted to Christianity within little more than a decade of one another, and interestingly, all three theological authors turned to the theme of time. All three authors also came to remarkably similar conclusions about time, positing that the temporal present moment allowed one to meet the eternal. Decades before Lewis, Eliot, and Auden sought to creatively construct a fictive or poetic theology of time, the prominent philosopher Henri Bergson wrote about time's power to transform an individual's emotional and spiritual state, a theory well known by Lewis, Eliot, and Auden. When the Eternal Can Be Met argues that one cannot fully understand Lewis, Eliot, and Auden's theology of time without understanding Bergson's theories. From the secular philosophy of Bergson dawned the most important works of literary theology and treatments of time of the twentieth century, and in the Bergson-influenced literary constructs of Lewis, Eliot, and Auden, a common theological articulation sounds out--time present is where humans meet God.