The End Of Protestantism

The Failure of Denominationalism and the Future of Christian Unity One of the unforeseen results of the Reformation was the shattering fragmentation of the church. Protestant tribalism was and continues to be a major hindrance to any solution to Christian division and its cultural effects. In this book, influential thinker Peter Leithart critiques American denominationalism in the context of global and historic Christianity, calls for an end to Protestant tribalism, and presents a vision for the future church that transcends post-Reformation divisions. Leithart offers pastors and churches a practical agenda, backed by theological arguments, for pursuing local unity now. Unity in the church will not be a matter of drawing all churches into a single, existing denomination, says Leithart. Returning to Catholicism or Orthodoxy is not the solution. But it is possible to move toward church unity without giving up our convictions about truth. This critique and defense of Protestantism urges readers to preserve and celebrate the central truths recovered in the Reformation while working to heal the wounds of the body of Christ.

Presents an accessible history of Protestantism from Martin Luther to the present day, focusing on worldwide developments and examining not only European and North American aspects of Protestant journeys, but also the importance of Protestant expansion into the non-Western world.

We live in a profoundly spiritual age, but not in any good way. Huge swaths of American culture are driven by manic spiritual anxiety and relentless supernatural worry. Radicals and traditionalists, liberals and conservatives, together with politicians, artists, environmentalists, followers of food fads, and the chattering classes of television commentators: America is filled with people frantically seeking confirmation of their own essential goodness. We are a nation desperate to stand of the side of morality--to know that we are righteous and dwell in the light. In An Anxious Age, Joseph Bottum offers an account of modern America, presented as a morality tale formed by a collision of spiritual disturbances. And the cause, he claims, is the most significant and least noticed historical fact of the last fifty years: the collapse of the mainline Protestant churches that were the source of social consensus and cultural unity. Our dangerous spiritual anxieties, broken loose from the churches that once contained them, now madden everything in American life. Updating The Protestant Ethic and the Sprit of Capitalism, Max Weber's sociological classic, An Anxious Age undertakes two case studies of contemporary social classes adrift in a nation without the religious understandings that gave them meaning. Looking at the college-educated elite he calls "the Poster Children," Bottum sees the post-Protestant heirs of the old mainline Protestant domination of culture: dutiful descendants who claim the high social position of their Christian ancestors even while they reject their ancestors' Christianity. Turning to the Swallows of Capistrano, the Catholics formed by the pontificate of John Paul II, Bottum evaluates the early victories--and later defeats--of the attempt to substitute Catholicism for the dying mainline voice in public life. Sweeping across American intellectual and cultural history, An Anxious Age traces the course of national religion and warns about the strange angels and even stranger demons with which we now wrestle. Insightful and contrarian, wise and unexpected, An Anxious Age ranks among the great modern accounts of American culture.

What if Protestantism were true? What if the Reformers really were heroes, the Bible the sole rule of faith, and Christ's Church just an invisible collection of loosely united believers? As an Evangelical, Devin Rose used to believe all of it. Then one day the nagging questions began. He noticed things about Protestant belief and practice that didn't add up. He began following the logic of Protestant claims to places he never expected it to go -leading to conclusions no Christians would ever admit to holding. In The Protestant's Dilemma, Rose examines over thirty of those conclusions, showing with solid evidence, compelling reason, and gentle humor how the major tenets of Protestantism - if honestly pursued to their furthest extent - wind up in dead ends. The only escape? Catholic truth. Rose patiently unpacks each instance, and shows how Catholicism solves the Protestant's dilemma through the witness of Scripture, Christian history, and the authority with which Christ himself undeniably vested his Church.

"It takes no courage to sign up as a Protestant." These words begin this bold new work -- the culmination of David Wells's long-standing critique of the evangelical landscape. But to live as a true Protestant -- well, that's another matter. This book is a jeremiad against "new" versions of evangelicalism -- marketers and emergents -- and a summons to return to the historic faith, defined by the Reformation solas (grace, faith, and Scripture alone) and by a high regard for doctrine. Wells argues that historic, classical evangelicalism is marked by doctrinal seriousness, as opposed to the new movements of the marketing church and the emergent church. He energetically confronts the marketing communities and their tendency to try to win parishioners as consumers rather than worshipers, advertising the most palatable environment rather than trusting the truth to be attractive. He takes particular issue with the most popular evangelical movement in recent years -- the emergent church. Emergents, he says, are postmodern and postconservative and postfoundational, embracing a less absolute understanding of the authority of Scripture than traditionally held. The Courage to Be Protestant is a forceful argument for the courage to be faithful to what Christianity in its biblical forms has always stood for, thereby securing hope for the church's future.

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

"The founder and CEO of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and columnist for the Atlantic describes how white Protestant Christians have declined in influence and power since the 1990s and explores the effect this has had on America, "--NoveList.

"In this compelling intellectual and social history, Moorhead argues that for mainline Protestants in the late 19th century, time became endless, human-directed and without urgency. . . . Moorhead offers some brilliant observations about the legacy of postmillennialism and the human need for a definitive eschaton." —Publishers Weekly In the 19th century American Protestants firmly believed that when progress had run its course, there would be a Second Coming of Christ, the world would come to a supernatural End, and the predictions in the Apocalypse would come to pass. During the years covered in James Moorhead's study, however, moderate and liberal mainstream Protestants transformed this postmillennialism into a hope that this world would be the scene for limitless spiritual improvement and temporal progress. The sense of an End vanished with the arrival of the new millennium.