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Lightly tracing his personal experiences growing up in the Bible Belt as a born-again Christian, James A. Sanders recounts his second rebirth experience and subsequent efforts to battle what can most broadly be called evangelicalism's denial of dignity and human worth to those different from the so-called norm. While Sanders cherishes his early experience of being «saved» or «born again,» he has become deeply concerned at what has happened to the evangelical movement in America, especially in its being politicized and removed from any kind of valid interpretation of the Bible itself. Sanders critiques evangelicalism for restricting the Holy Spirit's work to the realm of personal experience and so for denying the Spirit's work in society to move believers beyond the ancient mores and metaphors that biblical authors and editors used to record God's work in antiquity. Sanders proposes that Christians read the Bible honestly in its ancient and moral contexts, and attempt with humility to register its prophetic condemnation of tribal views of God, in order to heed the Spirit's urgings to engage in the advancing monotheizing process that the Bible demands of its adherents.

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Judaism, Christianity, and Islam claim to be monotheistic, but none of them actually is; none of the three has yet arrived at the true monotheism the Bible and the Qur'an mandate: that is, belief in there being but One God of All. Each often claims its concept of God is the One God despite the fact that the Bible and the Qur'an insist that the true God is indefinable and incomprehensible. Many passages of the Bible are polytheistic, and yet the Judaism that emerged out of the exile claimed to believe in One God. Critically moving from the older passages through to the later, careful readers are able to trace a process that is best called monotheizing. In effect the first commandment of the Decalogue, the first of Jesus's two great commandments, and the Qur'an's clear mandate fashion an imperative to continue the monotheizing process that is not yet complete but that enjoins adherents of each to live life in the belief that there is but One God of All.

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