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Wednesday, November 9, 2016 is the day that changed America. A Republican business mogul and reality television host who once proclaimed that if women didn't accept the intimate advancements of men, then men were could simply grab these women by a particularly sensitive extremity below their stomachs, snatched the electoral collegiate vote and since then has worked tirelessly on reversing President Barack Obama's progressive policies and pushing immigration legislation backwards.
This vital resource guide incorporates the basic understandings of spiritual care with the current social, emotional, existential and spiritual needs of African Americans simply surviving in Trump's violent America. It's one-of-a-kind, offering specific spiritual care strategies and interventions for African Americans dealing with particular physical, social and emotional health challenges in the midst of rising statistics of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia leading to violence in the United States.
Intended for anyone in academia or the helping professions, this comprehensive work benefits those seeking to provide spiritual care to African American hospital patients, counseling clients, church congregants and parishioners, military veterans, or returning service members. The contributors to this anthology are experts in their respective fields who offer a new, refreshing, and energizing perspective on important issues impacting African Americans.

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The purpose of this book is to help those engaged in Christian formation, or those exploring faith perspectives for themselves, to see the Ten Commandments in a positive and liberating, rather than a restrictive, sense. Seen in the context of Israel's story, the commandments are guidance toward a life of freedom in community. Commonly held meanings of faith, freedom, and love are challenged as social and political dimensions of this journey toward freedom are developed.

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"The Christian church worldwide has been taken prisoner by Satan's counterfeit healing." This statement is based on the author's personal experience, modest exposure to the Toronto Blessing, observation of parachurch healing ministries, and extensive historical reconstructions. Satan's Counterfeit Healing presents and evaluates Satan's supernatural healing from the Paleolithic period (ca. 45000 BCE) to the contemporary church. The guiding thesis is that Satan and his demonic surrogates perform miracles which are evident as psi paranormal phenomena. These manifestations include physical and exorcistic supernatural healings. Paleolithic and Neolithic periods produced Great Mother goddess worship and healing, which have persisted ever since. These idolatries, combined with OT nature gods, were a backdrop to Jesus' true miracles. For two thousand years of church history there's been a tug-of-war between true and false healing. Mother goddess as Mariological shrine healing joined with natural and demonic magic, and esoteric energy psi. Alongside these the Holy Spirit has raised up genuine healers and their ministries. Modern healing is marked by energy counterfeits and faith healing, the latter especially accompanied by trance, false prophecy, and psi transformations. True divine healing can be recovered when Christians repudiate nature gods, reject false prophecy, and restore proper eschatology.

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This book issues a provocative challenge to the notion, prevalent in Christian circles, that people (or their «souls») go to heaven when they die. Though deeply entrenched in Christian and Western culture, there is little or no biblical warrant for such a belief. John Davies presents a biblical theology of heaven, informed by mainstream biblical scholarship, and in the process sweeps away popular misconceptions. Be prepared to have your understanding of such cherished passages as John 14:2 («In my Father's house . . .») challenged. But as well, this book seeks to show the more glorious dimensions of the Christian hope, our renewal as whole persons in the context of a cosmic restoration, the outcome of the victory of Jesus. Though much of the language of the Bible regarding our eternal destiny is in the form of imagery, we should continue to use such imagery, understanding it against its cultural background, rather than construct our own more impoverished mythology based more on dubious logic and sentiment.

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The Pelagian Controversy (411-431) was one of the most important theological controversies in the history of Christianity. It was a bitter and messy affair in the evening of the Roman Empire that addressed some of the most important questions that we ask about ourselves: Who are we? What does it mean to be a human being? Are we good, or are we evil? Are we burdened by an uncontrollable impulse to sin? Do we have free will? It was comprised by a group of men who were some of the greatest thinkers of Late Antiquity, such as Augustine, Jerome, John Cassian, Pelagius, Caelestius, and Julian of Eclanum. These men were deeply immersed in the rich Roman literary and intellectual traditions of that time, and they, along with many other great minds of this period, tried to create equally rich Christian literary and intellectual traditions. This controversy–which is usually of interest only to historians and theologians of Christianity–should be appreciated by a wide audience because it was the primary event that shaped the way Christians came to understand the human person for the next 1,600 years. It is still relevant today because anthropological questions continue to haunt our public discourse.

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Greening the Children of God uncovers the theological roots of the growing ethical imperative to reconnect children to their natural environment. Theologians emphasize the sacramental nature of embedding our lives in creation. Environmental educators emphasize knowledge of local biology. Psychologists emphasize the morally pro-formative experience of care between biodiverse creatures. Together they affirm that knowing their place in the natural environment helps a child develop an intersubjective «ecological» identity that nurtures virtues of mutuality and care. During the Scientific Revolution this ethical harmony was threatened as science and moral theology began to adopt different epistemological methods. Seventeenth-century Anglican priest and poet Thomas Traherne was prescient of the consequences of this divorce and insisted that education should promote a child's attention to the moral dimensions woven into «the tapestry of creation.» Traherne professed that play, wonder, and a sensory relationship to diverse creatures play a pedagogical role in a child's moral formation. Greening the Children of God establishes the contemporary significance of Traherne's moral theory in conversation with child psychologists, educators, philosophers, and theologians who know that cultivating a place-based relationship to the local ecology helps children perceive creation's deep mutuality and develop a moral identity in the image of a caring Creator.

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The sacrificial nature of Jesus' crucifixion stands at the core of the Christian faith, and it serves as a focal point for the forty days of Lent. The essential meaning of his death as a victim of sacrifice is widely recognized, but there is more to the sacrificial representation than many realize. Jesus is not, for example, described in the New Testament only as a Passover lamb. That type of lamb sacrifice had nothing to do with addressing sin. His sacrifice involved concepts beyond Passover. Jesus and his early followers drew upon Jewish Scriptures to describe his death in light of several other Israelite practices and traditions, such as Day of Atonement rituals, guilt-sacrifice, and more. In this book, Tatlock draws upon his understanding of ancient sacrifice to explain the complex portrayal of the crucifixion in the New Testament. He shares about his personal challenges and insights in a series of daily reflections for the Lenten season or for any other time of the year.

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Christianity is dying–in parts of the world it is already dead. Yet there is hope, but it will require radical surgery that many are unprepared to accept as necessary. The vast behemoth that calls itself institutional Christianity must die if the Jesus Movement upon which it was founded is to live. The essential message of the Christian gospel is that death leads to new life. Is Christianity ready to embrace this truth and die so that it can live?

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Various cross-textual readings have been attempted between the Christian Bible and Chinese literature. Using cross-textual hermeneutics, this study centers on the political wisdom of Ecclesiastes and the Analects, and its goal is to demonstrate that both texts offer wisdom pointers for human survival amid uncertain sociopolitical realities. Chapter 1 introduces the vibrant interaction of biblical wisdom literature within the ancient Near East and highlights some of its political connections. The openness of wisdom literature is then proposed to support this present effort of cross-textual research. Chapter 2 offers readings of eight passages that communicate Qoheleth's political wisdom in Ecclesiastes. Chapter 3 centers on the Analects and on some notable passages that relate to Confucius' political ideas. Chapter 4 seeks to demonstrate the dialogical dynamics between the two works by exploring specific hermeneutical connections. In conclusion, readers will come to understand the distinctive and collective political insights of both wisdom texts. That is, this study suggests contextualized ideas for living wisely from within both a faith tradition and a native tradition.

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Good poetry is like a good painting: the more you linger over it, the more it reveals. It is a deep well that never runs dry. And that is why the Psalter, like a good painting, keeps giving. In the last four decades, Psalms scholarship has found remarkable fruitfulness in reading the Psalter as a book–that is, in reading the Psalms as a unified composition with a metanarrative across its 150 poems. Pivotal questions associated with this approach really boil down to two questions–how and why? How are individual psalms sequenced, if at all, and what is the design logic behind that macrostructure? This volume seeks to answer those questions. In essence, the Psalter unfurls the story of the Davidic covenant. While interest in the editing of the Psalter remains high in recent Psalms scholarship, this interest has not led to clear consensus. The specific and timely contribution of this volume is twofold. First, it consolidates the results of studies on groups of psalms. Second, it integrates poetic and thematic approaches that are typically separated in Psalms scholarship. Readers will find results of this study surprising and their implications sobering.

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