The End of Protestantism

The End of Protestantism
Author: Peter J. Leithart
Publisher: Brazos Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2016-10-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1493405837

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.

Protestantism: A Very Short Introduction

Protestantism: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Mark A. Noll
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2011-08-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191620130

Mark A. Noll presents a fresh and accessible history of Protestantism from the era of Martin Luther to the present day. Beginning with the founding of Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and Anabaptist churches in the sixteenth-century Reformation, he also considers the rise of other important Christian movements like Methodism and Pentecostalism. Focussing on worldwide developments, rather than just the familiar European and American histories, he considers the recent expansion of Protestant movements in Africa, China, India, and Latin America, emphasising the on-going and rapidly expanding story of Protestants worldwide. Noll examines the contributions from well-known figures including Martin Luther and John Calvin, along with many others, and explores why Protestant energies have flagged recently in the Western world yet expanded so dramatically elsewhere. Highlighting the key points of Protestant commonality including the message of Christian salvation, reliance on the Bible, and organization through personal initiative, he also explores the reasons for Protestantism's extraordinary diversity. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The Protestant's Dilemma

The Protestant's Dilemma
Author: Devin Rose
Publisher: Catholic Answers
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2014-02-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781938983610

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.

The Protestant Interest

The Protestant Interest
Author: Thomas S. Kidd
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300128401

During the early 18th century, New England witnessed the end of Puritanism and the emergence of a revivalist movement that culminated in the evangelical awakenings of the 1740s. This text shows how New Englanders abandoned their hostility towards Britain, instead viewing it as the chosen leader in the fight against Catholicism.

The End of White Christian America

The End of White Christian America
Author: Robert P. Jones
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2016-07-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501122290

"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.

World without End

World without End
Author: James H. Moorhead
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 1999-10-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0253028507

"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.

An Anxious Age

An Anxious Age
Author: Joseph Bottum
Publisher: Image
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2014-02-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0385521464

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.

The End of Empathy

The End of Empathy
Author: John W. Compton
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2020
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 019006918X

"The End of Empathy develops a theoretical framework capable of explaining both the rise of white Protestant social concern in the latter part of the nineteenth century and its sudden demise at the end of the twentieth. The theory proceeds from the premise that religious conviction, by itself, is rarely sufficient to motivate empathetic political behavior. When believers do act empathetically - for example, by championing reforms that transfer resources or political influence to less privileged groups within society - it is typically because strong religious institutions have compelled them to do so. For much of American history, mainline Protestant church membership functioned as an important marker of social status - one that few upwardly mobile citizens could afford to go without. The socioeconomic significance of membership, in turn, endowed Protestant leaders with considerable authority over the beliefs and actions of their congregations. At key junctures in U.S. history - the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the civil rights movement - the nation's informal Protestant establishment used this authority to mobilize rank-and-file churchgoers on behalf of government programs that increased economic opportunity and promoted civic inclusion. When this pattern of religious authority collapsed in the late 1960s - thanks to a confluence of trends in the labor market, higher education, and residential mobility - it produced a large population of white suburbanites who had little reason to seek out mainline Protestant churches or heed their advice on the burning social questions of the day. The churches that flourished in the new age of personal autonomy were those that preached against attempts by government to promote a more equitable distribution of wealth and political authority"--

The Courage to Be Protestant

The Courage to Be Protestant
Author: David F. Wells
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2008-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0802840078

"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.