CTS Library

From celebrated scholar Dr. Yolanda Pierce comes this indelible meditation on Black faith, suffering, hope, and the healing possibilities of justice, written in the venerable tradition of James Cone and Kelly Brown Douglas.

Offers a collection of wide-ranging essays exploring key issues animating trans biblical interpretation from a variety of angles and emphases. Contributors, who themselves represent a range of gender identities, answer the question "what makes a biblical reading trans, or a trans reading biblical?" in diverse and exciting ways. They also promote new ways of thinking about gender variation in the ancient world while more sensitively and critically addressing ongoing debates about gender and embodiment.

Calls upon extensive personal and professional experience to offer insight, context, and concrete guidance for congregations and leaders seeking to better serve the growing percentage of the population experiencing life with dementia. Churches have a vital role to play in alleviating the social isolation and stress of dementia, and church members have much to learn from taking part in a dementia ministry.

Can religion coexist in harmony with the American ideal of separation of church and state? Philosopher Robert Audi here explores this perennial and topical question. The notion of a religion is complex and elastic; the notion of democracy is complex and contested. Audi explores both notions in the context of American founding documents, American ideals of religious liberty and social justice, and contemporary American social problems in public education, business, and healthcare--all of which are beset by the culture wars--from perceived hostility to religion in schools, to vaccine resistance, to refusals to provide religiously objectionable services, to abortion.

This rich and diverse collection of sermons, essays, and worship elements explores how to preach, teach, and practice Open, Relational, and Process theological perspectives in local faith communities. It is a resource for pastors, ministers of worship arts, lay church leaders, professors of preaching, worship, and practical theology, and anyone seeking a deep understanding of God that aligns with the Bible, science, and inclusive love and justice for all life on Earth.

Using national survey data, in-depth interviews, and focus group results gathered over several years, Emerson and Bracey argue that the Religion of Whiteness shapes the practice of Christianity for millions of Americans and discuss what can be done to confront it.

In this compelling historical account, Chris Beneke explains how the religion clauses of the U.S. Constitution came into existence and how they were woven into American culture. He brings prominent early national figures to life, including George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Paine, while chronicling the First Amendment's relationship to defining social conditions like slavery, civility, family life, and the free market.

Using the lenses of practical theology, ecclesiology, Queer theology, and gender studies, Brandon Thomas Crowley examines the heteronormative histories, theologies, morals, values, and structures of Black churches and how their longstanding assumptions can be challenged.

How did white evangelicals come to see the suburbs as a promised land, home to the evangelical good life and to dense concentrations and networks of evangelical residents, churches big and small, and nonprofit organizations? This book systematically assesses how evangelicals became intertwined with the suburbs and what this means for evangelical life.

Offers a new framework informed by contemporary conversations about sexual violence, writings by victims and survivors, and feminist, queer, and affect theory. In addition, Graybill offers significant new readings of biblical rape stories, including Dinah (Gen. 34), Tamar (2 Sam. 13), Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11), Hagar (Gen. 16), Daughter Zion (Lam. 1-2), and the unnamed woman known as the Levite's concubine (Judges 19).

This book tackles the “taboo” subject of sexuality that has long been avoided by the Black church and community. Douglas argues that this view of Black sexuality has interfered with constructive responses to the AIDS crisis and teenage pregnancies, fostered intolerance of sexual diversity, frustrated healthy male/female relationship, and rendered black and womanist theologians silent on sexual issues.

Alcántara offers a definitive biography of one of the most controversial, complex--and, eventually, forgotten--luminaries of the twentieth century. Alcántara chronicles Jackson's rise to power as pastor of the largest Black church in the United States, the 15,000-member Olivet Baptist in Chicago, and as the longest-tenured president of the six-million-member National Baptist Convention, at one time the nation's largest Black organization. Nicknamed the "Negro Pope" along with "Silver Tongue," Jackson was known foremost for his oratorical talents. But his significance to twentieth-century Black Christianity and U.S. history more broadly has not yet been fully understood. Alcántara here provides a compelling examination of Jackson's humble beginnings, rise to power, and gradual fall from grace.

Invites readers into the imaginative, subversive, and ethically complicated stories of four nineteenth-century Black figures who received the call to challenge the what is and live into the what could be in the midst of a hard-hearted world. Focusing on the prophetic-call narratives of Maria Stewart, Nat Turner, Julia Foote, and Richard Allen, author Thomas M. Fuerst offers insight into the unique contributions this tradition makes to American oratory, storytelling, history, ethics, theology, and protest.

This book understands, interprets, and critiques the theology of the American Empire that undergirds and bolsters U.S. foreign policy and global engagement in the contemporary world order. It is particularly in conversation with African American experience, American presidential history, black religious and political thought, as well as black theological perspectives. The book makes a constructive theological statement and declaration on the American Empire in opposition and resistance to racism and white supremacy in U.S. origins and historical development. Finally it proposes a way forward for twenty-first century black theology in response to the foundational theology of James Cone.

"Evangelism" is a contested, even conflicted word. But churches are declining in numbers and resources. What if we aren't thinking about evangelism in the right way, culturally or theologically? This book contextualizes evangelism in our late modern times and reimagines what the call to outreach means in today's world. Root offers a vision for how a theology of consolation can shape a hopeful approach to evangelism.

Debates about human sexuality have divided the church across denominations. The Body of Christ has been wounded by profound theological disagreement. Preaching can be a healing balm for those who have been bruised and harmed by these debates. This book asks the church to remember its own nature as a Body that has a baptismal identity rooted in the triune God. We remember the beauty and value of the human body and we remember that we belong to a baptismal community with a distinctive ethic. Sermons are an opportunity to refresh and heal a Body that has been broken by division. By affirming sexuality and the body, preachers can build toward an affirmation of all sexual identities while making space for those whose theology is not affirming. In recovering the body as a focus for preaching, this book argues for a more equitable and inclusive understanding of Christian identity.

Trained as a scientist, pastor, and theologian, Carmelo Santos-Rolón brings together insights from various fields in neuroscience and the cognitive sciences (such as the neuroscience of religious experience, the neuroscience of emotions, the cognitive science of religion, and the neuroscience of decision-making) with data from liberation, postcolonial, decolonial, and Lutheran ecumenical theologies to analyze the spiritual experience of holistic liberation. The result is a theological framework, informed by science, that allows us to appreciate how the Spirit of God is at work "in, with, and under" neurons, bodies, and communities in all their beautiful messiness and complexity.

As a spiritual director, psychospiritual practitioner, and trauma survivor, Aizaiah Yong provides resources, practical integrations in contemplative paradigms, and new models of trauma care. In Trauma and Renewal, he shifts engagement beyond individualist approaches toward a holistic one of community, with culturally informed trauma care practices to support post-traumatic healing, growth, and lifelong transformation.

Proposing a groundbreaking theological approach to what it means to truly thrive, A Theology of Flourishing reframes Christian thought around the concept of abundant life for all of creation. Drawing from scripture, tradition, and contemporary theology, Schutz argues that flourishing is God’s fundamental intention for the universe. Suitable for students and scholars alike, this timely work confronts modern crises of injustice, inequality, and ecological destruction while constructing a fresh, hope-filled vision of Christian life for the well-being of all.

Through rigorous quantitative analyses and careful textual study of ordinary evangelicals' written comments, Inbari and Bumin aim to rectify misconceptions about who evangelical and born-again Christians are, about their sympathies toward Israel, Jewish people, and Palestinians, and about the sources of their foreign policy attitudes toward the conflict.

The common understanding of calling is often simplistic. You simply need to follow your bliss, or God's will. Miller-McLemore dives into the complex reality of what it means to pursue a calling, challenging the deceptive and destructive idea that a well-lived life is simple, with one perfect career, partner, or summons from God. Instead, she argues, to truly grapple with calling, we must consider how it evolves amid the constraints of life. Callings are often accompanied by loss, regret, failure, impediments, frustration, overload, and conflict, challenges that are an important part of a balanced life.

Beginning in 1620, tens of thousands of devout English colonists known as Puritans came to America. They believed that bringing Christianity to the natives would liberate them from darkness. Daniel Gookin, Massachusetts's missionary superintendent, called such efforts a "war of the Lord," a war in which Christ would deliver captive souls from Satan's bondage. But when Puritan soldiers slaughtered hundreds of indigenous men, women, and children at Fort Mystic in 1637, during the Pequot War, they also believed they were doing God's will. The same was true during King Philip's War, perhaps the bloodiest war in American history. The Puritan clergyman Increase Mather described this conflict, too, as a "war of the Lord," a war in which God was judging the enemies of his people. Matthew J. Tuininga argues that these two "wars" are inextricably linked. Puritan Christianity, he shows, shaped both the spiritual and military conquests of New England from beginning to end.