Facing a Pandemic traces the history and spread of the HIV/AIDS virus in Africa and its impact on African society and public policy before considering new priorities needed to combat the pandemic. The central argument is that the theological motif of the image of God invites a prophetic critique of the social environment in which HIV/AIDS thrives and calls for a praxis of love and compassion.

For decades, American popular media have instructed audiences about their roles and significance in the public sphere. In The Faithful Citizen, rhetorical critic Kristy Maddux argues that popular Christian media not only communicate avenues for civic engagement but do so in profoundly gendered terms. Her detailed interrogation of popular Christian movies, books, and television shows—the Left Behind series, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, Amazing Grace, 7th Heaven, and the blockbuster The Da Vinci Code—exposes five competing models of how Christians should behave in the civic sphere as their gendered selves. What emerges is a typology that insightfully reveals how these varying faith-based models of engagement uniquely shape public discourse and influence the larger picture of contemporary politics.

Economics is a value laden enterprise - and this despite the oft repeated claims of neutrality, objectivity, and the absence of bias. This volume explores the relationship between Christianity and economics, arguing that the two can and should be integrated. While no single Christian perspective drives the book, the authors do share in common a belief that scholarship shaped by Christian commitments is entirely appropriate and should be an integral part of the professional life of Christian economist. In particular, this volume demonstrates how Christianity shapes the worldview an economist brings to the task, the questions an economist asks, and the policies an economist advocates.

With crisp prose and intellectual fairness, Family Politics traces the treatment of the family in the philosophies of leading political thinkers of the modern world. What is family? What is marriage? In an effort to address contemporary society’s disputes over the meanings of these human social institutions, Scott Yenor carefully examines a roster of major and unexpected modern political philosophers—from Locke and Rousseau to Hegel and Marx to Freud and Beauvoir. He lucidly presents how these individuals developed an understanding of family in order to advance their goals of political and social reform. Through this exploration, Yenor unveils the effect of modern liberty on this foundational institution and argues that the quest to pursue individual autonomy has undermined the nature of marriage and jeopardizes its future.

This book examines conversion stories as told by people who have actually undergone a conversion experience, including experiences of apostasy. The stories reveal that there is not just one"conversion story."Scot McKnight and Hauna Ondrey show that"conversion theory"helps explain why some people walk away from one religion, often to another, very different religion. The book confirms the usefulness-particularly for pastors, rabbis, and priests, and university and college teachers-of applying conversion theory to specific groups. However, the book's sensitive detailing of the stories themselves makes conversion more than a theoretical occurrence; it makes the immediacy, and often the difficulty, of conversion both real and moving.

This volume examines relations between U.S. Protestants and Africa since the end of colonial rule. It draws attention to shifting ecclesiastical and socio-political priorities, especially the decreased momentum of social justice advocacy and the growing missionary influence of churches emphasizing spiritual revival and personal prosperity. The book provides a thought-provoking assessment of U.S. Protestant involvements with Africa, and it proposes forms of engagement that build upon ecclesiastical dynamism within American and African contexts.

Postmodern thinkers have demonstrated the fragmentation of the Enlightenment understanding of the self, society, and nature; for many, however, the postmodern alternatives—the pursuit of individual self-definition, utter skepticism regarding the relation between language and reality, or the embrace of ideological power—are unconvincing. In The Fullness of Knowing, by placing the most promising postmodern insights in dialogue with eighteenth-century critics of the Enlightenment, Daniel Ritchie argues that we can begin to overcome post-Enlightenment fragmentation without abandoning either coherence (as many postmoderns have done) or the valid insights of modern and postmodern thought (as many traditionalists have done).

The Future of Baptist Higher Education investigates four key issues that inform Baptist efforts at higher education: the denominational conflict that has afflicted Baptists since the 1980s, the secularization of higher education in America, the dominance of the market-driven tendencies in American higher education today, and the meaning of Christian higher education, but more specifically, the meaning of Baptist higher education. This volume clearly illustrates that the meaning of Baptist and Christian higher education, as with the Christian life itself, is far more complex than any one imperial interpretation.

David Gushee argues convincingly that there is in U.S. politics an “evangelical center” of voters who do not identify with the politics and religion of either the right or the left. Although evangelical Christians are portrayed by the media as conservatives, Gushee claims that the evangelical movement includes nearly even numbers of voters on the right, in the center, and on the left of the political spectrum. He provides portraits of the major figures in each of the three camps, outlines the core convictions of the adherents, and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of each group’s positions. He suggests that the evangelical center is poised for growth; this book could be its manifesto.

Why has gambling become so accepted in the U.S. when other historical vices, like smoking and drinking, continue to evoke morality-based opposition? That simple but intriguing question guides this path-breaking volume, the first interdisciplinary academic study of gambling. Led by the renowned Alan Wolfe and with essays by experts at the country’s premiere centers in public policy, clinical addiction, law, gaming, psychology, sociology, moral philosophy, theology, and the arts, Gambling: Mapping the American Moral Landscape is a tour de force of the booming cultural and moral phenomenon that has become woven into the fabric of American life. Both an attempt to understand and an effort to predict its future consequences, the book will prove evocative and critical reading for American civic and church leaders, activists, historians and government officials.