what is civic religion?

are the religious right?

According to Wilfred McClay and William Imboden: That strain of American piety that bestows many of the elements of religious sentiment and faith upon the political and social institutions of the United States. More problematically, civil religion is the misidentification of the nation of the United States with the covenant people of God. It is the casual assumption that America enjoys a special role in redemptive history. It is the confusion of the office of the political leader with the office of the spiritual leader. It is the frequent presumption of divine blessings without submission to divine judgment. It is the sublimation of Christian distinctives to a generic amalgam that conflates many faiths into a common national identity. It is as old as America itself. And it is not biblical Christianity.

mercy's store

The gospel: you are more twisted inside than you would ever dare imagine. You are more loved than you would ever dare hope. Love and justice; mercy and holiness. Ungracefully, and like an old shoe, one or the other comfortably envelopes our heart -- never both. Well, most the time. When love's robust and justice thin, Christ no longer had to die, and I am no longer "that bad." When my heart sees justice alone, Christ no longer had to live, and I am crushed and exhausted as I save myself. Those moments when both take hold -- fully, not fifty/fifty; consummation, not compromise -- are the moments in which my stone heart turns to soft babyskin flesh. I am "that bad," and I am "that loved:" this gospel is compelling, it is good news, my heart's true rest.

Let us wonder; grace and justice

Join and point to mercy's store;

When through grace in Christ our trust is,

Justice smiles and asks no more:

He Who washed us with His blood

Has secured our way to God.

longer lists...

As long as I am posting other folk's reading lists out here, I might as well add two more that I think are really good. ONE & TWO. Check them both out, and read good books!

read this: the sin beneath the sin

This here is a really great article! This is part two of that really great article.

lists part II

Butler

I recognize that the aforementioned book list is a really important list of books, and who am I to say that Christianity Today, the "nihil obstat" of evangelicalism, is wrong. But here is a list of books that I think might be more important and more fundamental to read. So here is a list compiled by Redeemer Church in NYC:

C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity
J.I. Packer Knowing God
J. Sire The Universe Next Door
John Stott Basic Christianity
B. Walsh and J. Middleton The Transforming Vision
Peter Kreeft The Journey
R.C. Sproul The Holiness of God
M. Horton Putting Amazing Back into Grace
M. Noll Turning Points
C. Plantinga Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Beviary of Sin
R. Lovelace Dynamics of Spiritual Life
H. Conn Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace
F. Schaeffer True Spirituality
C.S.Lewis The Abolition of Man
J.I.Packer "Introduction" to J.Owen's The Death of Death
J.I.Packer Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God
J.White The Fight
J. Edwards On the Religious Affections
M. Luther "Preface" to Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians
C. Blomberg The Historical Reliability of the Gospels
C. George Preparing Your Church for the Future
M.Green Evangelism Through the Local Church
H.Conn Planting and Growing of Urban Churches
T.Keller Ministries of Mercy
D.Keyes Chameleon Christianity
J.Engel and W.Dyrness Changing the Mind of Missions
G.Marsden The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship
M. Noll The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
L. Newbiggin Foolishness to the Greeks

lists

Annunciation

Here, as the title suggests, I will present lists. In this case, I am going to present the ten most important (Christian) books from the 20th century according to Christianity Today.

1. C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity
2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Cost of Discipleship
3. Karl Barth Church Dogmatics
4. J. R. R. Tolkien Lord of the Rings
5. John Howard Yoder The Politics of Jesus
6. G.K. Chesterton Orthodoxy
7. Thomas Merton The Seven Storey Mountain
8. Richard Foster Celebration of Discipline
9. Oswald Chambers My Utmost for His Highest
10. Reinhold Niebuhr Moral Man and Immoral Society