Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear
Choosing Trust over Safety in an Anxious Age
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
Fear has taken on an outsized role in our current cultural and political context. Manufactured threats are advanced with little to no evidence of danger, while real threats are exaggerated for self-interested gain. This steady diet of fear produces unhealthy moral lives, leading many Christians to focus more on the dangers we wish to avoid than the goods we wish to pursue. As a fearful people, we are tempted to make safety our highest good and to make virtues of suspicion, preemption, and accumulation. But this leaves the church ill-equipped to welcome the stranger, love the enemy, or give to those in need.
This timely resource brings together cultural analysis and theological insight to explore a Christian response to the culture of fear. Laying out a path from fear to faithfulness, theologian Scott Bader-Saye explores practices that embody Jesus's call to place our trust in him, inviting Christian communities to take the risks of hospitality, peacemaking, and generosity. This book has been revised throughout, updated to connect with today's readers, and includes new discussion questions.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The latest volume in the Christian Practice of Everyday Life Series (What About Hitler? etc.) explores the tension between Christian ethical imperatives and the anxieties of the post-9/11 world. Bader-Saye, who is an associate professor of theology and religious studies at the University of Scranton, is primarily concerned with the impact that these anxieties are having on the practices of hospitality, peacemaking and generosity. Acknowledging that many of our fears are well grounded, he believes that the best way Christians can reclaim their ethical heritage is by pooling their risk at the local level. He cites Taiz , the ecumenical French monastery, as an example of how pooled risk can counteract typical 21st-century fears and calls the practice of hospitality a "parable of courage in community." Anxiety and despair can also be opposed, he believes, through reclamation of God as providential parent. He writes, "Providence, at its heart, has to do with the conviction that our lives and our world constitute a coherent story, a drama, in which God and humankind, together, drive the story toward its proper conclusion." While some Christian groups may feel a certain obviousness to what he has to say, many, especially the mainline denominations, can learn much from this cogently argued and elegantly written volume.
