Subversive Christianity, Second Edition: Imaging God in a Dangerous Time
Ebook
Overview
Where is Western culture going?
What should Christians think about it?
Those who already ask these questions often come up with confused answers. Those who do not are, arguably, living in a fool's paradise (or a fool's hell.)
In this second edition of Subversive Christianity, Brian Walsh returns to the themes of cultural discernment that he unpacked more than twenty years ago. In a new Postscript, Walsh revisits Francis Fukuyama, Bruce Cockburn, and the prophet Jeremiah and asks, Where are we now? In light of 9/11 and the world economic crisis of 2008, how do we discern the times, and what does that discernment tell us about the calling of the church?
Top Highlights
“Goudzwaard describes the cultural imagination of the West, the spiritual driving force, or worldview, of Western culture as dominated, and permeated, by a faith that believes that progress is inevitable if only we allow human reason freely and scientifically to investigate our world. Progress enables us to acquire the technological power necessary to control that world and bring about the ultimate human goal: economic affluence and security.” (source)
“There is no relation—no relation whatsoever—between economic wealth and personal happiness, fulfilment and well being. Material prosperity does not bring human fulfilment or happiness. The Bible has always taught this. We are just beginning painfully to learn this lesson.” (source)
“Rather, it is the result of the loving, calling Word of God. God wills the creation into being. God evokes the creation, calls the creation. Creation, then, is, in its very being, a response, an answer to the Creator’s call.” (source)
“The prophet is first to criticise and dismantle the dominant worldview, and then to energise the covenant community with an alternative worldview, an alternative imagination.” (source)
“Is it imaginable that the mass media could be an agent of awakened social, cultural, and spiritual renewal, rather than the one thing that numbs us into cultural complacency and sleep more than anything else? And is our imagination spiritually opened up enough to conceive of a business enterprise that is characterised by stewardship, environmental responsibility, and real serviceability rather than profits, pollution and superfluous consumer goods?” (source)
"Brian Walsh tackles the central issues head on in this powerful little book. He is well-equipped to do so. On the one hand, he has studied contemporary culture--and a wide range of Christian discussions of it--in great depth. We are here given, in easily accessible form, the fruits of many years of patient academic work. He has also drunk deeply from biblical theology, and provides clear and creative exegesis of several passages in a way which breathes new life into them. Walsh brings together the Bible and the modern world in a way which is as original as it is compelling."
--From the foreword by N.T. Wright, University of St. Andrews.
Product Details
- Title : Subversive Christianity, Second Edition: Imaging God in a Dangerous Time
- Authors:
- Walsh, Brian J.
- Wright, Tom
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Publication Date: 2014
- ISBN: 9781630879433
Brian Walsh is a Christian Reformed campus minister at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination, and coauthor of Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement (with Steven Bouma-Prediger), Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire (with Sylvia Keesmaat), and Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be (with J. Richard Middleton).