The Bible In Politics Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of The Bible In Politics book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.
This enlightening book on how to read the Bible politically serves as a prerequisite to Christian political action. Richard Bauckham offers his interpretations of several Bible passage that are politically relevant, and discusses how reading the Bible in a political context can lead to fresh insights.
This second edition of Bauckham's wonderful work is essential reading for understanding the relationship between the Bible and politics. The enduring value of The Bible in Politics is that it teaches the reader how to read the Bible politically and to gain an understanding of the social relevance of the Bible that is more disciplined, more informed, more imaginative, and more politically fruitful than many interpreters--past and present--have achieved.
Politics - According to the Bible by Wayne A. Grudem Pdf
A variety of perspectives exist within the Christian community when it comes to political issues and political involvement. This comprehensive and readable book presents a political philosophy from the perspective that the Gospel pertains to all of life so Christians should be involved in political issues. In brief, this is an analysis of conservative and liberal plans to do good for the nation, evaluated in light of the Bible and common sense. In this ground-breaking book, recognized evangelical Bible professor Wayne Grudem rejects five mistaken views about Christian influence on politics: (1) “compel religion,” (2) “exclude religion,” (3) “all government is demonic,” (4) “do evangel-ism, not politics,” and (5) “do politics, not evangelism.” He proposes a better alternative: (6) “significant Christian influence on government.” Then he explains the Bible’s teachings about the purpose of civil government and the characteristics of good or bad government. Does the Bible support some form of democracy? Should judges and the courts hold the ultimate power in a nation? With respect to specific political issues, Grudem argues that most people’s political views depend on deep-seated assump-tions about several basic moral and even theological questions, such as whether God exists, whether absolute moral stan-dards can be known, whether there is good and evil in each person’s heart, whether people should be accountable for their good and bad choices, whether property should belong to individuals or to society, and whether the purpose of the earth’s resources is to bring benefit to mankind. After addressing these foundational questions, Grudem provides a thoughtful, carefully-reasoned analysis of over fifty specific issues dealing with the protection of life, marriage, the family and children, economic issues and taxation, the environment, national defense, relationships to other nations, freedom of speech and religion, quotas, and special interests. He makes frequent application to the current policies of the Democratic and Republi-can parties in the United States, but the principles discussed here are relevant for any nation.
The Bible in American Law and Politics by John R. Vile Pdf
While scholars increasingly recognize the importance of religion throughout American history, The Bible in American Law and Politics is the first reference book to focus on the key role that the Bible has played in American public life. In considering revolting from Great Britain, Americans contemplated whether this was consistent with scripture. Americans subsequently sought to apply Biblical passages to such issues as slavery, women’s rights, national alcoholic prohibition, issues of war and peace, and the like. American presidents continue to take their oath on the Bible. Some of America’s greatest speeches, for example, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural and William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech, have been grounded on Biblical texts or analogies. Today, Americans continue to cite the Bible for positions as diverse as LGBTQ rights, abortion, immigration, welfare, health care, and other contemporary issues. By providing essays on key speeches, books, documents, legal decisions, and other writings throughout American history that have sought to buttress arguments through citations to Scriptures or to Biblical figures, John Vile provides an indispensable guide for scholars and students in religion, American history, law, and political science to understand how Americans throughout its history have interpreted and applied the Bible to legal and political issues.
The Bible is fundamental to Western culture. Political philosophers from Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau to modern political theorists such as George H. Sabine, Leo Strauss, and Sheldon S. Wolin have drawn upon biblical examples. American political leaders, such as Thomas Paine, Abraham Lincoln, and William Jennings Bryan all drew heavily upon the Bible. Today, most contemporary politicians display less familiarity with Scripture although many proudly proclaim themselves to be born-again Christians. Politics in the Bible has a simple goal: to help readers to think critically about how the Bible illuminates understanding of justice, leadership, and politics. For a political scientist, there are great advantages to studying the Bible. Students of the Bible have short texts to analyze, but they have a history of two thousand years of Jewish and Christian scholarly discussion. In that tradition, Paul R. Abramson analyzes stories drawn from eighteen of the thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Bible and fifteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. Abramson argues that the Bible is a book that should be read even by those who do not believe it has any transcendent significance. One can choose to read it as the revealed word of God, as a source of Western morality, as a compilation of interesting stories, poetry, and history, or as a work of great literature. Although this book discusses selected stories that have political implications, it also considers parts that have literary merit. This unusual volume may stimulate new thinking about the Bible as a source of insight into political ideas.
The Politics of Faith addresses key biblical texts and their intersection with questions of good government, social policy, and societal leadership. It speaks to Christians and others who seek to ponder and discuss the role of faith and Bible in their decisions about civic politics and faithful citizenship. This book aims to enable readers to see more clearly that the Bible does speak about the kinds of economic and social policies a nation should adopt. It will empower them to claim the message of Scripture in favor of policies that promote the good of those who are disadvantaged and the good of the community. It will help them make the argument that the Bible calls for laws and policies that expect the wealthy to contribute to the good of all, including policies and laws that are not always to their personal financial advantage. The author explores ways the Old Testament shows God's concern for social structures, the ideal early church community in Acts, and how the Gospel of Matthew shows concern for social structures in the ministry of Jesus. The final section looks at the writings of Paul, showing how they demand certain kinds of political commitments. This book will help readers talk about how a deeper understanding of Scripture can affect how one votes and the kinds of policies one supports. Each chapter ends with a set of questions for discussion that both review what is in the chapter and provoke discussion about faithful action.
The Beginning of Politics by Moshe Halbertal,Stephen Holmes Pdf
The Book of Samuel is universally acknowledged as one of the supreme achievements of biblical literature. Yet the book's anonymous author was more than an inspired storyteller. The author was also an uncannily astute observer of political life and the moral compromises and contradictions that the struggle for power inevitably entails. The Beginning of Politics mines the story of Israel's first two kings to unearth a natural history of power, providing a forceful new reading of what is arguably the first and greatest work of Western political thought. Moshe Halbertal and Stephen Holmes show how the beautifully crafted narratives of Saul and David cut to the core of politics, exploring themes that resonate wherever political power is at stake. Through stories such as Saul's madness, David's murder of Uriah, the rape of Tamar, and the rebellion of Absalom, the book's author deepens our understanding not only of the necessity of sovereign rule but also of its costs--to the people it is intended to protect and to those who wield it. What emerges from the meticulous analysis of these narratives includes such themes as the corrosive grip of power on those who hold and compete for power; the ways in which political violence unleashed by the sovereign on his own subjects is rooted in the paranoia of the isolated ruler and the deniability fostered by hierarchical action through proxies; and the intensity with which the tragic conflict between political loyalty and family loyalty explodes when the ruler's bloodline is made into the guarantor of the all-important continuity of sovereign power.--
When Jesus left the most exclusive gated community in the universe to come live with the people he loved and gave his life for, he turned everything we know and believe about life on its head. Jesus said that he came to bring good news to the poor, but most Western Christians remain disconnected and isolated from the poor and their contexts of injustice. Even our churches echo society’s pressure to isolate ourselves from the margins (e.g. by moving to a better suburb) and instead teach us how to be “nice people” who worship a “nice Jesus” and don’t disrupt the status quo. Convinced that Jesus places love for the poor and the pursuit of justice central, Craig Greenfield has sought to follow in Christ’s footsteps by living among people at the edges of society for the last fourteen years. His quest to follow this Subversive Jesus has taken Craig and his young family from the slums of Asia to inner city Canada and back again. This is the story of how Jesus led them to the margins: initiating the Pirates of Justice flash mobs, sharing their home with detoxing crackheads, welcoming homeless panhandlers and prostitutes to the dinner table, and ultimately sparking a movement to reach the world’s most vulnerable children. This book is a strong and potentially controversial critique of the status quo too often found in our churches, but it offers an inspirational and hopeful vision of another way. While readers may not relocate to a slum, they will certainly come to view their lives and ministry through a fresh lens—reconsidering how they are uniquely called by Jesus to subversively love the poor and break down systems of injustice in their sphere of influence.
The complete guide to debunking right-wing misinterpretations of the Bible—from economics and immigration to gender and sexuality. Jesus loves borders, guns, unborn babies, and economic prosperity and hates homosexuality, taxes, welfare, and universal healthcare—or so say many Republican politicians, pundits, and preachers. Through outrageous misreadings of the New Testament gospels that started almost a century ago, conservative influencers have conjured a version of Jesus that speaks to their fears, desires, and resentments. In Republican Jesus, Tony Keddie explains not only where this right-wing Christ came from and what he stands for but also why this version of Jesus is a fraud. By restoring Republicans’ cherry-picked gospel texts to their original literary and historical contexts, Keddie dismantles the biblical basis for Republican positions on hot-button issues like Big Government, taxation, abortion, immigration, and climate change. At the same time, he introduces readers to an ancient Jesus whose life experiences and ethics were totally unlike those of modern Americans, conservatives and liberals alike.
No one will ever be able to righteously defend the Republican Party, Tea Party Republicans or any other socially conservative political party with a bible, in regard to how they treat the vast majority of the people, including the most needy among us. Yet the overwhelming majority of those proclaiming to be Christian in America religiously get out in droves to vote for the Republicans, who continually work against serving the needs of the people. I've heard many Christians including pastors and bible teachers who talk as though Republicans represent Christian values and Democrats do not, but this is not biblically correct. This book sets the record straight. BIBLE POLITICS brings over 200 examples of bible scriptures which are very much in favor of the more socially liberal Democrats and contrary to popular belief, are much more against the politics of the conservative Republican and conservative Tea Party Republicans.
The Bible as Political Artifact by Susanne Sholza Pdf
Biblical studies and the teaching of biblical studies are clearly changing, though it is less clear what the changes mean and how we should evaluate them. Susanne Scholz casts a feminist eye on the politics of pedagogy, higher education, and wider society, decrypting important developments in "the architecture of educational power." She also examines how the increasingly intercultural, interreligious, and diasporic dynamics in society inform the hermeneutical and methodological possibilities for biblical exegesis. Taken as a whole, the fourteen chapters demonstrate that the foregrounding of gender, placed into its intersectional contexts, offers intriguing and valuable alternative ways of seeing the world and the Bible‘s place in it.
In this eagerly awaited book, political theorist Michael Walzer reports his findings after decades of reading and thinking about the politics of the Hebrew Bible. Attentive to nuance while engagingly straightforward, Walzer examines the commentary of the ancient biblical writers and discusses the implications for such urgent modern topics as the nature of political society, hierarchy and justice, the use of political power, the justification for and rules of warfare, and the responsibilities of clerical figures, monarchs, and their subjects./divDIV DIVBecause there are many biblical writers, and because they represent different political views, pluralism is a central feature of biblical politics, Walzer observes. Yet pluralism is never explicitly defended in the Bible—indeed it couldn't be defended since God's word is one. There is, however, an anti-political teaching which recurs in biblical texts: if you have faith in God, you have no need for particular political institutions or prudent political leaders or deliberative assemblies or loyal citizens. And, Walzer finds a strong moral teaching common to the Bible's authors. He identifies God's decree for ethics and investigates its implications for just policymaking in our own times./div
How to read the Bible on matters of public policy Christians affirm the Bible as our standard of faith and practice. We turn to it to hear God’s voice. But what relevance does the Bible have for the contentious public policy issues we face today? Although the Bible does not always speak explicitly to modern issues, it does give us guiding principles as we think about how we might vote or act as political figures ourselves. The Bible and the Ballot demonstrates the proper use of Scripture in contemporary political discussions. Christians regularly invoke the Bible to support their positions on many controversial political topics—gay marriage, poverty, war, religious liberty, immigration, the environment, taxes, etc.—and this book will help facilitate those conversations. Tremper Longman provides a hermeneutical approach to using the Bible in this manner, then proceeds topic by topic, citing important Scriptures to be taken into consideration in each case and offering an evangelical interpretation. Longman is careful to suggest levels of confidence in interpretation and acknowledges that often there are a range of possible applications. Each chapter includes questions to provoke further thought in individuals’ minds or for group discussion. The Bible and the Ballot is a ready guide to understanding the Bible on issues that American Christians face today as we live within a pluralistic society.
The Bible in Political Debate by Frances Flannery,Rodney A. Werline Pdf
Politicians and pundits regularly invoke the Bible in social and political debates on a host of controversial social and political issues, including: abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage, the death penalty, separation of church and state, family values, climate change, income distribution, teaching evolution in schools, taxation, school prayer, aid for the poor, and immigration. But is the Bible often used out of context in these major debates? This book includes essays by fourteen biblical scholars who examine the use of the Bible in political debates, uncovering the original historical contexts and meanings of the biblical verses that are commonly cited. The contributors take a non-confessional approach, rooted in non-partisan scholarship, to show how specific texts have at times been distorted in order to support particular views. At the same time, they show how the Bible can sometimes make for unsettling reading in the modern day. The key questions remain: What does the Bible really say? Should the Bible be used to form public policy?