Worldview and Perspective on United States

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The United States is Like Samaria

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Scripture

Jeremiah 29:4-7 , 2 Kings 17:24-33, Isaiah 1:18-20, John 4:4-26, Acts 8:4-8, 14-17, Psalm 46:1-2

The United States retains a basic respect for religion though it may be following European trends: surveys show a steady rise in the “nones” (now one-third of those under the age of thirty), that is, ...

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Gracious God, you have placed us in a

Author

Chip Hardwick

Keywords

Gracious God, you have placed us in a culture that seems more and more filled with politics. Forgive us for every time we respond to these politics with decisions that do not honor Christ. Pardon us f...

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A Post-Christian America?

Author

Phillip Yancey

Keywords

The United States is undergoing a marked change in its attitude toward religion, and Christians here face new challenges. When a blogger named Marc Yoder wrote about “10 Surprising Reasons Our Kids Le...

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Can Americans Teach Others about Religion?

Author

Mark A. Noll

Keywords

Even more germane to the concerns of this book, it is important to remember how the American concern for enumerating Christian work can look to non-Americans. Kanzo Uchimura (1861-1930) was a Japanese...

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Father God–You invite us to come as a

Author

Richard Herman

Scripture

Psalm 23:4, James 5:16, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Isaiah 61:1-2, Amos 5:24

Father God–You invite us to come as a child to his/her daddy. You invite us to open our souls to You. You invite us to lay our desires before You. You are fond of us, Your children–so we come to You h...

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Our Lord—Today we have given You praise

Our Lord—Today we have given You praise and thanks for who You are and what You’ve done for us. Now, we also give You our needs—for we are not self-sufficient. We need You! We pray for those dear to u...

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Stealing Indian Land

Author

George Yancey

Keywords

To illustrate how the racial oppression of previous generations has benefited European Americans, we can look at the fate of Native Americans. When Europeans arrived in North America, Indians owned al...

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Racial Division in America

Author

Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith

Keywords

While I was sitting at a stoplight a few blocks from my [Emerson’s] home in Minneapolis, reflecting on the recent rash of drive-by shootings in the area, three African-American teens clad in the urban...

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Author

Soong-Chan Rah

Keywords

Western Culture

Contrary to popular opinion, the church is not dying in America; it is alive and well, but it is alive and well among the immigrant and ethnic minority communities and not among the majority white chu...

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Curious About Oregon

Author

D. L. Mayfield

Keywords

The Latin root of curiosity means “cure,” which makes me wonder if it isn’t a way to heal some of our oldest sicknesses. Like, perhaps, the “amnesia of affluence” that theologians point out in the Bib...

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The World in which Jesus Lived

Author

William H. Marty

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 12:1–3, Exodus 3:1–12, Isaiah 53:, Matthew 22:15–22 , John 4:1–42 , Acts 17:16–34

The world of Jesus was not the Old Testament Hebrew world. Like the United States now, Israel was multicultural, including a combination of Aramaic, Greek, and Roman influences. The people looked Jewi...

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Author

Isaac Asimov

Keywords

Anti-Intellectualism

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nur...

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Nothing to Hide

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 139:23-24, Ephesians 5:11-13, Hebrews 4:13, Genesis 2:25, Genesis 3:7-11, Isaiah 47:3, Revelation 3:18

The relationship between wartime leaders Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been well chronicled by historians of the period. On one visit to the United States, Roosevelt wheeled hims...

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Experiencing Joy and Sorrow as a Black Man

Author

Jonathan Walton

Keywords

In 2008, I felt like an American for the first time because I saw a leader who looked like me. All my life I hoped my education and accomplishments would free me from the history of my skin color as i...

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What Business They Were In

Author

Chris Stroup

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 3:23-24, Matthew 25:14-30, Isaiah 43:19, Proverbs 16:3, Romans 12:2

In the late 1800’s, no business matched the financial and political dominance of the railroad. Trains dominated the transportation industry of the United States, moving both people and goods throughou...

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Understanding Expressive Individualism

Author

Brian S. Rosner

Keywords

A survey in 2015 found that 91 percent of adults in the United States agreed that the best way to find yourself is by looking within yourself. Everything else flows from this conviction. The thinking ...

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The Solution to Divisions

Author

James Bryan Smith

Keywords

The solution to gender, race and social divisions is not to eradicate our differences but to see them in light of Jesus. The Pentecostal movement in the United States in the early twentieth century wa...

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Does Religion Do More Harm than Good?

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Keywords

Religion

I wondered whether negative feelings against religion were a local phenomenon until I came across a poll of eighteen thousand people in twenty-three countries. In preparation for a 2010 debate between...

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Practicing Corporate Repentance

Author

George Yancey

Keywords

In his insightful work, Beyond Racial Gridlock, George Yancey provides a multi-faceted picture of both the brokenness of American race-relations, as well as a response couched in the gospel. In this e...

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Short Term Missions, Long Term Partnerships: Reevaluating Mission Trips

Author

Scott B. Bullock

Keywords

What Value is there in Short-Term Missions? Over the years, I have had people ask me why my family and I go on short-term mission trips. Some of the more cynical have wondered aloud, “Isn’t it reall...

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The Culture Wars Plague Atheists, Too

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 16:17-18, 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, Titus 3:9-11, Mark 3:24-26

In the mid-2000s, a Trans-Atlantic movement emerged, characterized by a rejection of organized religion and the ascent of what came to be known as the “New Atheism.” This trend gained notable traction...

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The News: The Light of the World?

Author

Jeffrey Bilbro

Keywords

Scripture

John 1:5, John 8:12

In early 2017, less than a month after Donald Trump was inaugurated as the president of the United States, the Washington Post adopted a new slogan: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” There is of course a ...

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On Changing your Mind

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 16:25, Isaiah 55:8-9, Proverbs 28:26, James 4:13-15, 1 Corinthians 8:2, Proverbs 14:12, Luke 7:30

Joseph Lister was a British surgeon and the founder of anti-septic medicine. That may sound incredibly boring, but the effects of his discovery were profound. Prior to Lister, surgeons had virtually n...

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The Truth Is Out There

Author

Jared C. Wilson

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 25:2, John 8:31-32, John 16:13, Psalm 25:5, Luke 8:17

We are a couple of decades past the vastly popular initial run of the TV show The X-Files, but its themes continue to resonate. In the show, two FBI agents, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, investigate par...

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The Two House-Hunters from Quadora

Author

Jerry Bridges

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 3:24, Colossians 2:13-14, Isaiah 64:6, Ephesians 2:8-9, Luke 15:11-32, Matthew 20:1-16

Sam and Pam, two friends, both arrived in the United States as immigrants from the country of Quadora. Each one wanted to buy a house, and it so happened they each found one for sale by a certain weal...

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Returning to a Better America

Author

Ken Wytsma

Keywords

Scripture

Amos 5:21-24, Micah 6:6-8 , Ecclesiastes 7:10, Psalm 146:3-7, Matthew 23:23-24, Philippians 3:13-14

There are many people who will always want to return to the time when America was great. But was there ever a time when America was a wonderful place for everyone? As I saw on a Facebook meme recently...

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Author

Russell Moore

Keywords

The problem was that . . . Christian values were always more popular in American culture than the Christian gospel. That’s why one could speak of “God and country” with great reception in almost any e...

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Author

Timothy Keller

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Nearly every racial minority in the US understands Euro-white culture pretty well, but we whites are far more ignorant of how the cultures of others operate.

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Author

Bernice King

Keywords

Scripture

Jonah 3:1–10, Isaiah 49:6, Genesis 12:1–3, Psalm 96:3–4 , Luke 10:25–37, Psalm 96:3–4

Christ is not American. The church is global. Our neighbors are all of humanity. The national anthem is not a gospel song.

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Author

Gregg Easterbrook

Keywords

Adjusting for population growth, ten times as many people in the Western nations today suffer from “unipolar” depression, or unremitting bad feelings without a specific cause, than did half a century ...

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