Knowing God?: Consumer Christianity and the Gospel of Jesus

by Michael Hardin, Chris Tilling (Foreword by)

Overview

Knowing God? is an indictment of Protestant American Christianity in its failure to follow Jesus of Nazareth. Consumer Christianity is laid bare before the gospel and found wanting. After exposing the superstition of American Christianity, Hardin examines the gospel narrative and demonstrates that a truly Jesus-oriented approach must be non-sacrificial in all its ways. Like Jeremiah, Kierkegaard, or the early Barth, Knowing God? rings with a clarion call for followers of Jesus to ask what the Christian life looks like and is all about.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781532683916
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	05/19/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	108
File size:	861 KB

About the Author

Michael Hardin is an independent scholar residing in Pennsylvania. He has a master’s from North Park Seminary in Chicago and is a PhD candidate at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, Australia, where his thesis is on “Religion and Revelation in Karl Barth and Rene Girard.” Author of ten books and a score of peer reviewed articles, Michael is a popular teacher with a broad global audience. He is a singer-songwriter who has studied wilderness survival with Tom Brown Jr. for over seventeen years. Michael is known as The Dude of Theology and he carries this moniker proudly!



Chris Tilling is Senior Lecturer in New Testament at St. Mellitus College

Michael Hardin is the cofounder and executive director of Preaching Peace, cofounder of Theology and Peace, and is the coeditor of Compassionate Eschatology, editor of Reading the Bible with Rene Girard, and author of the acclaimed The Jesus Driven Life, in addition to other books and essays. With his wife, Lorri, Michael has taken courses for the past decade on wilderness survival and Native American healing traditions. He is a singer/songwriter.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Michael’s passion for the gospel, heaving through his anger with the fake merchants of religion he indicts, is a searing wake-up call. His notion of mysticism as a downward movement to the Divine, becoming incarnate in our day-to-day, and his refusal to let anything get in the way of forgiveness shine through this exceptional teaching.”

—James Alison, Catholic priest and theologian



“Hardin begins by expressing the sense of frustration, at times mounting to rage, that many Christians feel at the moment as they contemplate the fractious, fake, and frequently vicious landscape of American Christianity. He unleashes a prophetic ‘no’ upon this ‘church,’ laying bare its problems at their root. As we read on, however, we find that Hardin’s ‘no’ is undergirded by a far more powerful ‘yes.’ Behind the fake Jesus is the real Jesus, whom Hardin knows and serves so faithfully. So the book leads us on with undiminished pace and passion, beyond the dreadful mess that is much of current Christianity, into a life of authentic discipleship. . . . Hardin’s short, urgent book is, quite simply, a book many of us need to read. By turns I resonated, I laughed, and I repented. I urge you all to do likewise.”

—Douglas A. Campbell, Professor of New Testament, Duke Divinity School

Editorial Reviews

Michael’s passion for the gospel, heaving through his anger with the fake merchants of religion he indicts, is a searing wake-up call. His notion of mysticism as a downward movement to the Divine, becoming incarnate in our day-to-day, and his refusal to let anything get in the way of forgiveness shine through this exceptional teaching.”

—James Alison, Catholic priest and theologian



“Hardin begins by expressing the sense of frustration, at times mounting to rage, that many Christians feel at the moment as they contemplate the fractious, fake, and frequently vicious landscape of American Christianity. He unleashes a prophetic ‘no’ upon this ‘church,’ laying bare its problems at their root. As we read on, however, we find that Hardin’s ‘no’ is undergirded by a far more powerful ‘yes.’ Behind the fake Jesus is the real Jesus, whom Hardin knows and serves so faithfully. So the book leads us on with undiminished pace and passion, beyond the dreadful mess that is much of current Christianity, into a life of authentic discipleship. . . . Hardin’s short, urgent book is, quite simply, a book many of us need to read. By turns I resonated, I laughed, and I repented. I urge you all to do likewise.”

—Douglas A. Campbell, Professor of New Testament, Duke Divinity School

From the Publisher