Reading Recommendations

	Edited by Douglas Layock, Anthony Picarello and Robin Fretwell Wilson, this book explores the religious liberty implications of defining marriage to include same-sex couples. It represents the only comprehensive, scholarly assessment of the church-state conflicts virtually certain to arise from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. Contributors include proponents and opponents of same-sex marriage.
	In Liberty of Conscience, distinguished political philosopher Martha Nussbaum offers a sweeping historical study of the American tradition of religious liberty with special emphasis given to the contributions of Roger Williams. Nussbaum finds that this distinctly American tradition, embodied in the First Amendment, is based on six principles: equality, respect for conscience, liberty, accommodation of minorities, nonestablishment and separation of church and state.
	In this book, Mark Toulouse maps the ambiguous landscape between American Christianity and American public life. Built on an extensive study of religious periodical literature since the mid-1950s and on an analysis of landmark events in American history, Toulouse develops an insightful typology for understanding how Americans have related their Christian faith to public life.
	This well-researched book by Barry Hankins offers a fresh analysis of Francis Schaeffer and his role in shaping American evangelicalism in the last half of the twentieth century. Particular attention is given to Schaeffer’s relation to American fundamentalism, involvement in the Christian Right and his “tendency to conflate issues of faith with issues of politics and American patriotism.”
	Published at the beginning of the twentieth century, Christianity and the Social Crisis by Walter Rauschenbusch is the epoch-making book that dramatically expanded the church’s vision of how it could transform the world. This 100th anniversary edition updates this classic with new essays by leading preachers and theologians such as Tony Campolo, James Forbes Jr., Stanley Hauerwas, Richard Rorty, Joan Chittister, Phyllis Trible, Jim Wallis and Cornel West.
	In Wayward Christian Soldiers, leading evangelical theologian Charles Marsh offers a powerful indictment of the political activism of evangelical Christian leaders and churches in the United States. With emphasis on repentence and renewal, this important work advises Christians how to understand past mistakes and to avoid making them in the future.
	Published by HarperOne, The Green Bible is printed on recycled paper and with soy-based ink and a cotton/linen cover. Additionally, the Bible highlights passages about creation and the environment in green letters, much as many Bibles highlight the words of Jesus in red letters. This first Bible of its kind includes inspirational essays from notable Christian leaders such as N.T. Wright, Barbara Brown Taylor, Brian McLaren, and Pope John Paul II with the foreward by Desmond Tutu.
	In his book, For the Healing of the Nations: Baptist Peacemakers, Paul Dekar traces a seemingly unnoticed peacemaking legacy from seventeenth-century Baptist origins to the present. Baptist Peacemakers surveyed include John Clifford, James Henry Rushbrooke, Douglas Clyde Macintosh, Howard Thurman, Walter Rauschenbusch, Muriel Lester, Martin Luther King Jr., British Baptist Pacifist Fellowship and the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America.
	With dramatically falling church attendance, baptisms, church weddings and a dangerously low birth rate many scholars in recent years have proclaimed that European Christianity is on the brink of death. In his latest tome, God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis, Philip Jenkins offers a more optimistic account of the future of European culture. Jenkins argues that the death of European Christianity has been greatly exaggerated by those on the right and the left.
	This book presents five different views concerning the proper relationship between church and state in seeking public justice: Catholic, Classical Separation, Principled Pluralist, Anabaptist, and Social Justice. Contributors address such issues as the mission of the church, the purpose of the state and how each together (or separately) can fight social injustice.