Gospelbound

“Our cause is sacred. How can we doubt it, when we know it has been consecrated by a holy baptism of fire and blood?” So said a North Carolina minister about the Confederacy in the aftermath of the South’s defeat at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. This arresting quote contributes to the title of James P. Byrd’s new book,  A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood: The Bible and the American Civil War , publi...

“Do I exist for God or does God exist for me?”  That’s the question that I think animates Dean Inserra’s new book,  Getting Over Yourself: Trading Believe-in-Yourself Religion for Christ-Centered Christianity , published by Moody. Or, maybe it’s this line: “We can’t make Christianity cooler.” He explains his argument this way: “The entire premise of this book is that spiritual victory and earthly...

It’s the fundamental lie of modern life, says Alan Noble: that we are our own. Compared to our ancestors, we’re less worried about war. We’re less worried about starvation and famine. But by believing that we are our own, we tend to struggle with new problems: the loss of meaning, identity, and purpose. Noble says this in his new book,  You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World ,...

If you want to sell millions of books, tell readers they can be their own hero. Tell them if they don’t have what they want, they need to demand it. Tell them that they can have everything if they work hard enough: the beautiful family, the booming business, the world-changing nonprofit venture. For Ruth Chou Simons, being her own hero doesn’t seem all that freeing. It looks exhausting. She has on...

What is faith? Is it a feeling? Is it hope against hope? Belief without evidence? Jen Michel says faith is a habit. It’s not  against  evidence but careful consideration  of  evidence. It’s trust in the story that makes sense of the world. It’s curiosity. It’s where the habits of humility take us. “Try  practicing  your way into faith,” Michel writes in her new book,  A Habit Called Faith: 40 Days...

Breaking news! (Insert dramatic gong sound here.) Find out if you’re on the right side of history. Learn about the latest celebrity you should cancel for the wrong view on oat milk. After this commercial break.    Not so fast says Jeffrey Bilbro, editor in chief of Front Porch Republic and the author of the new book Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News , published by...

In his day job for the last 15 years, Daniel Strange has taught church leaders about culture, worldview, and apologetics. He’s studied worldviews and philosophy. He talks about “plausibility structures” and “social imaginaries” and “cultural liturgies.” But it’s not some kind of vain philosophical exercise. He’s trying to help people grow in how they present the person and work of Jesus to their s...

Blair Linne’s mother planned to abort her before a Baptist minister’s words changed her mother’s mind. Linne moved 25 times before she set out on her own as an adult. She did not grow up with a father. I won’t spoil her new book,  Finding My Father: How the Gospel Heals the Pain of Fatherlessness , published by The Good Book Company. But it’s a raw, sometimes shocking memoir with a surprise ending...

We’re long past the time when we could assume even that dedicated believers in Jesus Christ understood why they should bother with church. The number who identify as Christians is far larger than the number who attend a weekly meeting. Even then, the bulk of the serving and giving in our churches tends to be done by only a few. So it’s not as if COVID-19 suddenly convinced Christians they didn’t n...

In former Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam’s new book, Faithful Presence: The Promise and the Peril of Faith in the Public Square (Nelson Books), he asks, “Do our political actions match our theology, or has our theology been taken captive to our political beliefs?” A political book that’s driven by theology, Faithful Presence offers a stirring call to justice and mercy with humility. Gov. Haslam se...

Jasmine Holmes is the author of Mother to Son: Letters to a Black Boy on Identity and Hope (InterVarsity Press) and cohost of TGC's new podcast for women, Let's Talk . Holmes joined Collin Hansen on Gospelbound to discuss politics, race, police brutality, abortion, and everything else you’re not supposed to bring up in polite company. Use code “ GOSPELBOUND ” for 25% off tuition.  Learn more...

Tim and Kathy Keller joined Collin Hansen on Gospelbound to discuss the link between decreasing marriage and decreasing religiosity, how to know you’re ready to get married, how to raise children to prepare them for marriage, and more. Use code “ GOSPELBOUND ” for 25% off tuition.  Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and d...

On today’s bonus episode of Gospelbound, we’re featuring a clip from an interview between TGC senior writer, Sarah Zylstra and her guest, J. D. Greear as they discuss his experience as SBC president, future hopes for the SBC and the global church, and the importance of keeping the gospel at the center of it all.  To hear the full episode, head to TGC Podcast episode 169.   You can hear more about...

On today’s bonus episode of Gospelbound, we’re featuring a clip from an interview between TGC senior writer, Sarah Zylstra and her guest, Alex Harris about his experience clerking for two U.S. Supreme Court justices and editing Harvard Law Review , his brother Josh’s high-profile deconstruction of his faith, whether evangelicals invest too much import in presidential politics, and much more.  To h...

Because of the gospel, there’s always hope. Even in the rubble, you can find defiant new growth poking through the rocks. A similar hope can be seen in seminary education. One of the greatest success stories can be found in Kansas City at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The president there is Jason Allen, and under his leadership, the school has grown in enrollment and resources and in qu...

For Shai Linne, the cultural differences in music and dress never seemed to matter compared to unity in the crucified and risen Christ. Shai became a key figure in the growing movement of Christian hip-hop, musically like Wu-tang Clan but lyrically like Billy Graham. The style was appealing, but the crowds seemed more excited about Jesus than anything else. He’s convinced that we’ll look back one...

In this live episode of Gospelbound from TGC’s 2021 national conference, Collin Hansen is joined by two esteemed guests who can help explain the origins and shape of Christian nationalism with a view toward the promises of the gospel. Michael Horton is the J. Gresham Machen professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in California. Justin Giboney is cofound...

These days, you’ll see many Christians defend the faith by pointing out the problems with others. But owning up to ways the church has fallen short of its own ideals may be the more appropriate path. In his new book, Bullies and Saints: An Honest Look at the Good and Evil of Christian History (Zondervan), John Dickson takes an honest look at the church’s successes and failures. Dickson sums up his...

Maybe you imagine the biggest problem facing Christians in the West today is hostility, whether from media or government or schools. You wouldn’t be wrong to notice how these venues don’t usually look kindly on orthodox, observant Christians these days. But what if we actually face a bigger problem? What if the problem isn’t that our unbelieving friends and family care too much about what we belie...

Has anyone ever confided in you, “I’m deconstructing”? Maybe you don’t know the phrase, but you know the phenomenon. Yet another social-media post announces departure from the Christian faith. The cause could be sex, race, politics, social justice, science, hell, or all of the above. For many, Christianity is becoming implausible, even impossible to believe.  It might be tempting to leave the chur...

In this episode of Gospelbound, Collin Hansen is joined by Morton Schapiro and Gary Saul Morson, authors of Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us (Princeton University Press). Schapiro and Morson describe fundamentalism as “radical simplification of complex questions and the inability to learn either from experience or from opposing views.” Among their proposed solutions is a reco...

Politicians, advertisers, talk radio hosts, social media engineers—you name it, they want your attention. They want you to be angry and afraid. But as Christians, we’re called to faith and love—even when we’re scared, even with people who don’t like us. We need to get back to the gospel so we can move forward—together.  That’s why we wrote the new book Gospelbound (Multnomah), to help Christians l...

When church leaders assume that they can only scan for attacks in one direction, they leave Christians vulnerable to different dangers. What the church needs, then, is what Trevin Wax calls multi-directional leadership—leaders who combine dexterity and discipline. Leaders today must demonstrate faithful versatility. And that’s what Trevin Wax commends in his new book,  The Multi-Directional Leader...

Maybe you’ve seen a sign in your neighbor’s yard that reads something like this: "In this house we believe that: Black Lives Matter Love Is Love Gay Rights Are Civil Rights Women’s Rights Are Human Rights Transgender Women Are Women" If the “we believe” format and propositions sound familiar, that’s because they are. It’s a creed, albeit a secular one, without reference to transcendent moral autho...

Joseph Henrich is chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and author of many important works. His latest is The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous . In it, you’ll get pretty everything you want: theology, history, neuroscience, biology, social science, economics, and more. Henrich weaves everyth...