Have Christians grown accustomed to those who defame the Church? Whether it’s a best-selling author who claims “religion poisons everything” or an atheist comedian whose punch lines aren’t hassled by the burden of proof, foes of the faith continue to declare Christianity morally deficient without much resistance.In Moral Apologetics for Contemporary Christians, Mark Coppenger mixes compelling references—from classic philosophers to modern entertainers—to reasonabl...

The movie We Are Marshall brought national attention to the tragic loss and dramatic reconstitution of the school's football team. But neither this film nor the Emmy-winning documentary, Marshall University: Ashes to Glory, explores the spiritual context and effect of the plane crash. Few know that a visiting campus preacher touched the life of a popular defensive lineman the week before his ill-fated flight; that a campus minister was surprised several weeks later by a nighttime visit fro...

A dying man hires the services of a cannibal; a customs official insults a world-class sculptor; a farmer complains that low-flying bombers are killing his chickens; two rock groups claim the same name; a monkey takes a selfie; and a minister with mail-order credentials performs a wedding. The resulting court cases (and sixteen others) serve to introduce a wide range of philosophical notions (such as libertarianism, speciesism, and speech acts). Next, a subway employee draws a revolutionar...

What do you get when you add a Fortune 500 CEO to a veteran Muppeteer, both recently awakened in Christ? Steep them in the prophetic preaching of Times Square Church and the story of William Wilberforce. Simmer them in the spectacle of moral chaos in the West and the heroics of Anglican archbishops in the Global South. Before long, you have an inspired array of publications, productions, gatherings, and endowments. This is the ongoing legacy of Emmanuel and Camille Kampouris.The pr...

This is the story (told in nearly two hundred short recollections) of a surgeon from a family of surgeons, raised in the Arkansas oil country of the Jim Crow South. A churchgoer from his childhood, he came to a saving knowledge of Christ (along with his wife Cathy) only in the late 1970s. And from that turning point, they proved themselves to be choice servants of the Lord in countless ways--in John's case, as a deacon, a surgeon in the Amazon region, a denominational and parachurch board ...

Apart from the work of God in creation, it's notoriously difficult to explain the presence of beauty in the world and man's appreciation for it. Indeed, the aesthetic realm (with its array of phenomena which engage the senses, the mind, and the heart) not only suits the biblical account of the universe, but also points toward it. In making this case, sixteen writers address the shortcomings of naturalistic narratives, the virtues of theistic accounts (particularly those grounded in Christ)...

Evangelical discourse on the role of arts in the church can be radioactive, and the twenty-one contributors to this book walk right into the "hot zone" to pick up on twenty contentious questions. The volume is a series of written dialogues, each one keyed to a cranky question, one that a skeptic might raise (hence the title). Herein, the gainsayers are taken seriously and given their voice. They even find support in some of the contributors' comments. But apologists for greater use of arts...