Contemporary Western society has a strange relationship with freedom. Unbridled subjective liberty and narrow fundamentalism pull away from each other in mutual loathing while sociological forces seek to manipulate both sides. The church needs to recover and reconstruct a theology of freedom to navigate between the perils of both extremes and to avoid being manipulated by these forces. Just as biblical figures are taught through parables and metaphors, this book uses jazz improvisation as ...

The Lord of the Rings and other works of J.R.R. Tolkien have had a far-reaching impact on culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In print and on film, Tolkien's works seem to be incredible epics, but religious aspects are less obvious. Yet Tolkien himself stated in his letters that the chief conflicts of his epic works were “about God, and His sole right to divine Honour,” and whether Sauron can wrest and destroy all that is good in Middle-earth. It is fro...