Ten Theology Books to Watch For – January 2023

Making Christianity Manly Again: Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church, and American Evangelicalism

Jennifer McKinney

( Oxford UP)

A look inside one of America’s most politically consequential churches

Mark Driscoll, the founding pastor of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church, indelibly impacted American evangelicalism. Driscoll’s brash, authoritarian, and profanity-laden leadership grew Mars Hill Church into one of the fastest growing, most innovative, and most influential churches in the country–not an easy task in one of America’s most secular cities. Driscoll’s gender theology put men at the forefront of American Christianity, rebranding Jesus from a “gay hippie in a dress” to a sword-carrying, “robe-dipped-in-blood” warrior. This type of rhetoric paved the way for evangelicals’ embrace of hypermasculine Christianity, priming the pump for their unprecedented support of Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections.

Making Christianity Manly Again places Driscoll’s gender theology in its social and historical contexts and analyzes the contemporary social patterns that explain how a hypermasculine theology helped create a megachurch empire. By addressing the rhetoric of Driscoll’s movement through his sermons, along with narratives from former Mars Hill Church members, sociologist Jennifer McKinney leads us to a better understanding of the dynamics of the evangelical impulse to reclaim and glorify men’s power. These dynamics, as McKinney shows, have fueled a growing Christian nationalist movement, with enormous implications for religion and politics in America.

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Resisting Apartheid America: Living the Badass Gospel

Miguel De La Torre

( Eerdmans )

Miguel De La Torre foresees a future America dominated by white nationalists—and equips us with the tools to resist it.  

In Burying White Privilege, he opened our eyes to white Christians’ complicity in maintaining racist hierarchy in America. In its sequel, Decolonizing Christianity, he encouraged us to decolonize Christianity and return it to its revolutionary roots. Now, in his conclusion to the trilogy, Miguel A. De La Torre shows us the America on our horizon, should we continue down the path of heretical white Christianity—and the outlook is not bright.

Resisting Apartheid America assesses the past and present threads of systemic racism in American politics, from Plymouth Rock to the Capitol on January 6. Sweeping and unsparing in his critique, De La Torre takes on authors revered in Christian theology, including Paul, Augustine, and heroes of the Reformation, aiming to uproot the ideological foundations of racism in Christianity. Following these through lines of oppression, he warns of a decline in democracy and rise in political violence—but equips us with the nonviolent ethical framework to resist this bleak future. Resisting Apartheid America is a clarion call to Christians to remake America in the image of the God of liberation.

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