Gospel After Christendom

Collin Hansen serves as vice president for content and editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, as well as executive director of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He hosts the Gospelbound podcast and has written and contributed to many books, including Where Is God in a World with So Much Evil? and Rediscover Church. He has published with the New York Times and the Washington Post and offered commentary for many broadcast outlets. He edited The Gospel After Christendom and The New City Catechism Devotional, among other books. He is an adjunct professor at Beeson Divinity School.Skyler R. Flowers is an associate pastor at Grace Bible Church in Oxford, Mississippi, and the associate program director at The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He earned a master of divinity from Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida, and he is currently a PhD student at the University of Aberdeen. Skyler and his wife, Brianna, have two children.Ivan Mesa (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is editorial director for The Gospel Coalition. He’s editor of Before You Lose Your Faith and coeditor of Scrolling Ourselves to Death and Faithful Exiles. He and his wife, Sarah, have four children, and they live in eastern Georgia.

'Apologetics has perennially endeavored to persuade about the Christian hope. The best approach has been Cultural apologetics, meaning recognizing whole persons, their history, and their circumstances. This anthology introduces us in a superb manner to the need for the vindication of the Christian faith in a post-Christendom world. It a must-read for anyone concerned to explain the faith to outsiders and insiders alike in these perplexing times.'

• Introduction (Collin Hansen): What Is Cultural Apologetics?Description: In a time when many Christian voices look outside and tell the weather of the day, in this introductory chapter, Hansen conceives of cultural apologetics as climatology. Cultural apologetics is the proactive study by Christians of the deep-rooted values, ideologies, narratives, and patterns at work in their culture. These aspects of a culture are, at their core, religious in nature. They are the pursuit of meaning and eternal life. Understanding them in this way helps the cultural apologist, rooted in the gospel, to correct and connect so unbelievers can see their sin and need for a Savior. Done properly, this means that cultural apologetics presents a vision of Christianity that compels the non-believer to see the Christian faith as truth, good, and beautiful even before they have believed. This is not a call to “redeem the culture,” and the task must constantly be attuned to the ways the church itself needs to be challenged and edified by a cultural apologetic that by scripture. Every culture in its self-serving idolatry thinks it can have the benefits of Christianity while subtracting actual faith in it. The ultimate task in cultural apologetics is to not only to comprehend and critique the ways the culture does this, but also to consummate their own story in the story of Jesus Christ.Top Choice:Collin Hansen serves as vice president for content and editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, as well as executive director of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He hosts the Gospelbound podcast and has written and contributed to many books, most recently Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation and Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential. He has published with the New York Times and the Washington Post and offered commentary for CNN, Fox News, NPR, BBC, ABC News, and PBS NewsHour. He edited Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor and The New City Catechism Devotional, among other books. He is an adjunct professor at Beeson Divinity School, where he also co-chairs the advisory board.Part I: The Concept of Cultural ApologeticsThese first three chapters serve to introduce the conceptual underpinnings of the task of cultural apologetics. This section will include a precise definition, drawing on theological and philosophical resources, a biblical presentation of the methodology’s scriptural basis, as well as a historical analysis of its employment through various thinkers. Each chapter will serve the project’s goal of presenting cultural apologetics as a means by which the church articulates the gospel truth in light of its cultural context for the sake of renewal in churches, hearts, and homes.Chapter 1 – Why Cultural Apologetics?Description: We are living in the largest religious transformation in American history. Forty million Americans have left the church in the last 25 years. Many other countries have already seen similar declines. With this massive shift in religious demographics comes an equal shift in the underlying beliefs, desires, and hopes of a culture. For centuries in the West, these fundamental aspects of human life were largely understood within the concepts of Christiendom, making the task of evangelism the relatively simple task of connecting the dots. With the advent of post-Christendom, these shared cultural touch points no longer exist. Christianity is not merely rejected but is thought to be unbelievable. This need calls for a reassessment of evangelistic practice in the modern world. This chapter offers cultural apologetics as the needed corrective to effectively share the gospel and form Christians today. Cultural apologetics steps into this situation bring the truth, goodness, and beauty of the gospel as the fulfillment to these shared beliefs, desires, and hopes. Thus, cultural apologetics makes Christianity comprehensible, commendable, and compelling t