Christianity's Relevance for Today : A Personal Perspective

Christianity's Relevance for Today: A Personal Perspective arises from a pastor's six decades of scholarship and experience serving congregations and the wider culture. Russell C. Block, drawing upon his study and personal insights, offers readers a guide to digging up the Bible's hidden treasures. Then he uses the Bible's witness to God's desire for people to live together in loving peace as the foundation for encouraging both individual Christians and their churches to embrace God's mission to join with authentically religious people from all traditions to discover and speak the truth. Christianity's Relevance for Today shows ways to foster awareness of a common humanity, discard mutual fear and suspicion, and engage in real dialogue that uncovers the barriers that impede shared action to seek peace.

By exploring the author's journey of faith, the Bible's riches, the life of the church, and the relations between God's world and its religions, Christianity's Relevance for Today presents the personal and corporate, local and global, and traditional and novel elements that come together to show how the Christian faith reveals its essential relevance to modern life.

Christianity's Relevance for Today: A Personal Perspective encourages ordinary Christians to discover God's gifts in relationships and to work with people of all faiths to carry out God's mission to promote reconciliation, justice, and peace.

A longtime minister offers a manifesto on faith.  
Debut author Block, who has been involved in pastoring and community activism for over six decades, provides a lifetime's worth of lessons about Christianity, Scripture, and the church.      He...begins with a brief autobiographical essay... From there, Block goes on to produce an outline of the Christian Bible, describing it in progressive and intellectually rich terms.  For instance, in discussing the Tower of Babel, he takes the intriguing step of comparing the tale to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: "Human beings trying to play...God, while creating their own nemesis."  In discussing the New Testament, he extends a universalism to the story of Jesus, noting that "I fully believe...that God speaks to...people who profess other religions...and even no religion."  The author addresses what he views as misuses of the Bible...to support everything from racial and gender inequality to holy wars and the rejection of scientific findings...His ideal view of the church is an open and liberalized one, in which social activism is thoroughly coupled with a dedication to doctrine and evangelization.  He also reviews the ministerial profession, with the benefit of a lengthy career's worth of experience.  Block is a clear and accessible writer, who is frank, introspective, and well-read....The author takes a thoroughly modern view of Scripture, studying it critically..his tone is generous and inviting throughout, endearing his writing to those who agree and disagree alike.  
Progressive and modern in approach, an engaging appeal to the future Western church.         Kirkus Reviews