Books by "W. Gary Phillips"
2 books found
WHAT ABOUT THOSE WHO HAVE NEVER HEARD? The debate swirls and feelings run deep. What is the fate of the unevangelized? The traditional position - that apart from an explicit faith in Jesus no one is saved - seems to have fallen out of favor with many evangelicals. But the contributors to Faith Comes by Hearing demur. This book is a passionate but irenic response to the arguments of those who believe that the unevangelized can (or might) be saved apart from knowledge of Jesus Christ. Building on the insights of others, nine scholars introduce readers, even those with little background, to the ongoing discussion. Key questions - Is general revelation sufficient? Are other religions salvific? Do holy pagans exist? Must faith be explicit? Is exclusivism unjust? - are probed and answered from a biblical, theological and historical perspective.
The belief that Native Americans might belong to the fabled “lost tribes of Israel”—Israelites driven from their homeland around 740 BCE—took hold among Anglo-Americans and Indigenous peoples in the United States during its first half century. In Lost Tribes Found, Matthew W. Dougherty explores what this idea can tell us about religious nationalism in early America. Some white Protestants, Mormons, American Jews, and Indigenous people constructed nationalist narratives around the then-popular idea of “Israelite Indians.” Although these were minority viewpoints, they reveal that the story of religion and nationalism in the early United States was more complicated and wide-ranging than studies of American “chosen-ness” or “manifest destiny” suggest. Telling stories about Israelite Indians, Dougherty argues, allowed members of specific communities to understand the expanding United States, to envision its transformation, and to propose competing forms of sovereignty. In these stories both settler and Indigenous intellectuals found biblical explanations for the American empire and its stark racial hierarchy. Lost Tribes Found goes beyond the legal and political structure of the nineteenth-century U.S. empire. In showing how the trope of the Israelite Indian appealed to the emotions that bound together both nations and religious groups, the book adds a new dimension and complexity to our understanding of the history and underlying narratives of early America.