Amos Yong

An unprecedented and theologically informed exploration of President Donald Trump’s Faith Advisory Team and their response to the 2020 election and their continuing impact of U.S. politics. Combining anthropological fieldwork with expert theological analysis, Derrick Lemons and Amos Yong illuminate the motivations, beliefs, strategies, and cosmology that guided this influential network of evangelical, Pentecostal, and charismatic leaders during one of the most contentious periods in modern American history. Drawing on exclusive data—including 25 prayer-strategy calls between November 2020 and January 2021, participant interviews, Jericho March participation, and access to 2024 gatherings—the authors reveal how Trump's advisory team interpreted election events through a theological worldview shaped by dominionism, prophetic revelation, spiritual warfare, Christian Zionism, and a literalist understanding of biblical truth. The book traces how these leaders navigated competing realities of “spiritual” and “natural” truth, mobilized prayer networks, framed their fight against perceived enemies such as the Deep State, and envisioned their mandate to “re-Christianize” America. The narrative illuminates how Trump’s presidential defeat in 2020 was framed as a moment of “death,” followed by a prophesied “resurrection” culminating in 2024. By uncovering the internal logic, scriptural reasoning, and cosmological claims of the movement, the authors provide an indispensable guide for scholars, students, and observers seeking to understand this constituency’s growing influence on American democracy. Trump and the Politics of Prayer maps the religious imagination of a fiercely ambitious group of Christians seeking to align America with their understand of God's will. In a riveting postscript, the authors contrast the advisory team's worldview with a vision of democracy grounded in dialogue, hospitality, and interpretive negotiation.

An unprecedented and theologically informed exploration of President Donald Trump’s Faith Advisory Team and their response to the 2020 election and their continuing impact of U.S. politics. Combining anthropological fieldwork with expert theological analysis, Derrick Lemons and Amos Yong illuminate the motivations, beliefs, strategies, and cosmology that guided this influential network of evangelical, Pentecostal, and charismatic leaders during one of the most contentious periods in modern American history. Drawing on exclusive data—including 25 prayer-strategy calls between November 2020 and January 2021, participant interviews, Jericho March participation, and access to 2024 gatherings—the authors reveal how Trump's advisory team interpreted election events through a theological worldview shaped by dominionism, prophetic revelation, spiritual warfare, Christian Zionism, and a literalist understanding of biblical truth. The book traces how these leaders navigated competing realities of “spiritual” and “natural” truth, mobilized prayer networks, framed their fight against perceived enemies such as the Deep State, and envisioned their mandate to “re-Christianize” America. The narrative illuminates how Trump’s presidential defeat in 2020 was framed as a moment of “death,” followed by a prophesied “resurrection” culminating in 2024. By uncovering the internal logic, scriptural reasoning, and cosmological claims of the movement, the authors provide an indispensable guide for scholars, students, and observers seeking to understand this constituency’s growing influence on American democracy. Trump and the Politics of Prayer maps the religious imagination of a fiercely ambitious group of Christians seeking to align America with their understand of God's will. In a riveting postscript, the authors contrast the advisory team's worldview with a vision of democracy grounded in dialogue, hospitality, and interpretive negotiation.

In the world of education, disorientation and uncertainty has been increasing for several decades, with the Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbating preexisting challenges. Christians called to academic vocations need authentic hope to sustain them in their work--and they need to be able to share that hope with a weary world.Habits of Hope explores a Christian understanding of hope and how it applies to the work of educators, administrators, scholars, and others in academia. Essays by master practitioners focus on six key educational practices and describe how these practices can cultivate hope within educators as well as among their students and everyone they serve: integrationconversationdiversityreadingwritingteachingContributors include Hans Boersma; Kimberly Battle-Walters Denu; Kevin G. Grove, CSC; Cherie Harder; Jon S. Kulaga; Philip Graham Ryken; David I. Smith; and Jessica Hooten Wilson.Christian hope, these thinkers are convinced, has two fundamental characteristics: it's tied inextricably to the world to come, inaugurated by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and it's active in its very nature. Habits of Hope combines theology and practical application to help educators find hope and infuse it throughout every area of their work.

The Dialogical Spirit II is a second collection of essays that demonstrates the dialectical contours of Amos Yong's critical pentecostal theology. It is a montage of constructive engagements with various thinkers and ideas in the promotion of theological plurality for the third millennium. With essays on Hegelian dialectics, Buddhist-Christian dialogue, pneumatic missiology, etc., voice is generated for the renewal of relationality and the revival of imagination. Free from the imposition of traditional boundaries, Yong makes his way across differing landscapes of truth in a global environment, gleaning from the activities of reflection and understanding therein. Providing snapshots of Yong's theological development over decades of work, The Dialogical Spirit II further evidences the vitality of pentecostal theology to emerging conversations in constructive and comparative venues.

The Dialogical Spirit II is a second collection of essays that demonstrates the dialectical contours of Amos Yong's critical pentecostal theology. It is a montage of constructive engagements with various thinkers and ideas in the promotion of theological plurality for the third millennium. With essays on Hegelian dialectics, Buddhist-Christian dialogue, pneumatic missiology, etc., voice is generated for the renewal of relationality and the revival of imagination. Free from the imposition of traditional boundaries, Yong makes his way across differing landscapes of truth in a global environment, gleaning from the activities of reflection and understanding therein. Providing snapshots of Yong's theological development over decades of work, The Dialogical Spirit II further evidences the vitality of pentecostal theology to emerging conversations in constructive and comparative venues.

This volume fulfills the need for an accessible academic book that addresses the gender issues that women face as Christian disciples, whether in formal leadership roles or engaging leadership in informal means, and considers these issues in the context of world Christianity. In an era in which mission is "from everywhere, to everywhere," when local churches strive to be missional, and when Christians are engaged in intercultural ministry, this book invites a scholar-practitioner conversation, engaging multiple disciplines and perspectives to explore the role of women in the mission of God. An interdisciplinary and intercultural conversation about women will enrich the church's ongoing effort to be faithful to God's call to women (and men) to participate in God's work in the world.

Christian higher education (CHE) is increasingly a transnational and global endeavor, with over one-sixth of the almost two hundred institutional members of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) located in nineteen countries outside the United States. Much of this is related to the shift of the Christian center of gravity to the global South over the last half century, and in particular to the explosion of pentecostal and charismatic forms of churches across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, all of which also feeds back via migration to the so-called "browning" of the churches of North America.Networks like the CCCU have sought to bridge faith and learning through a certain form of Christ-centeredness and biblical orientation. While these theological priorities of the evangelical Protestant tradition have gained wide currency, the pneumatic spirituality of the pentecostal and charismatic movements is rarely considered when thinking about a distinctively Christian vision of higher education.When even God is showing up at secular universities, one wonders what difference considerations of the Holy Spirit might make to complement and perhaps revitalize the christocentrism renowned across CHE. The Holy Spirit and Higher Education responds along two interrelated lines: by reconsidering historic Christian education itself from this pentecostal perspective, and by formulating an approach to CHE around the charismatic, sanctifying, and missional dimensions of the Spirit's activity. Yong and Coulter show that CHE should be both Christ-centered and Pentecost-inspired, both biblically faithful and pneumatically empowered, both faith-committed and charismatically propelled.

WILL WE BECOME A SCANDAL TO THOSE WHO LOOK TO US AS LEADERS, OR WILL WE CHOOSE TO IMITATE THE SCANDALOUS WAY OF CHRIST?The fall of high-profile leaders has sadly become an epidemic, and although books and podcasts have sought to uncover the problem, they often fail to identify the root cause. In The Scandal of Leadership, JR Woodward offers a deeper diagnosis, outlining a more comprehensive understanding of power abuses in the church and the critical role of imitation. Drawing from Scripture and the scholarship of Walter Wink, Ren Girard, and William Stringfellow, as well as from positive examples of leaders such as scar Romero, this book offers a robust theology of the Powers--of Satan, the demonic, and the principalities and powers explored in the Bible. By unmasking the Powers of domination, Woodward seeks to help missional leaders practice a self-emptying spirituality that reshapes their desires and forms them into Christlike servants who join God's mission in the world.

Given the consistent challenge of Islamist acute violence, particularly in Nigeria, this monograph attempts to respond to the question: How can Jesus's followers pattern response to violence after Jesus's model demonstrated in his triumph over death, evil, sin, and violence through staurocentric pathways? And how can Jesus's followers in Nigeria adopt the same staurocentric model in order to not only overcome acute violence within the country but also to extend hands, heads, hearts, and homes of staurocentric forgiveness, hospitality, and other practices toward Muslims? In this study, I posit that peacebuilding contextual theology be grounded on the mystery of the cross (σταυρός-stauros)--a theologico-theoretical framework that the church in Nigeria should espouse in order to position herself to extend hands, heads, hearts, and homes of staurocentric practices, whose appropriation must be undertaken through constructive and critical integration of the God-given African peacebuilding concepts autochthonous to Africa's mosaic cultural contexts. The pivotal thesis is that the staurocentric model remains the triune God's instrument for triumphing over violence, and thus should be espoused by Jesus's followers in every era and context for peacebuilding in contexts of violence through a triadic constructive and critical integration of indigenous peacebuilding concepts.

Amos Yong has stated that Veli-Matti Karkkainen has become one of the more important theologians to be reckoned with in our time. This becoming has developed over the course of many decades with prolific contributions in essays, monographs, lectures, and other mediums. The goal of this book, then, is to offer a curated selection of Karkkainen's essays for both new and established reader of Karkkainen. This volume offers an accessible introduction to Karkkainen's diverse contribution for readers who are only familiar with his popular survey texts or are new to his work overall. And yet, for those familiar with his theology, this volume provides insights into the journey his theological contributions have taken over the last fifteen years and serves as a kind of intellectual storyboard leading into his five-volume constructive systematics. In sum, this book seeks to offer a wide-ranging taste of Karkkainen's trajectory that will inspire more research into his work and ever more attention to his important constructive contributions to global twenty-first-century theology.

Amos Yong has stated that Veli-Matti Karkkainen has become ""one of the more important theologians to be reckoned with in our time."" This becoming has developed over the course of many decades with prolific contributions in essays, monographs, lectures, and other mediums. The goal of this book, then, is to offer a curated selection of Karkkainen's essays for both new and established reader of Karkkainen. This volume offers an accessible introduction to Karkkainen's diverse contribution for readers who are only familiar with his popular survey texts or are new to his work overall. And yet, for those familiar with his theology, this volume provides insights into the journey his theological contributions have taken over the last fifteen years and serves as a kind of intellectual storyboard leading into his five-volume constructive systematics. In sum, this book seeks to offer a wide-ranging taste of Karkkainen's trajectory that will inspire more research into his work and ever more attention to his important constructive contributions to global twenty-first-century theology.

Los Angeles is a global crossroads of migrating communities that presents a case study of migration, transnationalism, and interfaith engagement with significant implications for thinking and practice in other global hubs. This book weaves together contributions from a group of internationally-recognized scholars who were brought together for the 2020 Missiology Lectures at Fuller Theological Seminary, which received funding from the Luce Foundation. They examine historical waves of migration — European Protestant, Asian, Latino/a, and Muslim — into Southern California and use sociological, missiological, and theological methods to understand the experience of migration and its effects, both on those who move and those who are already there. The result shows how migrants are inspired and sustained by faith and spiritual resources; how migration challenges faith communities about their identity and attitudes to others; how faith communities in turn impact the migration landscape through immigrant integration and public advocacy, and how migration forges new transnational and global ways of being in community and innovative religious movements. The contributors put forward a mission theology of migration and suggest mission practices in response to the suffering caused by forced migration and the injustices of immigration systems.

The book of Revelation stands as one of the most challenging and inspiring in the Christian canon. While giving rise to much unhelpful speculation, its core message of the active sovereignty of God in a hostile world has given courage and comfort throughout Christian history. In this volume, Amos Yong analyzes the message of Revelation to its earliest readers and speaks to its ongoing meaning for believers today.The volumes in the Belief series offer a fresh and invigorating approach to all the books of the Bible. Building on a wide range of sources from biblical studies and the Christian tradition, renowned scholars focus less on traditional historical and literary angles in favor of a theologically focused commentary that considers the contemporary relevance of the text. Why then, and why now are overarching questions asked throughout the volumes in the series.

The book of Revelation stands as one of the most challenging and inspiring in the Christian canon. While giving rise to much unhelpful speculation, its core message of the active sovereignty of God in a hostile world has given courage and comfort throughout Christian history. In this volume, Amos Yong analyzes the message of Revelation to its earliest readers and speaks to its ongoing meaning for believers today.The volumes in the Belief series offer a fresh and invigorating approach to all the books of the Bible. Building on a wide range of sources from biblical studies and the Christian tradition, renowned scholars focus less on traditional historical and literary angles in favor of a theologically focused commentary that considers the contemporary relevance of the text. Why then, and why now are overarching questions asked throughout the volumes in the series.

While the struggle for disability rights has transformed secular ethics and public policy, traditional Christian teaching has been slow to account for disability in its theological imagination. Amos Yong crafts both a theology of disability and a theology informed by disability. The result is a Christian theology that not only connects with our present social, medical, and scientific understanding of disability but also one that empowers a set of best practices appropriate to our late modern context.

In most parts of the world and especially where Christianity is flourishing, Pentecostal and charismatic movements predominate. What would it look like for the Western world--beset by the narrative of decline--to participate in this global Spirit-driven movement? According to Amos Yong, it all needs to start with the way we approach theological education. Renewing the Church by the Spirit makes the case for elevating pneumatology in Christian life, allowing the Spirit to reinvigorate church and mission. Yong shows how this approach would attend to both the rapidly deinstitutionalizing forms of twenty-first-century Christianity and the pressing need for authentic spiritual experiences that marks contemporary religious life. He begins with a broad assessment of our postmodern, post-Enlightenment, post-Christendom ecclesial context, before moving into a detailed outline of how a Spirit-filled approach to theological education--its curriculum, pedagogy, and scholarship--can meet the ecclesial and missional demands of this new age.

Bringing Pentecostal theology into the Bible and mission conversation, Amos Yong identifies the role of the divine spirit in God's mission to redeem the world. As he works through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, Yong emphasizes the global missiological imperative: "People of all nations reaching out to people of all nations." Sidebars include voices from around the globe who help the author put the biblical text into conversation with twenty-first-century questions, offering the church a fresh understanding of its mission and how to pursue it in the decades to come.

Efforts to construct a Christian theology of religions have inevitably stumbled on the Christian scandal of particularity--the historical Jesus of Nazareth. What, however, if we began by focusing on the universal presence and activity of God in the world as symbolized by the Holy Spirit? Yong develops just such a pneumatological approach to religions, drawing, by way of resource, on the Pentecostal-charismatic experience of the Spirit. This book thus invites Pentecostals, charismatics, and other Christians to conceive of how a pneumatological approach to religions can invigorate the wider ecumenical conversation. At the same time, it also brings recent Pentecostal-charismatic scholarship into dialogue with a broader audience, including those interested in philosophical theology, world religions, global spiritualities, and comparative religion and theology. ""Yong is truly a pioneer."" Geoffrey Parrinder, Epworth Review Amos Yong is Professor of Theology & Mission and Director of the Center for Missiological Research at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.