When I was reading the book Jesus Made in America by Stephen J. Nicholas, I came across a very interesting chapter titled “Jesus on Vinyl”. This chapter discussed in detail the state of the use of Jesus in contemporary music from the 1950s up to the current times. Back 3in the 1950s there were contemporary artists who putting out albums of hymns, like Johnny Cash’s Hymns of Johnny Cash. Not surprisingly, the most significant time for Christian gospel music was during the hippie era in the 1960s. During that time, gospel, youth, and music had merged together into songs that preached about Christ and love. Many people became Christians during that time to protest the ongoing war in Vietnam so it would make sense that they would start to make that a main topic in the music of that time.
Hippies usually referred to themselves as the Jesus People (named by Duane Pederson who was one of the leaders in Los Angeles) which led to this movement called the Jesus Movement. They claimed to not be a part of the hippie culture that they were born out of nor were they a part of the fundamental church. This caught the attention of several media outlets which drew more people do the Jesus Peoples welcoming environment. Many baptisms happened during this time, like in 1967 when Ted and Liz Wise converted four couples into becoming followers of Jesus, usually while on drugs. The people being baptized actually believed that they were being cleansed while still being intoxicated. They
In the book Simply Jesus, N.T. Wright makes three different claims throughout. N.T. Wright's first claim is about the “perfect storm”. The “perfect storm” takes up a large section of the first few chapters, and in those chapters N.T. Wright writes about that to enter the “perfect storm” you must step out of your own storm that is happening in your life, you must jump back into the “perfect storm” just as Jesus did in his own life. N.T. Wright fails to fully support the idea of the “perfect storm” throughout the book. Wright writes about the two myths that create the “storms”, the first is “… the high-pressure system of conservative Christianity” and the second is “... the new classic modernist myth…”. N.T. Wright loses his credibility to his claims by never giving evidence that disproves they myths. N.T. Wright states that the stories in the bible “...’really did happen’. And there the matter ends…. Facts or no facts”. N.T. Wrights claims are never fully
In a time where the majority of music is about making money, doing drugs, or having sex, it is complicated for music concerning other topics to gain attention. However, there are always a few jewels that beat the odds. Lecrae, the stage name of a Christian lyricist who piously centers his music around the teachings of Jesus Christ, is one of those jewels. In all of his songs there are explicit references that all of his energy is channeled into doing the will of God. Typically Lecrae’s genre of music is overlooked by the majority population because it lacks the pizazz in the beat that popular music has. As a result of this millions of people get deprived of the content of Christian music which has the power to
It is possible to write on the life of Jesus from the information gathered from the bible. I will be dividing my essay into three parts. In the first part of the paper, I will talk about the nature of the gospels, John’s views vs. the Synoptic, discuss if the authors of the gospels are eyewitnesses and how they used written sources. Also I will talk about the Q source. Then I will elaborate on the topic of how Matthew and Luke were similar. Then I will continue on by discussing how the Old Testament uses Moses, Samuel and Elijah to interpret Jesus, and finally whether or not the Sermon on the Mount happened. In the second part of my paper, I will talk about Jesus’s birth and childhood, his miracles, his resurrection, and what Jesus did to cure people, spirits and how they are interpreted to the prophet, magician and the mad man compared to Saul and Elijah. The final part of the paper I will talk about what Jesus talked about as regards to the Kingdom of God vs. the Kingdom of the Romans and what he intended by speaking of the end of the world. I will also speak of the reasons behind the Romans executing him. My sources for this paper will be the New Jerusalem Bible Readers edition as my primary source and lecture notes from Professor Trumbach.
One critique to the Jesus Seminar was the motives behind their work. The media often portrayed the group to be comprised mostly of former Christians, attacking hardest on the group’s leader Robert Funk and cochair John Crossan. Critics went as far to describe their meetings as having “the air of a village atheists’ convention” (Powell, 110). Such an allegation gave rise to the popular belief that the motives of the scholars were to get revenge on institutionalized religion for not being accepting to them. I believe the media was too quick to judge the motives of the scholars by attacking their backgrounds. Just because their work was controversial doesn’t mean it was subjective with underlying personal vendettas. It seems unlikely that a group
In this paper, the writer will explain the following questions about the American's belief about Jesus. The first question is Why do you think Americans' dedication to Jesus is, in most cases, "a mile wide and an inch deep?" What is the root of the problem? How do walking with Christ and engaging in the community help people's faith become "a mile deep?"
From the beginning of times, music has played an important role in everyone’s life. At first, it started with drum-based and percussion instruments made out of what was available as rocks and sticks. Our ancestors proved that human beings have an innate need of music. Nowadays, no one teaches a baby to follow the beat of a song, he just naturally lets his body get involved with the rhythm. Since the prehistoric era to Christian times, several forms of music have developed leaving a trail to new genres of music. For Christianity, hymns and plainchants were the first forms of music considered as a worship to God. As time passed by, Christian music has evolved giving way to new and fresh sounds.
Jean Kilbourne's " Jesus Is a Brand of Jeans" is about Jean Kilbourne complaints about advertising and how it effects the readers' society. She tells the listeners how the world of advertising managed to grab hold of their deepest desires without them notice it. Advertisements influence human's daily life everyday, because it tells the buyers that they will be loved by the things they purchase instead of being loved by a person.
In our book “American Jesus” by Stephen Prothero, the chairman of the religious department at Boston University, has published an engaging book that explains how the Son of God “Jesus Christ” became the nation’s most known and forming celebrity figure. While the United States of America was founded on religious freedom, Prothero explains to us that America has more active Christians than any other nation in history. And while this nation has been somewhat of a hedonistic society, Americans are more interested in the figure of Jesus than their Puritan forefathers, who were, as Prothero writes, "a God-fearing rather than Jesus-loving people." But that’s no surprise; Prothero warns us that Jesus may rule the country, but the people in the country
Two thousand years ago, the birth of Jesus, arguably the most influential man the world has ever seen, altered history forever. Christians know him as the Messiah, the son of God who came to save all of mankind, and for others, he may just be a great teacher and person of history. It is the latter that Reza Aslan attempts to shed an unbiased light on by comparing the Jesus that modern Christians believe in to the Jesus that Aslan believes would have fit into first-century Palestine: a violet revolutionary, dedicated to the eradication of the Roman government in Israel and the deposition of the rich priestly class. Aslan paints a portrayal of Jesus using knowledge of the time period, Scripture that has been taken out of context and misinterpreted, and most of all, the author’s imagination and powerful rhetoric to cover up his faulty argumentation. In his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan recreates an interesting but purely speculative image of the historical Jesus through exploring the political and social history of first-century Palestine, the life and teachings of Jesus, and the development of early Christianity.
I believe, after reading The Challenges of Jesus by N.T. Wright that Jesus had an agenda to save the first century Jew, and become the eschatology prophecy of the Old Testament.
I'm writing to you in regards to Jesus E. Ramirez-Granados, his hearing is on April 4, 2017. His charges are 2 counts of burglary and 1 count of theft and his bail is set to 250,000.
Bart Ehrman’s “How Jesus Became God”; is a book where Ehrman gives his insight on how Jesus became to be considered divine while Jesus himself didn’t even deem himself to be divine. Weather his insight is what you believe it really gets you thinking about the history of Christianity. His book is a study into the growth of the Christian religion and how Jesus wasn’t, but then was considered God. He draws a line between human and divine which makes you think deeper into how Jesus underwent a transformation from being a preacher to being a celestial figure and how Christians came to view him as that. Ehrman makes his case that Jesus wasn’t viewed by himself or his followers as divine until Christians gave him that title and I want to examine Ehrman’s
Discuss the distinction between the Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History. What are the implication did it have within our social location
“the Jesus I Never Knew,” by Philip Yancey, was a lot more interesting than I was expecting. When I first read the plot, or summary, on the back of the book itself, I begin to wonder what this book what relate to me in what way. As I continued to dig deeper in the marvelous writing of Philip Yancey, I instantly began to relate to his occurrences, and remembering of Jesus as a young child.
Is it possible to live a life as Jesus did in his time in our society today? In the book of ‘Jesus Today: Living Life as Jesus would’ by Marc Estes, the main character, Dave Finley, and his fictional story shows us how we could live our lives as Jesus did. Before coming to Christ, Dave was living a life full of emptiness, depression, loneliness, worries and discontent. It was not until he became a follower of Christ that he started to substitute the anxieties, emptiness, and brokenness of his heart with the love of God, and live a life more as Jesus would do it. Through the book, Dave passed through different circumstances that help him to become more like Jesus. As I read the book, I felt inspired not only by Dave’s story but also by the practical truths in each chapter. At the same time, I identified myself in some areas with the main character in his story.