The book is officially released! You can get it at Amazon.com, and the Kindle Edition is available as well. Thanks for all you are doing to support this. Also there is a new article up highlighting the book at the Huffington Post. Each time a person clicks “like” or shares the article via twitter/facebook/social media, or emails it to a friend, it gets bumped up the food chain & will stay out there longer. That means more people will read it. So I appreciate your patronage!
Here are the blurbs which appear on the back cover & inside the book. Thank you to Shane Claiborne, Stanley Hauerwas, Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo, Christopher Evans, John Franke, Steve McCormick, and Mary Nelson! Also thanks to Paul Raushenbush for writing a wonderful foreword and for supporting this project.
“There is a dreadful pattern evident in church history where we continually overcompensate where our Christianity has become imbalanced. We exaggerate the truth that has been neglected, and we keep ending up with a lopsided faith… then we wind up with Jesus-lovers that forget justice and justice-lovers that forget Jesus. It is my hope that this book helps cure our bifurcated “either/or” mentality that keeps separating things that must be held together — loving God and loving people, the great commandment and the great commission, a God that is personal and a God that is social… may the pages of this book remind us that Jesus and Justice must kiss, and that loving God and loving people are like the blades of scissors — they’ve got to stick together.”
– Shane Claiborne, author, activist, and recovering sinner (thesimpleway.org)
“An Evangelical Social Gospel? is a joy to read because Suttle is so deadly serious about matters that matter. The book is filled with delightful surprises not the least being the recovery of Walter Rauschenbusch to challenge the individualism of evangelical Christianity. But this book is more than critique it is a wonderful imaginative attempt to develop a folk theology that is faithful to the gospel.”
– Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University
“Tim Suttle’s first book, An Evangelical Social Gospel?, brings a message of balance and challenge needed by us all. This gifted new writer helps us rediscover one of our most-misunderstood old writers from a century ago. Highly recommended.”
– Brian McLaren, author/activist (brianmclaren.net)
“This is a down-to-earth account of how the thinking of a young Evangelical changed his understanding of the Gospel from a message that addressed individualistic sin management to a holistic Gospel that includes a strong emphasis on justice. He makes the teachings of Walter Rauschenbusch accessible to all readers, but undoubtedly this book will have a special appeal to youth who are going through the same growth process that marked the author’s life.”
– Tony Campolo, PhD, Eastern University
“Combining elements of history, theology, and autobiography, Tim Suttle has written a thought-provoking book that serves as a fresh assessment of Walter Rauschenbusch for the 21st century church. In an age when many Christians use labels such as ‘evangelical’ and ‘liberal’ in an uncritical fashion, Suttle calls upon his audience to reflect on how a recovery of the past can lead to a fresh understanding of Christianity today. While written primarily with an evangelical audience in mind, Suttle’s study provides a welcome perspective not only on Walter Rauschenbusch and the social gospel, but on how Christianity in America might unfold over the course of the next several decades.”
– Christopher Evans, Boston University
“In this remarkable and enjoyable book Tim Suttle draws on the theology of Walter Rauschenbusch in offering a holistic account of the Gospel that is truly good news for the world. In so doing he reminds us that the invitation to follow Jesus and participate in the mission of God involves all that we are in an effort to create a society in which the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven.”
– John R. Franke, Biblical Seminary
Every once in a while, as we journey in faith, we will discover the kind of guide who not only helps us find our way, but our voice. Tim Suttle has not only found his way further into God’s Kingdom, but he has discovered his own voice by rediscovering a like-minded pastor, theologian, and fellow traveler, in Walter Rauschenbusch. Today, in the footsteps of Rauschenbusch, Tim has found a way to ‘reconnect’ the personal nature of the Gospel that has become unhinged from the Gospel’s corporate and communal nature in the Church of Jesus Christ. Every page of this book burns with the fervent love of God, and immediately, one begins to hear in the infectious words of a compassionate pastor, the unswerving conviction of a prophet, beckoning the whole ‘people of God,’ and not just the wandering individuals of the Church with their private experience(s) of grace, to join together in the transforming power of God’s mission to reconcile the whole world. After all, says Tim, “the nexus of the personal and corporate is where all the power is.” Yes, a recovery of the Gospel is underway in the Church because these two faithful pastors and prophetic voices have already seen ahead of the rest of us, and now, they are calling the Church to ‘run further up and further in’ the Kingdom of God.
– K. Steve McCormick, Nazarene Theological Seminary
An Evangelical Social Gospel? is a probing and passionate call to Christians and churches to move beyond our one-sided individual relationship with God to equally include relationship with others and responsibility for the wider community. Suttle, using the writings and life of Rauschenbusch and his own disquiet as a pastor, stirs us to feel discomfort at our self-centered complacency and co-option by culture; he moves us to redefine “our Kingdom come on earth as in heaven” as a call to relationships and the transformation of our communities. Transformation goes beyond charity, seeking change in the unjust social structures (public education, prisons, etc)… an exciting, challenging, biblically based read that will change your faith thinking and action.
– Mary Nelson, CCDA
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