Source: Baker Books
Boundless: What Global Expressions of Faith Can Teach Us about Following Jesus, by Bryan Bishop. Baker Books, 2015. 240 pages.
This gracefully written book takes us along on the author’s journey through the world of contextualized religion to discover what might help post-Christian westerners who hunger for a faith more relevant and vibrant than what they have inherited in traditional Christianity.
Bishop, a long-time researcher and writer with Youth with a Mission, visits groups who learn from and worship Jesus using forms inspired by Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, and native American cultures (and generally found in those religious settings). He sees his own faith grow and shares his questions and what he learns along the way from groups of believers who honor the centrality of the Bible, focus on Jesus, adopt local practices, and seek truth where they can find it.
Bishop’s honest and engaging travelogue through a landscape often marked with controversy nicely blends scholarship, journalism, and personal reflection. I would recommend this book to any who seek to understand contextualization and its faces, problems, and benefits, and I believe it would hold the interest of those new to these issues as well as those who have long considered them.
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