Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear: Choosing Trust over Safety in an Anxious Age

From the Back CoverA Timely Christian Response to a World Warped by FearFear has taken on an outsized role in our current cultural and political context. But this steady diet of fear produces unhealthy moral lives, leading many Christians to focus more on the dangers we wish to avoid than the goods we wish to pursue.Bringing together cultural analysis and theological insight, Scott Bader-Saye explores a Christian response to the culture of fear and offers practices that embody Jesus's call to place our trust in him and to show hospitality to our neighbors. Now revised and updated throughout, including new discussion questions."In this important book, updated to reflect the difficult realities we now face, Scott Bader-Saye reminds us that the only way to break through a life of fear is by embracing a different way, a way of love. This is not easy work, but it is crucial work, and in these pages we learn how to risk much for God's dream of a better world."--The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church; author of Love Is the Way: Holding On to Hope in Troubling Times"What a marvelously lucid, engaging, and convincing book. Bader-Saye singles out fear as the defining and largely self-imposed burden of our world. Not content with diagnosis, he offers a cure--cogent, compassionate, and Christian. Here is a fresh voice to challenge and transform the anxieties of church and world."--Samuel Wells, vicar, St. Martin-in-the-Fields Anglican Church; visiting professor, King's College London"In a culture consumed by anxiety and divided against itself, Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear couldn't have come at a better time. Bader-Saye tackles the most pressing moral challenges of our day: the dangers of American exceptionalism, of stoking fear for profit, and of manufacturing fear of the stranger in our midst. Bracing in its honesty and inspiring in its call for a risky faith, this book offers readers biblical wisdom and well-founded hope for our turbulent times."--Joy Ann McDougall, Candler School of Theology, Emory UniversityFear has taken on an outsized role in our current cultural and political context. Manufactured threats are advanced with little to no evidence of danger, while real threats are exaggerated for self-interested gain. This steady diet of fear produces unhealthy moral lives, leading many Christians to focus more on the dangers we wish to avoid than the goods we wish to pursue. As a fearful people, we are tempted to make safety our highest good and to make virtues of suspicion, preemption, and accumulation. But this leaves the church ill-equipped to welcome the stranger, love the enemy, or give to those in need.This timely resource brings together cultural analysis and theological insight to explore a Christian response to the culture of fear. Laying out a path from fear to faithfulness, theologian Scott Bader-Saye explores practices that embody Jesus's call to place our trust in him, inviting Christian communities to take the risks of hospitality, peacemaking, and generosity. This book has been revised throughout, updated to connect with today's readers, and includes new discussion questions.About the AuthorScott Bader-Saye (PhD, Duke University) holds the Helen and Everett H. Jones Chair in Christian Ethics and Moral Theology at Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, where he also serves as academic dean. He is the author of Formed by Love and Church and Israel after Christendom and has contributed chapters to The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics and The Cambridge Companion to the Gospels.