I’m pleased to announce my new book, Reimagining the Kingdom: The Generational Development of Liberal Kingdom Grammar from Schleiermacher to McLaren, is now available as an ebook for NOOK and Kindle. A print version will be available to purchase within a week or so from most online retailers. You can also pre-order it HERE.

This book traces the generational development of liberal Kingdom grammar from Schleiermacher to Ritschl, Rauschenbusch, and Tillich, in order to see how that grammar is affecting contemporary articulations of Kingdom in evangelicalism, particularly progressive Emergent evangelicalism.

In the next week or so, once it’s out in print, I’m going to blog through some of the themes of my research, especially some of the great questions a friend of mine asked of the introduction. I think it’s important to deal with the pieces of liberal Kingdom grammar, because of how I see those pieces beginning to influence and impact historic orthodoxy and evangelicalism with the increased attention paid to the Kingdom of God.

Yes, paying more attention to the Kingdom teachings of Jesus is a good thing, and so too is recapturing that language. It isn’t, however, if the Kingdom becomes the mode of salvation, rather than faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection. As I say in my conclusion:

While the Kingdom is part and parcel of the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is being pronounced at the expense of the justification provided through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Such pronouncement not only has implications for the future of mission and evangelism, but the gospel itself. Therefore, it behooves evangelicals to reconsider their Kingdom grammar in order to guard their gospel grammar. Yes, we must pray for God’s Kingdom-rule to break into our existence in increasing measure. But we do so with the realization that it was God Himself through His Son’s life, death, and resurrection that made it possible in the first place. It is not the Kingdom that saves us, but Jesus Christ alone.