Search results for ""Author William Murchison""

It's not that the dignified and rarefied old Episcopal Church quit believing in God. It's that the God you increasingly hear spoken of in Episcopal circles is infinitely tolerant and given to sudden changes of mind--not quite the divinity you thought you were reading about in the scriptures. Episcopalians of the twenty-first century, like their counterparts in other churches of the so-called American mainline--such as Methodists and Presbyterians--seem to prefer a God that the culture would be proud of, as against a culture that God would be proud of. While they work to rebrand and reshelve orthodox Christianity for the modern market, exponents of the new thinking are busy reducing mainstream Christian witness to a shadow of its former self. Mortal Follies is the story of the Episcopal Church's mad dash to catch up with a secular culture fond of self-expression and blissfully relaxed as to norms and truths. An Episcopal layman, William Murchison details how leaders of his church, starting in the late 1960s, looked over the culture of liberation, liked what they saw, and went skipping along with the shifting cultural mood--especially when the culture demanded that the church account for its sins of "heterosexism" and "racism." Episcopalians have blended so deeply into the cultural woodwork that it's hard sometimes to remember that it all began as a divine calling to the normative and the eternal.

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The first biography of John Dickinson published in fifty years, The Cost of Liberty offers a sorely needed reassessment of a great patriot and misunderstood Founding Father. Countering the caricature of Dickinson that has emerged from such popular treatments as HBO’s John Adams miniseries, author William Murchison brings to life an astonishingly principled man whose gifts as philosopher, writer, and speaker only Jefferson came near matching. Today Dickinson is remembered mostly for his reluctance to sign the Declaration of Independence. But that reluctance was in fact principled, Murchison shows, not the result of a lack for patriotism. Indeed, Dickinson immediately took up arms to serve the colonial cause—something only one signer of the Declaration did. The Cost of Liberty gives a great Founder his long-overdue measure of honour.

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