Zondervan and Breakpoint are pleased share with you a recap of Chuck Colson's recent 9-stop blog tour for the recent release of The Faith. Below is a summary of the 9 questions bloggers asked Chuck about The Faith, along with a link back to the blogs where Chuck answered the questions. Enjoy this Question and Answer blog tour recap!
Question #1: Chuck, you talk about the history of the faith and tradition in your book a great deal. What do North American evangelicals stand to gain from examining more closely their own history and traditions? In what sense ought Protestantism be understood as “catholic”? Part of that great Christian tradition has to do with the witnesses to the faith, which you survey in the book. What do the concepts of martyrdom and suffering have to do with a Western context where most Christians live comfortably and without the threat of persecution? Read Chuck's answer on the Acton Powerblog.
Question #2: Mr. Colson, you make the point in several places that Christianity is a worldview. The term worldview is becoming common in the Christian vernacular. Many associate worldview with learning "isms". How do you recommend we keep "worldview" from becoming just another cerebral exercise? How do we connect it to the heart? Also, in the chapter on becoming holy, you discuss social holiness. "We are to bring God's holiness to bear in every area of life. This understanding of holiness has moved Christians throughout history to some of the greatest advances in human dignity and freedom." How do you recommend we protect against losing the focus on God's holiness as our motivation for engaging culture? In other words, it can become easy to slide into pursuing political or social causes for reasons having nothing to do with God's holiness. What are good ways to guard against that? Read Chuck's answer on Voyage of the Dawn Treader's Blog.
Question #3: A few years you said that America is no longer a "Christian Nation." Can you expand on this statement? Also, in The Faith, you identify secular atheism and militant Islamism as the two main threats to Christianity today. If you had to pick between them, which do you think presents the greater threat and why? Read Chuck's answer on Reasoned Audacity's Blog.
Question #4: Protestants have traditionally held that justification by grace alone through faith alone is at the heart of the Christian faith and thus a non-negotiable doctrine for anyone who considers himself a Christian. Yet this is anathema within the Roman Catholic Church. This would seem to be an unbridgeable divide when seeking communion between the two traditions. Is justification by grace alone through faith alone a doctrine fundamental to the faith? What theological distinctives are non-negotiable in determining who belongs to the Body of Jesus Christ? Read Chuck's answer on Challies.com.
Question #5: Others have asked you erudite theological questions. I hope you haven't felt like you were facing some kind of theological inquisition! Welcome to the blogosphere, Chuck! I would like to be sneaky and ask you more than one question, although they are not as intellectual as some of the others. First of all, will we ever see a Chuck Colson blog? Secondly, can you please tell us a bit about your hopes and aspirations for the book, i.e. how you came to be writing it, why you wrote it, who your target audience is, and what you hope the book will achieve in the Christian world? Read Chuck's answer on Adrian Warnock's blog.
Question #6: Congratulations on your ambitious yet comprehensive book. Well done!!!!! I know its risky but I admire your efforts to join with the other streams of the holy apostolic catholic church in gaining a wider, fuller more accurate understanding of the faith and I applaud the breadth of those authors you reference. I am familiar enough with your writings to know that "postmodern" is a negative word in your vocabulary, synonymous with "relativism". But I am also close enough to the emerging church scene to recognize that "postmodern" can just as easily mean "committed to context" or "open to the past". However, despite our disparate journeys and the words we chose to define them, I think many of us are finding ourselves on a similar a quest to rediscover the historical foundations of our faith or, as D.H. Williams put it, to "retrieve" the Tradition that has informed our practice through the centuries. So my question is "Why now?" Read Chuck's answer on Tall Skinny Kiwi's Blog.
Question #7: Chuck, thanks for this concise and compelling summary of Christian faith and its implications for our lives. The Faith speaks to the challenges of our world with clarity and incisiveness. I am pleased to recommend it to my constituency. I am the Senior Director and Scholar-in-Residence for Laity Lodge, an organization founded by Howard E. Butt, Jr. to advance God’s renewal of individuals, families, institutions, and society. One of our core convictions is that Christians can make a major difference in the world by living out their faith at work. You mention opportunities for believers to share the Gospel in the workplace (p. 156), something we encourage as well. But we also see great potential for broader renewal if Christians would only live out their faith holistically in the context of their daily work. In fact, one of our web-based ministries encourages believers to think in terms of The High Calling of Our Daily Work. We want all Christians to understand that they are called to serve the Lord, not only in church-based ministries or through their volunteer activities, but also in their daily work, whether this be in the marketplace, at school, or in the home. Given the breadth and inclusiveness of your vision in The Faith, I expect you would agree with this conviction. Would you be willing to suggest various ways one might live out the faith in the context of daily work? What difference could orthodoxy make at work? Read Chuck's answer on Mark D. Roberts's blog.
Question #8: On page 117 you write this: “True faith means putting the cause of Christ and the needs of others ahead of self and doing the gospel.” Can you explain what you mean by the phrase “doing the gospel”? What is included in doing the gospel? Read Chuck's answer on Rebecca Writes' Blog.
Question #9: Mr. Colson – thank you for your ministry and for this book, I think I have read all of your books, and this one continues the tradition you have established of depth and practicality and I am honored to be a part of this blog tour. Since several of my friends in the blog world already took questions I would have asked you I would just like to ask you to elaborate a bit on a passage in the book. On page 223 you write: "This is why orthodoxy matters, for a renewal and strengthening of the orthodox Christian faith can provide not only joy and meaning for Christians but a bulwark of sanity and reason against barbarism. Do we want Westminster Abby and the Houses of Parliament facing one another? Or do we want to leave it to the merry pranksters of café society to confront an evil they cannot understand, appreciate, nor defend against? This is the great battle of good versus evil of our time?" I am just curious as to who you mean by “the merry pranksters of café society” and whether or not you see any groups on the horizon who are working effectively to re-establish orthodoxy in our day? Read Chuck's answer on David Wayne's Blog.
Thank you to all of the participating bloggers on The Faith's blog tour! To learn more about The Faith by Chuck Colson and Harold Fickett, visit www.Zondervan.com/TheFaith.
Charles Colson, author of The Faith (Zondervan, 2008), today received the Presidential Citizens Medal from President Bush during a ceremony at the White House. Colson served seven months in prison for his role in the Watergate cover-up, and after becoming a born-again Christian, founded Prison Fellowship in 1976. 