Description: This collection of essays, sermons, and prayers urges the church today to "be the sort of community that sustains a vigorous and continuing conversation within itself as to who has called it into being, to whom it is responsible, and what it is called to be and to do." Jones reminds the church that it is an alternative political community called into being by the Gospel. This collection explores what it means to be such an alternative community in "tumultuous times," in times when it is tempting to look to the world for answers, and to confuse loyalty to the nation-state with...

Joe Jones, a retired and well-known systematic theologian, confesses he has a lover's quarrel with the church. In wide-ranging writings mostly dating since 2006, he forthrightly argues for a theologically sound understanding of the church. And he pursues a multi-faceted critique of the feckless ways in which actual churches--ministers and laity--balk and betray their rightful calling to witness in word and deed to God. He is especially critical of the practical ways in which congregations become no more than mirror images of their sociopolitical milieu, whether to the right or to the left....