Here is the latest Christ the Center interview. The panel talked with Stephen J. Nichols about his book Jesus Made in America. This was, far and away, the most lively Christ the Center interview.
Dr. Nichols gave us a summary of the book and the panelists interacted with him about the prevalent American Evangelical temptation to make Jesus over in our own image or into the image of some ideal far removed from his Biblical context. The group looked at how Jesus was understood by the Puritans in New England as well as the manly Jesus of Jacksonian America and the gentle Jesus meek and mild of the Victorian era. Closer to the present time the panelists discussed Fosdick and Van Dyke and their views of Jesus in contradistinction to the orthodoxy of J. Gresham Machen. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the American made Jesus was the consideration of the roots of contemporary Christian music (CCM).
We always love having Nichols on the show. I hope you enjoy.
I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naïve. (Romans 16:17-18)