As pastor of Church of the Resurrection, Adam Hamilton has the honor of leading the largest United Methodist congregation in the United States. More than 8,600 attend services each week, and the Kansas congregation is considered by many to be America’s most influential mainline Protestant church. But with the release of his provocative new book, “Making Sense of the Bible: Rediscovering the Power of Scripture Today,” Hamilton is becoming known as someone who is challenging traditional understandings the Bible.

Here we discuss the message of his book and how he navigates the most difficult and debated passages.

RNS: You believe the Bible is divinely “inspired.” Can you explain what you mean exactly?

AH: The biblical authors were people like us. Christians do not hold, as Muslims do, that our holy book was dictated by God. The biblical authors wrote in particular times, for particular audiences, out of a particular context. Part of rightly interpreting Scripture is reading it in the light of what we can know about its historical and cultural context, the author’s purposes in writing and knowing something about the people they were writing to.

In 2 Timothy 3:16 Paul writes, “All Scripture is inspired by God…” Christians often assume they know what this means, but Paul seems to have created the word “inspired.” It does not appear in the Greek language before this and is used nowhere else in the Bible. It literally means “God-breathed” but Paul doesn’t go on to explain precisely what he means. It is a metaphor, and metaphors are not precise. Push them too far and they break down.

When I think of inspired, I think of God-influenced. This leaves open a variety of ways in which the biblical authors were influenced by God.

RNS: A lot of critics reject the Bible because of the violence in the Old Testament. What say you?

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For many Christians, Philip Yancey needs no introduction. He’s written thirteen Gold Medallion Award-winning books, 4 of which sold more than a million copies. From grace to prayer to the real Jesus, he’s always tackling the burning spiritual questions. With his new book, “The Question that Never Goes Away,” Yancey tackles how to answer a universal question: “Where is God when we suffer?” Here, I discuss with the bestselling author how he answers this question and what he’s learned about finding God in tragedy.

RNS: You’ve traveled the world visiting places devastated by war and disasters, natural and manmade. What have you learned from journeying with those who suffer?

PY: I’ve learned that words don’t matter nearly as much as personal presence and practical help. We all struggle with the “Why?” questions surrounding the problem of pain and suffering, but a person going through it is usually not investigating philosophical questions; they’re just trying to survive and heal.

The calming effect of community and personal presence is scientifically verifiable. I have a friend who participated with a medical student in a pain experiment. They found that a person with feet in a bucket of ice can stand the pain much longer if a friend is with them holding their hand. Every study shows that people recovering from surgery heal faster if they’re engaged with a supportive community.  It makes sense: a caring community can help relieve stress, fear, anxiety, the very things that keep us from healing well.

RNS: As you’ve moved among those whose lives have been ripped apart by conflict, how have you seen light penetrate the deepest darknesses people endure?

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Ten years ago, a group of Christians in Durham, North Carolina, launched a community of hospitality in a historic neighborhood called Walltown. Since then, the Rutba House has welcomed folks who are homeless, returning home from prison and others who just need a safe place to land. Now In his new book, Strangers at My Door: A True Story of Finding Jesus in Unexpected Guests, Rutba co-founder Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove shares some of the remarkable everyday stories he’s encountered. Here we talk about why he thinks hospitality has declined in Western culture and how we can recover it.

JM: Your community, Rutba House, was inspired when you were in Baghdad during the American invasion. How so?

JWH: In the spring of 2003, we were in Baghdad with a Christian peacemaker delegation. Outside of a town called Rutba, a car in our caravan hit a piece of shrapnel in the road, blew its tire, and careened into the side ditch. Three of our friends split their heads open. When they stumbled out of the ditch to the roadside, they didn’t know what to do. But some Iraqis stopped, took them into their car, and drove them to a doctor in Rutba. This doctor said, “Three days ago your country bombed our hospital, but we will take care of you.” He saved our friends’ lives.

We came back to the US in 2003 telling that story, and the more I told it, the more I realized that it was the Good Samaritan story. The people who were supposed to be our enemies had saved our friends’ lives. They were the Good Iraqis, the Good Muslims. We moved to Durham, North Carolina that summer and started Rutba House as a house of hospitality to put into practice the welcome we’d received in Rutba. In many ways, the past decade of our life has been an attempt to respond faithfully to the gift of hospitality we received at Rutba.

JM: Do you think that hospitality has declined in Western culture? What can Christians do to begin recovering this discipline?

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The same week Mark Driscoll declared via a press release that “[Christians] spend too much time lobbing e-bombs at each other in cyberspace,” he published an internet article confronting Christian pacifism.

“Jesus is not a pansy or a pacifist; he’s patient. He has a long wick, but the anger of his wrath is burning,” the Seattle-based pastor wrote. “Once the wick is burned up, he is saddling up on a white horse and coming to slaughter his enemies and usher in his kingdom. Blood will flow.”

The more than 1,200-word article titled, “Is God a Pacifist?” argued that Exodus 20:13 (“You shall not murder”) does not teach non-violence, but the conclusion was especially pointed:

“Some of those whose blood will flow as high as the bit in a horse’s mouth for 184 miles will be those who did not repent of their sin but did wrongly teach that Jesus was a pacifist. Jesus is no one to mess with.”

Predictably, Twitter erupted with Christian pacifists who felt misrepresented. Pacifist denominations include the Church of the Brethren, Mennonites, Churches of God (7th Day), Quakers, and Seventh-day Adventists.

In light of the growing conversation, I asked several prominent Christian pacifists Shane Claiborne, Preston Sprinkle, Sarah Withrow King, Scot McKnight and Jonathan Wilson-Hatrgrove for their thoughts and reactions:

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From the Abu Ghraib tortures to the more than 100,000 civilian casualties, solemn and sickening headlines have told of the true cost of the Iraq conflict. Finally, we’re hearing some good news about a different kind of American intervention.

His name is Jeremy Courtney, and he is executive director of Preemptive Love Coalition (PLC), an international development organization based in Iraq that provides lifesaving heart surgeries to Iraqi children and training for local healthcare professionals. The storied Middle Eastern nation has experienced a spike in birth defects as a result of sanctions and exposure to chemical weapons or depleted uranium. One out of seven children in Iraq are born with a physical defect, and the cancer rates are higher than Hiroshima.

Living in Iraq with his wife and two children has been fraught with difficulty. At one point, a fatwa calling for his death was issued by Muslim authorities. But he has stayed and his work has made incredible strides toward creating peace between communities at odds. His new book, Preemptive Love: Pursuing Peace One Heart at a Time, tells the harrowing tale of his experiences there. Here, we talk about his experience living in Iraq, the struggles his family has faced, and what he thinks of American tensions in both Syria and Iran.

JM: You and your family were in Iraq during the war. Did you think the war was unjust?

JC: No, I did not think the war was unjust. Or, perhaps more accurately, I did not think about it. Looking back now, I can see that many people were tapped into the conversation, but none of the people in my life (and I was in seminary at the time!) were questioning the legal justifications, potential outcomes, unintended consequences, authority, or threat potentialities that were being used to lead us into war.

It was not until my wife and I moved to Iraq as unarmed civilians and befriended the very people who were most affected by Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, the U.N.’s violent and oppressive sanctions regime, and various U.S. interventions that we began to see the entire conversation through more nuanced perspectives.

JM: I imagine that an American Christian embedded in the Middle East—even a well-intentioned one–might cause some Iraqis concern. How were you and your team received? Any animosity toward you?

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The Syrian civil war has become a humanitarian hell. More than 100,000 are dead, images of a state-sanctioned chemical weapons attack have evoked a global protest, and most Western leaders agree that Syrian President Bashar Assad is an all-around bad guy. But enacting another bloody and expensive war against an unstable Middle Eastern country, particularly one with the backing of Russia and Iran, is something many Americans have little stomach for.

So which position should Christians support?

Traditionally, Christians have viewed war through one of two lenses. Those who hold to just war theory believe that war is often right if the violent conflict meets certain criteria. This is the view held by most Catholics and conservative Protestants. On the other hand, Christian pacifists believe that violence is incompatible with a faith that is patterned after the one who blessed peacemakers and urged his followers to “turn the other cheek.”

But in recent years, a third view called just peacemaking has gained traction among some Christians. It has been promoted by evangelical theologians Glenn Stassen and David Gushee, and supports the prevention of war through nonviolent direct action and cooperative conflict resolution. Stassen and Gushee point out that just peacemaking theory is not intended to be a substitute for just war or pacifism, but rather a supplement and corrective.

Below are position statements on the Syrian conflict from Christian thought leaders representing each of these perspectives:

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For years, conservative Christians have decried the “hookup culture” among young people that they believe is eroding the foundation of our nation. America’s youth, they claim, is having sex more frequently and with more partners. But according to new data, these Christians are wrong.

A sweeping new study conducted by sociologist Martin A. Monto of the University of Portland demonstrates that today’s young people are having no more sex than did their parents and they aren’t having sex with more partners, either. In a paper presented at the American Sociological Association, Monto stated there is “no evidence of substantial changes in sexual behavior that would support the proposition that there is a new or pervasive ‘hookup culture’ among contemporary college students.”

How did so many Christians get this one so wrong? The answer seems to be a little thing called confirmation bias, which is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their preconceived notions or beliefs.

In response to America’s cultural revolution, conservative Christians in the early 1970’s began to preach about America’s “moral decline” or what Robert Bork famously labeled “slouching towards Gomorrah.” According to this narrative, America was abandoning its moral roots and becoming a more sinful, secular nation. As this narrative penetrated Christian communities, every anecdote of a young person contracting an STD or impregnating their teenage girlfriend fit nicely into the larger story Christians were telling, and coincidently, using to generate fear, raise money and political power.

But there are several problems with the macro-narrative of moral decline.

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Charles H. Spurgeon has been called “the greatest of the Victorian preachers,” but the 19th century Brit is much more than an artifact. Modern conservative Christians maintain an enduring fascination with Spurgeon, whose writings still rank among the top 100 bestsellers of Christian literature on Amazon.

Most of the books, blogs, and articles written about the longtime pastor of London’s Metropolitan Tabernacle center on his evangelistic fervor and theology. But the most fascinating thing about Spurgeon may be his lesser known political views.

“Spurgeon was basically a left winger politically,” says Tom Nettles, professor of historical theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “He was politically active, but some evangelicals may be surprised to find that he was usually on the side of liberal politics.”

Though Spurgeon supported Bible teaching in public schools, Nettles says, Spurgeon “loved the American idea of the separation of church and state.” He favored the disestablishment of the Anglican church from the British government and spoke about it often.

Spurgeon was also sensitive to the problems of the poor that arose as a result of the industrial revolution in the West. He favored the abolition of the elitist House of Lords that disempowered ordinary Brits, and he publicly support more liberal policies to address poverty.

“He was very active in preaching about certain social issues,” says Nettles, author of the forthcoming Living by Revealed Truth: The Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. “Spurgeon preached in support of making government low-income housing projects more humane and encouraged Christians to vote for the governmental alleviation of poverty.”

But one of Spurgeon’s lesser known and more contentious political stances was his opposition to war. He believed that war was “an enormous crime” and “regarded all battles as but murder on a large scale.” Spurgeon said in his 1857 sermon “Independence of Christianity,”

Christ’s church hath been also miserably befooled; for this I will assert, and prove too, that the progress of the arms of a Christian nation is not the progress of Christianity…. The Christian soldier hath no gun and no sword, for he fighteth not with men. It is with “spiritual wickedness in high places” that he fights, and with other principalities and powers than with those that sit on thrones and hold sceptres in their hands.

“Spurgeon was anti-war,” says Nettles. “I don’t know if he actually rejected just war theory, but every time he talks about war, he speaks of it in the most negative, unattractive way. The only war he fully justified was the American Civil War because he believed so strongly in the cause of freeing slaves. It even caused some Southerners in America to boycott his books. I wouldn’t go so far as calling him a pacifist, but he would think the justification for war would be extremely rare.”

Bill Leonard, church history professor at Wake Forest Divinity School and author of Baptist Ways: A History, says Spurgeon’s views on foreign policy were formed as a response to a time in which his mother country ruled the world and was sending its soldiers to fight foreign wars. His situation, Leonard says, is not unlike ours.

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Named “America’s Best Theologian” by Time magazine in 2001, Stanley Hauerwas teaches at both Duke Divinity School and also Duke Law School. His book, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic, was selected as one of the 100 most important books on religion of the 20th century. He’s such a prominent thinker, the adjective “Hauerwasian” has been created to describe those who are influenced by his work.

More than an intellectual paragon, Stanley Hauerwas is a provocateur par excellence. He is always pushing people’s buttons, even once asking a medical researcher who defended experiments on fetal tissue, “What if it were discovered that fetal tissue were a delicacy? Could you eat it?” But he does this to provoke thought, not to pick fights. As a result, he’s become a prominent “Christian contrarian” and respected theologian. Here, he shares bluntly–would you expect any less?–his thoughts on war, pacifism and the church’s relationship with the state.

JM: Many Christians supported the war in Iraq. My home denomination, The Southern Baptist Convention, even did so publicly. This a problem in your view, isn’t it?

SH: Of course, the Christian support of war in Iraq is a problem. It’s more than a problem, it’s a sign of deep unfaithfulness.

JM: Many people attack pacifists with arguments about World War II, claiming that in some cases, war is justified and just. Do you disagree with this position? I mean, would the world have been better off if the Nazi regime had been allowed to pursue their agenda of aggression and genocide unchallenged?

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American Christians have a persecution complex. Whenever a public figure criticizes the Christian movement or offers believers in other faiths an equal voice in society, you can bet Christians will start howling. Claims about American persecution of Christians are a form of low comedy in a country where two-thirds of citizens claim to be Christians, where financial gifts to Christian churches are tax deductible, where Christian pastors can opt out of social security, and where no one is restricted from worshipping however, whenever, and wherever they wish.

But for many Christians, the “war on religion” is no laughing matter.

Let’s be clear: protecting religious freedom is a serious concern, and believers should speak up whenever they feel the free practice of any faith—not just their own—is threatened. But what is happening in America is not “persecution.” Using such a label is an insult to the faithful languishing in other parts of the world where persecution actually exists—places like the Middle East.

Rather than asking pastors to abstain from endorsing presidential candidates from their pulpits in exchange for tax-exempt status, persecution looks more like the recent experience of Saeed Abendini. The American pastor was sentenced to eight years in Iran’s Evin prison, where it is suspected that he is undergoing beatings, torture, and brainwashing techniques.

A 2011 Pew Forum study found that Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world. Followers of the faith are harassed in 130 countries. According to the study, just 0.6% of the world’s 2.2 billion Christians now reside in the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity. To put this in perspective, that number is down from 20% a century ago.

As many as two-thirds of Christians in Iraq have fled the country to escape massacres and church burnings. There are reportedly fewer than 60 Christian churches left in the war-torn country, a fact that adds another level of critique to the prudence of waging such a conflict. Just this month, an angry mob in Pakistan torched 40 Christian homes. And even Lebanon, once a safe haven for Christians, is experiencing a mass exodus.

“Massacres are taking place for no reason and without any justification against Christians,” says Amin Gemayel, the former President of Lebanon. “It is only because they are Christians.”

In a USA Today article titled “Middle East Christians need our protection” by Fox News political contributor Kirsten Powers, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg said he was shocked that Christians aren’t regularly protesting outside embassies drawing attention to this issue. The persecution of Christians in the Middle East, Goldberg told Powers, is “one of the most undercovered stories in international news.”

Goldberg raises an important question: Why isn’t the mammoth Christian community of the world’s most influential nation in a tizzy over the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and around the world?

The answer, it seems, is that many of their attentions have been focused elsewhere. Some are too busy protesting Target employees who wish them “Happy Holidays” and others have been mobilizing to boycott JCPenney over selecting Ellen DeGeneres, an outspoken lesbian, to be their spokesperson. Isn’t it time that American Christians reinvest their energies in addressing the actual persecution of their brothers and sisters happening outside their borders?

Today in the Middle East and elsewhere, Christians huddle together beneath a solitary light bulb to read from contraband Bibles and sing hushed hymns. At any moment, their doors may be broken in and their lives could be snuffed out. Many Christians sit in dank prisons for committing no crime except following Jesus. Tomorrow, they could be executed without due process. This is a true “war on religion,” and it is one that too few American Christians seem willing to enlist in.