Foreword by Julia Sweeney

America may be the land of plenty, but in the midst of our Walmarts, enormous supermarkets, and other signs of material surfeit, it seems that many are experiencing a gnawing spiritual hunger. New religions, spiritualities, and religious therapies attract throngs of believers to megachurches, Yoga classes, and the bestseller bookshelves. The latest popular fad in spirituality is Rhonda Byrne's The Secret, which promises both success and spiritual fulfillment, and is endorsed by no less than Oprah Winfrey.

If you're trying to make sense of all the offerings in this confusing spiritual wonderland, Top Secret is just the book for you. Noted religion scholar Robert M. Price examines the historical roots and the current appeal of today's pop mysticisms. Critical and appreciative at the same time, Price applies his impressive background in theology and biblical criticism to put these trends in perspective. Among other popular movements and books, Price discusses:

.Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
·Rhonda Byrne's The Secret and New Thought
·Helen Schucman's A Course in Miracles and the popular works of Marianne Williamson
·Deepak Chopra's How to Know God
·James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy
·The Jewish Kabbalah, recently made popular by Madonna
·Joel Osteen's Prosperity Gospel and his popular Your Best Life Now
·Diedre Blomfield Brown (AKA Pema Chödrön) and American-style Buddhism

Whether you're a skeptic looking for a rational approach to understanding current religion or a seeker in search of a deeper, more informed understanding of popular spiritualities, Top Secret has much to offer....

Conservative Protestantism in America has always wrestled with doctrinal controversies over issues ranging from predestination to the mode of baptism, from charismatic gifts to biblical prophecy. But probably none has threatened the American evangelical movement as much as the recent battle for the Bible. The dispute centers on the doctrine of biblical inerrancy--the belief that the Bible is correct in any statement it makes, whether on nature or history, on doctrine or morals.

In this painstakingly researched and penetrating analysis of the controversy, biblical scholar Robert M. Price helps us understand the present evangelical ferment by focusing on a recent period of intense theological conflict in which fundamentalists accused their slightly more mainstream brethren, the evangelicals, of abandoning the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.

Price provides a historical survey of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early twentieth century and argues that this history began repeating itself in the 1970s. Many evangelicals in fact abandoned rigid inerrancy beliefs and began to assimilate to various alternative approaches such as neo-orthodoxy, demythologizing, and Catholicism. Price analyzes the works, big and small, of evangelical theologians and their fundamentalist critics and distills a set of five distinct noninerrancy approaches evolved by liberal evangelicals amid the debate.

Inerrant the Wind is utterly unique, not only in its comprehensive grasp of the ocean of relevant literature, but also in its cogent taxonomy of evangelical positions for and against inerrancy. Scholars and students on all sides of the debate will want to consult this valuable contribution to an important ongoing debate in the evangelical community.
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