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God against Religion: Rethinking Christian Theology through Worship
(Eerdmans, 2008)

Description
In God against Religion Matthew Myer Boulton outlines a Christian theology that takes worship as its basic framework, considering worship as the occasion of not only an approach toward God in piety but also a separation from God in sin.

Drawing on the thought of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and especially Karl Barth, Boulton
rethinks the broadest themes of Christian theology in terms of Christian worship. He offers
three groundbreaking thoughts: that the catastrophe of sin is liturgy's original and continual work,
that the miracle of reconciliation is liturgy's decisive transformation in Jesus Christ and the Holy
Spirit, and that the glory of redemption is and will be liturgy's end.

A fascinating systematic, liturgical theology in the Reformed tradition, God against Religion will lead scholars, pastors, and anyone interested in thinking about Christian theology and Christian worship in fresh, critical, challenging directions.

Links
Table of contents and more information from Eerdmans

Preface
Read the preface by John Witvliet via Google Books

Preview
Read pages from this book via Google Books

Author
Matthew Myer Boulton is assistant professor of ministry studies at Harvard Divinity School. The author of numerous articles on Christian theology and worship, he is also coeditor of Doing Justice to Mercy: Religion, Law, and Criminal Justice.

Endorsements
"Worship, with all its promise and peril, takes center stage in this beautifully written little systematic theology by one of the best young theologians in America today. Worth reading for its illuminating treatment of Barth alone, this is a must-read for anyone interested in how religious life is a weave of both sin and salvation. With its erudition wrapped in an entertaining, accessible style, Boulton’s book is systematic theology at its finest: fresh, provocative, and compelling."
—Kathryn Tanner, University of Chicago Divinity School

"In the 1960s various theologians attempted to come to terms with Bonhoeffer’s concept of ‘religionless Christianity’ and concluded that ‘God’ was dead. Here Matthew Myer Boulton, by a reexamination of Karl Barth’s theology, shows that the concept was not new with Bonhoeffer but was known to such Reformers as Luther and Calvin. It is the rightness of righteousness rather than the religiosity of religion, the death of sin rather than the death of God, that lies at the heart of Christianity and is experienced in the reality of worship and is central to theology. A timely message in an age that tends to consign worship to the periphery of theological concerns."
—Robin A. Leaver, Westminster Choir College, Rider University

CICW Liturgical Studies Series with Eerdmans
This series is designed to promote reflection on the history, theology, and practice of Christian worship and to stimulate worship renewal in Christian congregations. Written by pastoral worship leaders from diverse communities and scholars from a range of disciplines, these volumes seek to nurture worship practices that are at once spiritually vital and theologically rooted. To find all the books in this series, go to Publications and under "Publisher," select "Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing."