Orphaned Believers
How a Generation of Christian Exiles Can Find the Way Home
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Narrated by:
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Rosemary Benson
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By:
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Sara Billups
About this listen
In the wake of the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, many young evangelical Christians found themselves untethered, disillusioned, and—ultimately—orphaned as they grappled with the legalistic, politically co-opted churches of their youth and embarked on a search for a more loving, more biblical expression of the faith and discipleship taught by Jesus.
Sara Billups was one of those orphans. She knows the grief of loving Jesus while watching political pundits twist her faith to support their power struggles and exclusionary policies. She knows the feeling of being alone, misunderstood, and maligned. In this honest yet hopeful book, she invites fellow orphaned believers to process their pasts so they can move boldly forward into a future where they know without a doubt that they are beloved by Christ and belong to the family of God. With love and compassion, she binds up the wounds of the broken and points them toward a new expression of faith that is motivated to make the world a better place.
©2023 Sara Billups (P)2023 eChristianListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
This book is more than Porter's own story. It also invites those who may be in the deconstruction process themselves to consider the perspective of someone who was tempted to leave his faith—yet stayed. And it provides theological insight and pastoral support to those who worry that everyone is bailing out on the church.
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Beautiful
- By Anonymous User on 05-10-23
By: Joshua S Porter, and others
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Reconstructing the Gospel
- Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion
- By: Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove grew up in the Bible Belt in the American South as a faithful church-going Christian. But he gradually came to realize that the gospel his Christianity proclaimed was not good news for everybody. The same Christianity that sang, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound" also perpetuated racial injustice and white supremacy in the name of Jesus. His Christianity, he discovered, was the religion of the slaveholder. Just as Reconstruction after the Civil War worked to repair a desperately broken society, compromised Christianity requires a spiritual reconstruction.
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Disappointing.
- By Elgin Bailey on 04-01-18
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Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth
- 12 Questions Christians Should Ask About Social Justice
- By: Thaddeus J. Williams, John M. Perkins - foreword
- Narrated by: Thaddeus J. Williams, full cast
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing from a diverse range of theologians, sociologists, artists, and activists, Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth, by Thaddeus Williams, makes the case that we must be discerning if we are to "truly execute justice" as Scripture commands. Not everything called "social justice" today is compatible with a biblical vision of a better world. The Bible offers hopeful and distinctive answers to deep questions of worship, community, salvation, and knowledge that ought to mark a uniquely Christian pursuit of justice.
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Not Injustice - Conservative Justification
- By Peter on 07-06-21
By: Thaddeus J. Williams, and others
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Befriend
- Create Belonging in an Age of Judgment, Isolation, and Fear
- By: Scott Sauls
- Narrated by: Dean Gallagher
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Is real friendship too risky? We live in a world where real friendship is hard to find. Suspicious of others and insecure about ourselves, we retreat into the safety of our small, self-made digital worlds. Tragically, even the church can become a place that reinforces this isolation. Jesus models a much richer vision of friendship. Scott Sauls, pastor and teacher, invites you to see the breadth of Christ's love in this audiobook, Befriend.
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Great post election therapy.
- By Manoli on 12-20-16
By: Scott Sauls
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A New Kind of Christianity
- Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith
- By: Brian D. McLaren
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in the church. Not since the Reformation five centuries ago have so many Christians come together to ask whether the church is in sync with their deepest beliefs and commitments. These believers range from evangelicals to mainline Protestants to Catholics, and the person who best represents them is author and pastor Brian McLaren. In this much anticipated book, McLaren examines ten questions facing today's church - questions about how to articulate the faith itself, the nature of its authority, who God is....
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Clear, Careful, Considerate Confrontation
- By Celia on 09-10-12
By: Brian D. McLaren
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Rumors of God
- Experience the Kind of Faith You've Only Heard About
- By: Darren Whitehead, Jon Tyson
- Narrated by: Darren Whitehead, Jon Tyson
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Where is the life God promised us? Life is busy. We live like slaves to our fast-paced, suffocating schedules. We spend our energy and time in triviality, relegating God to the background. He seems distant to us, and we resist the idea that God wants to give, say, and show us more; we dismiss it as rumor. But Jesus calls us to a better way. Another dream - an unimagined future. Close the gap between what you hear about and what you see.
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Excellent book
- By S. HARRIS on 06-24-15
By: Darren Whitehead, and others
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Intensional
- Kingdom Ethnicity in a Divided World
- By: D.A. Horton
- Narrated by: D.A. Horton
- Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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When it comes to the ethnic divisions in our world, we speak often of seeking racial reconciliation. But at no point have all ethnicities on Earth been reconciled. Animosity, distrust, and hostility among people from various ethnicities have always existed in American history. Even in the church, we have often built walls to divide God’s people from each other. In Intensional, pastor D. A. Horton steps into the tension to offer vision and practical guidance for Christians longing to embrace our Kingdom ethnicity, combating the hatred with the hope of Jesus Christ.
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Loved Every Moment!
- By Marqus Rose on 02-26-21
By: D.A. Horton
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Christians in the Age of Outrage
- How to Bring Our Best When the World Is at Its Worst
- By: Ed Stetzer
- Narrated by: Wayne Shepherd
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Today there are too many examples of those claiming to follow Christ being caustic, divisive, and irrational, contributing to dismissals of the Christian faith as hypocritical, self-interested, and politically co-opted. What has happened in our society? One short outrageous video, whether it is true or not, can trigger an avalanche of comments on social media. Welcome to the new age of outrage. In this groundbreaking book featuring new survey research of evangelicals and their relationship to the age of outrage, Ed Stetzer offers a constructive way forward.
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A Balanced Look at an Unbalanced World
- By Tony E. on 11-01-18
By: Ed Stetzer
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The Black Church
- This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song
- By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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From the New York Times best-selling author of Stony the Road and one of our most important voices on the African-American experience, a powerful new history of the Black church in America as the Black community's abiding rock and its fortress.
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A must read for all Christians
- By Carol Hamilton on 02-16-21
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Strangers in a Strange Land
- Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World
- By: Charles J. Chaput
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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From Charles J. Chaput, author of Living the Catholic Faith and Render unto Caesar, comes Strangers in a Strange Land, a fresh, urgent, and ultimately hopeful treatise on the state of Catholicism and Christianity in the United States. America today is different in kind, not just in degree, from the past. And this new reality is unlikely to be reversed.
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A Must Read
- By CFletcher on 07-04-17
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Interrupted
- When Jesus Wrecks Your Comfortable Christianity
- By: Jen Hatmaker
- Narrated by: Rebecca Gallagher
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Are you one of the millions who crave a new direction in the church, fed up with religious games, empty promises, and cultural Christianity? You are not alone. You are not crazy. Maybe Jesus is ready to interrupt your life. Snatching Jen Hatmaker from the grip of her consumer life, God began asking her questions like, "What is really the point of My Church? What have I really asked of you?" Transparent and imperfect, Jen will engage and inspire you to go beyond comfortable and answer for yourself the question she faced.
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If you're ready to be interrupted too...
- By Tamara Shope on 10-08-15
By: Jen Hatmaker
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Speaking of Faith
- By: Krista Tippett
- Narrated by: Krista Tippett
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In this illuminating story of her life and conversations, the host of public radio's Speaking of Faith describes her journey of spiritual exploration - a journey shared by countless others.
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Clarity of Faith
- By Charles on 06-01-07
By: Krista Tippett
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Living the Secular Life
- New Answers to Old Questions
- By: Phil Zuckerman
- Narrated by: Andy Paris
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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A guidebook for living a life without religion, combining sociological insight and personal inspiration. Over the last 25 years, "no religion" has become the fastest growing religion in the United States. Around the world, hundreds of millions of people have turned away from the traditional faiths of the past and embraced a secular - or nonreligious - life, generating societies vastly less religious than at any other time in human history.
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Anecdotal based approach for understanding
- By Gary on 12-30-14
By: Phil Zuckerman
What listeners say about Orphaned Believers
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Christmas
- 11-28-23
Orphaned Believers
Great relatable writing and storytelling! I feel seen and a little less alone. Thank you Sarah.
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- Renee Huie
- 03-30-23
for those looking for grounding in a God of love
Orphaned Believers is a well-written and honest expression of the author's first-hand experience with the evangelical world. Sara Billups takes a very gentle approach. There’s no axe to grind, but a truthful and candid story to tell. I think it’s a story that many should hear. She offers an invitation away from a complicated, fear-based, and often misled evangelical portrayal of faith toward an honest and beautiful relationship with our Savior, Jesus. I was not raised in an evangelical church, but as a spiritual director, I hear far too many hard and sad experiences that have led so many individuals, young and old, to question why they would serve God as often represented by the evangelical church and culture. There is so much offered in this book, but in the end, I so appreciate the unabashed invitation to a hurting and confused generation of people to see God as the God of love that he always has been and always will be.
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- sara j billups
- 03-01-23
Courage for orphaned believers
Rosemary does an amazing job reading orphaned believers: how a generation of Christian exiles can find the way home.
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1 person found this helpful