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Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion Audiobook
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In the post-Christian context, public life has become markedly more secular and private life infinitely more diverse. Yet many Christians still rely on cookie-cutter approaches to evangelism and apologetics. Most of these methods assume that people are open, interested, and needy for spiritual insight when increasingly most people are not. The urgent need, then, is the capacity to persuade―to make a convincing case for the gospel to people who are not interested in it.
In his magnum opus, Os Guinness offers a comprehensive presentation of the art and power of creative persuasion. Christians have often relied on proclaiming and preaching, protesting and picketing but are strikingly weak in persuasion―the ability to talk to people who are closed to what is being said. Actual persuasion requires more than a one-size-fits-all approach. Guinness notes, “Jesus never spoke to two people the same way, and neither should we.”
Following the tradition of Erasmus, Pascal, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Peter Berger, Guinness demonstrates how apologetic persuasion requires both the rational and the imaginative. Persuasion is subversive, turning the tables on listeners’ assumptions to surprise them with signals of transcendence and the credibility of the gospel.
This book is the fruit of forty years of thinking, honed in countless talks and discussions at many of the leading universities and intellectual centers of the world. Discover afresh the persuasive power of Christian witness from one of the leading apologists and thinkers of the era.
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“Fool’s Talk by Os Guinness is necessary and vitally important. Insightfully, he not only guides in the use of wit and weightiness but also restores winsomeness to the art of communicating Christ…The benefits of the past are freshly and insightfully applied to the present. All people need to know they are deeply loved and forgiven by God. Fool’s Talk will better equip us to tell them. I heartily endorse this book.”
— Jerry Root, associate professor of evangelism, Wheaton College
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“Guinness richly mines many a classic vein of wisdom, and wit, to help Christians in our time discern what it means to be winsome, and compelling, in commending faith…Seeking answers, readers can do no better than turn the pages of this book. For over forty years, Dr. Guinness has crafted learned, witty, and compelling books. This book may be his finest―one rich in simile, parable, and insight.”
— Huffington Post -
“Guinness offers helpful discourse on the anatomy of disbelief, how to respond to it, and how to avoid compromise while charting a journey toward faith. He uses examples from history and scripture to steer the reader toward deeper understanding of how to effectively share the good news of Christianity in a new age, when character, ethics, and faith can persuade more effectively than reasoned argument.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“A remarkable book. Written with the benefit of decades of experience and reflection―this is one book on apologetics you will not want to miss. I wholeheartedly recommend it.”
— Michael Ramsden, joint director, Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, international director, RZIM for Europe, the Middle East and Africa -
“Hardened skeptics and militant unbelievers are often a puzzle to Christian apologists. Arguments alone sometimes fail to stick to the souls of these unbelievers. Because of this, we need the rhetorical wisdom of Os Guinness, evangelicalism’s greatest living social critic. Fool’s Talk will make its readers wiser and more creative in commending the matchless gospel of Jesus Christ.”
— Douglas Groothuis, professor of philosophy, Denver Seminary
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About Os Guinness
Os Guinness, DPhil, is the author or editor of more than thirty books, including Renaissance, The Global Public Square, A Free People’s Suicide, Unspeakable, The Call, Time for Truth, and The Case for Civility. A frequent speaker and prominent social critic, he has addressed audiences worldwide from the British House of Commons and the US Congress to the St. Petersburg Parliament. He has been a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. He was the lead drafter of the Williamsburg Charter, celebrating the First Amendment, and has also been senior fellow at the EastWest Institute in New York, where he drafted the Charter for Religious Freedom. He also coauthored the public school curriculum Living with Our Deepest Differences. He has had a lifelong passion to make sense of our extraordinary modern world and to serve as liaison between the worlds of scholarship and ordinary life, helping each to understand the other, particularly when advanced modern life touches on the profound issues of faith.
About Os Guinness
Ralph Lister is an actor, voice actor, and AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. He spent fifteen years in London theater before moving to the United States to focus on film and television. He has held numerous roles in Shakespeare and modern dramas, as well as starring roles in independent films. His voice and character work can be heard in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearland 13 Going On 30. He lives in Los Angeles.