Based on the correspondence of missionaries in the field, this book offers valuable insight unto understanding Protestant attitudes toward the American Indians in the nineteenth century. By focusing upon the work of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., the book portrays a major Protestant denomination's evangelical program to take the Indian from heathenism to gospel light. From its founding in 1837 the board sent over 450 missionaries to at least nineteen diverse and widely separated Indian tribes, with a goal of uplifting them into the Protestant tradition of Christian civilization. These zealous men and women sent back thousands of detailed and often highly personal letters from the Indian field, and this book is based primarily upon that store of correspondence. Seeking to fill the need for critical case studies of individual missionary organizations, this book depicts the missionaries as cultural revolutionaries in the deepest human sense. Moved by a nearly absolute ethnocentrism, they denounced almost every aspect of tribal culture. Among the Indians they found virtually nothing worth incorporating into the codes of Christian civilization. Yet these missionaries resisted racial explanations for what they saw as Indian failings and retained a conviction that individual tribal members were both eligible for eternal salvation and capable of attaining citizenship in the United States. In this book the author places the work of the Board of Foreign Missions in a historical context and presents the goals, methods, backgrounds and motivations of the missionaries. He also examines the cluster of ideas which constituted the Presbyterian definition for Christian civilization.

Este libro es un intento de articular el contenido de una cosmovisin bblica y su significado para nuestras vidas a medida que buscamos ser obedientes a las Escrituras. Las ideas que componen esta cosmovisin provienen de una larga tradicin de reflexin cristiana sobre las Escrituras y sobre una perspectiva global acerca del mundo. Son parte de una tradicin arraigada en las Escrituras mismas. Ha tenido como sus representantes ms prominentes a los padres de la iglesia Ireneo y Agustn, y a los reformadores Tyndale y Calvino. A esta cosmovisin de formacin escritural se le conoce a veces como "reformacional" porque alude a la Reforma protestante, la que descubri con frescura la enseanza bblica concerniente a la profundidad y al alcance del pecado y de la redencin. El deseo de vivir slo por medio de la Escritura, en vez de hacerlo colocndola al lado de la tradicin, es el sello de los reformadores. Seguimos sus pasos al hacer este nfasis y al desear una continua reforma, al desear ser re-formados por las Escrituras continuamente (ver Hch. 17:11, Ro. 12:2), en vez de vivir segn tradiciones que no han sido examinadas.

When the Reverend Mark Allison Matthews died in February 1940, thousands of mourners gathered at a Seattle church to pay their final respects. The Southern-born Presbyterian came to Seattle in 1902. He quickly established himself as a city leader and began building a congregation that was eventually among the nation's largest, with nearly 10,000 members. Throughout his career, he advocated Social Christianity, a blend of progressive reform and Christian values, as a blueprint for building a morally righteous community.

In telling Matthews's story, Dale Soden presents Matthews's multiple facets: a Southern-born, fundamentalist proponent of the Social Gospel; a national leader during the tumultuous years of schism within the American Presbyterian church; a social reformer who established day-care centers, kindergartens, night classes, and soup kitchens; a colorful figure who engaged in highly public and heated disputes with elected officials. Much of the controversy that surrounded Matthews centered on the proper relationship between church and state -- an issue that is still hotly debated.

In this classic work of American religious history, Robert Middlekauff traces the evolution of Puritan thought and theology in America from its origins in New England through the early eighteenth century. He focuses on three generations of intellectual ministers - Richard, Increase, and Cotton Mather - in order to challenge the traditional telling of the secularization of Puritanism, a story of faith transformed by reason, science, and business. Delving into the Mathers' private papers and unpublished writings as well as their sermons and published works, Middlekauff describes a Puritan theory of religious experience that is more creative, complex, and uncompromising than traditional accounts have allowed. At the same time, he portrays changing ideas and patterns of behavior that reveal much about the first hundred years of American life.

The Open Body emerges from a conference held at Harvard Divinity School in April 2011. The essays in this book reflect on ecclesiology in the Anglican tradition, that is, they debate whether and how humans should gather as a "church" in the name of Christ. While the prompt for this collection of essays is the contemporary crisis in the Anglican Communion regarding homosexuality and church governance, this book provides a capacious re-interpretation and re-imagination of the central metaphor of Christian community, namely "the Body of Christ". By suggesting that the Body of Christ is "open", the authors are insisting that while the recent controversy within the Anglican Communion should prompt and even influence theological reflection on Christian community, it should not define or determine it. In other words, the controversy is regarded as an "opening" or an opportunity to imagine and to examine the past, present, and future of the Church, both of the Anglican Communion and of the entire Body of Christ. Some of the essays begin their reappraisal by looking backward and offering creative theological retrievals from the early Church; some essays offer fresh perspectives on the recent Anglican past and present; others examine the present ecclesiology from a comparative, interreligious perspective; and still others are keen to anticipate and influence the possible future(s) of the Body of Christ.

In this revelatory account of the people who founded the New England colonies, historian David D. Hall compares the reforms they enacted with those attempted in England during the period of the English Revolution. Bringing with them a deep fear of arbitrary, unlimited authority, these settlers based their churches on the participation of laypeople and insisted on "consent" as a premise of all civil governance. Puritans also transformed civil and criminal law and the workings of courts with the intention of establishing equity. In this political and social history of the five New England colonies, Hall provides a masterful re-evaluation of the earliest moments of New England's history, revealing the colonists to be the most effective and daring reformers of their day.

Rutherford played a major role as a reformer at the Westminster Assembly and was also a crucial figure in the establishment of Presbyterianism for Scotland in 1689. Rutherford's 'Lex Rex' heavily influenced John Locke and in turn, the framers of the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Thus Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and Hamilton discussed and formulated their work in the light of the work and opinions of Samuel Rutherford. Several biographies have been written to eulogise Samuel Rutherford but little has been done to consider the man and his work critically. Kingsley Rendell uses Rutherford's writings and contemporary material to present a comprehensive picture of him from his student days to his death in 1661. Usually described as a model preacher and pastor, Rendell shows he had an even greater ability as an apologist and propagandist.

Addressing such questions as "Are You Saved, or Are You Presbyterian?" and "Is the Bible the Literal Word of God or Just a Long, Boring Book?" this is an easy-to-understand, slightly irreverent appraoch to theology and the kind of theological musings that many youth and others have today. "Bring Presbyterian in the Bible Belt Today" helps Presbyterian young people articulate their faith and respond to these questions from a mainline point of view.

Many students of our national character would agree that, for better or worse, the Puritan tradition had an enormous effect on the assumptions and aspirations of today's Americans. This book tells the story, largely through the participants' own words, of the emergence of that tradition. It provides a broad range of primary documents--religious, political, social, legal, familial, and economic--for an understanding of Puritanism in early New England. Originally published in 1972, it is reissued here with a new introduction and two new documents: extracts from Anne Hutchinson's trial and from John Winthrop's "Experiencia."

Let us Reason Together: Christians and Jews in Conversation addresses the theological understanding of the relationship that God intends between Christians and Jews. You will learn to welcome the differences between faiths and appreciate the how it affects the God we know and worship.

Invites readers to explore the implications of proclaiming the gospel. Gonzalez maintains that 'to be a congregation ready and able to proclaim the gospel for the salvation of humankind is to be the church in its exciting fullness.

This study examines the influence of John Calvin in ethics eschatology and education, as well as those influences that affected him. It examines his writings to determine if his vision made him an innovator. The research searched for reforms in the areas of ethics, curriculum, understanding of the teaching office, and universal education. It also looked at philosophy, economics, and labor. A belief in the after life and end times was an ethical motivation for Calvin and education was a means by which the people that he worked with and wrote to could understand how they should live and why they should live like that. Thus, there is an important connection among ethics, eschatology and education. All people were to work to their potential at their job because in doing their job they would honor God. Teachers were especially important. Those who taught would affect the quality of education. Calvin worked to provide teacher training and support. He believed that all occupations could be a special calling from God and education was a means to prepare the young person for his or her calling. Schools existed in Geneva before Calvin arrived in 1536; however, they did not function in the way that Calvin would have liked. Calvin provided the elementary students with a needed text when he prepared a catechism. The students had written material that they could read and study and a systematic presentation of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. Calvin also wanted more appropriate facilities in which the students could learn. Although his organization of the schools improved the atmosphere for learning, the building of the Academy was his dream and became his major educational achievement in the city of Geneva. Because16th century students needed to be prepared for the new world, there was a need for curriculum change. The students were required to read many of the prominent Greek and Roman authors in the ancient languages but the student learned theology, Hebrew, poetry, dialectic and rhetoric, physics, and mathematics as well. Calvin wished to graduate a well rounded scholar who could take his or her place in society. In this way the citizens of Geneva and all those of the Reformed belief would be better prepared for life on earth and the after life.

This book investigates the Mission of the Reformed Church in America sent to Arabia in 1889 to preach the Gospel, and which operated in the Persian Gulf until 1973. It also explores the various cultural encounters between missionaries and Muslims, and discusses conversion and the place of Islam in the Protestant eschatology. It maintains that John G. Lansing from the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, New Jersey, who founded the Arabian Mission, deliberately dedicated the Mission to "direct Muslim evangelism". In terms of premillennialism, Lansing "moved" Islam into the very centre of the theological discourse, and presented the evangelization of Muslims as critical for Christ's Second Coming. This made the Arabian Mission unique among the American Protestant Missions, and placed the Church and missionaries between religious pluralism and the obligations of the Great Commission.

Seit 1980 leiten Frauen reformierte Kirchen der Schweiz, selbstverstandlich und von der Basis unterstutzt. Der vorliegende Band enthalt Beitrage zur Fuhrungsrolle von Frauen aus einem neuen Blickwinkel: Esther Girsberger und Karin Ammann befragen die ersten Frauen in kirchlichen Spitzenpositionen: Was ist ihnen wichtig, warum haben sie Erfolg? Weiter wird gezeigt, dass fur die Fuhrungsrolle von Frauen neben der geschichtlichen Entwicklung der Schweizer Kirchen auch die typisch reformierte Spiritualitat wichtig ist, die ein anderes Verstandnis von religioser Fuhrung begrundet. Einer vergleichende Studie ist zu entnehmen, dass - anders als in den reformierten Kirchen der Schweiz - Frauen in kirchlichen Spitzenpositionen weltweit noch sehr selten anzutreffen sind. Mit Beitragen von Claudia Bandixen, Hella Hoppe, Doris Brodbeck, Ina Praetorius, Sabine Scheuter, Judith Stofer, Luzia Sutter Rehmann, Anne Waldner. Frank Worbs, Jahrgang 1957, ist Theologe und Leiter Kommunikation und Marketing der Evangelisch-reformierten Landeskirche Aargau. Claudia Bandixen ist Kirchenratsprasidentin der Reformierten Landeskirche Aargau und Initiantin der Tagung der Kirchenprasidentinnen 2005 auf dem Rugel.

Does the Church of Scotland have a future? Spirited views from those on the inside.

The book explores the lives of the church's foot soldiers, its ministers, and examines the pressures that reduce some of them almost to despair. The book offers insights into many of the "Kirk problems" that go unnoticed by Church members and examines the church as a living and breathing organization and brings to life the people who make it tick and those who induce its sclerosis.