The Jesuit Relations, written by new world jesuit missionaries from 1632 to 1673 back to their Superior in France, have long been a remarkable source of both historical knowledge and spiritual inspiration. They provide rich information about Jesuit piety and missionary initiatives, Ignatian spirituality, the Old World patrons who financed the venture, women's role as collaborators in the Jesuit project, and the early history of contact between Europeans and Native Americans in what was to become the northeastern United States and Canada. The Jesuits approached the task of converting the native peoples, and the formidable obstacles it implied, in a flexible manner. One of their central values was "inculturation," the idea of "coming in by their door," to quote a favorite saying of Ignatius, via a creative process of syncretism that blended aspects of native belief with aspects of Christian faith, in order to facilitate understanding and acceptance. The Relations thus abound with examples of the Jesuits' thoughtfully trying to make sense of native-and female-difference, rather than eliding it. The complete text of the Jesuit Relations runs to 73 volumes. Catharine Randall has made selections from the Relations, some of which have never before appeared in print in English. These selections are chosen for their informative nature and for how they illustrate central tenets of Ignatian spirituality. Rather than provide close translations from seventeenth-century French that might sound stilted to modern ears, she offers free translations that provide the substance of the Relations in an idiom immediately accessible to twenty-first-century readers of English. An extensive introduction sets out the basic history of the Jesuit missions in New France and provides insight into the Ignatian tradition and how it informs the composition of the Relations. The volume is illustrated with early woodcuts, depicting scenes from Ignatius's life, moments in the history of the Jesuit missions, Jesuit efforts to master the native languages, and general devotional scenes.

The world has changed, but will the church keep up? This seminal report from the Church of England evaluates the changing religious landscape and introduces exciting new forms of church that speak directly to their diverse mission contexts. The Archbishop of Canterbury's Council on Mission and Public Affairs collaborated to research and produce the Mission-Shaped Church report in 2004, and Seabury Books is the new North American Publisher.

Missionary medicine flourished during the period of high European imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was considered the best and surest method to overcome the distrust of and gain access to the indigenous population in the so-called Muslim World. Through studying the medical activities and infrastructures of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in Persia and north-western British India, and building upon existing works on missionaries in the Middle East and British India, this book examines the practice of obtaining trust. A synthesis of Christian mission history, architectural history, emotions history and history of medicine and empire, Emotion, Mission, Architecture raises broader historical questions about the process of mobilising and regulating emotions in the Christian missionary contexts - contributing in turn to discussions on hybridity, missionary and local encounters, women's agency and the interactions between mission and empire.

In 1889 the Jesuit Richard F. Clarke published this biography of Charles Lavigerie (1825-1892), the French cardinal and Primate of Africa. From the moment of his arrival in Algeria in 1868, Lavigerie became a key, if sometimes controversial, figure in organising Catholic missions in Africa. In 1874 he founded the Society of Missionaries for Africa, otherwise known as the White Fathers after the white Arab dress they wore. Lavigerie's later career was devoted to the battle against slavery and in 1888 he conducted a campaign in several European capitals denouncing the practice. Clarke's book, which appeared a year after Lavigerie's visit to London, provides an account of the cardinal's career in France and Africa up to that date. It emphasises and praises Lavigerie's anti-slavery message, referring to him in the preface as 'the apostle of the slaves of all Africa'.

Two lectures given by the medical missionary and explorer David Livingstone after his return to England from his travels in Africa (1841-1856) form the core of this book, which was originally published in 1858, the year when Livingstone set off on the British Zambezi expedition. The book also contains a biography, a letter from Adam Sedgwick (then Professor of Geology at Cambridge), and a thorough appendix covering the scientific results of the journey, describing the geography, mineralogy, diseases, and the language and cultural aspects of the peoples Livingstone encountered. Finally, Livingstone reports on the needs and prospects for further missionary work in Africa. Although Livingstone himself felt his calling was now to pursue purely scientific exploration, he hoped that the lectures and their subsequent publication would encourage other missionaries to continue his work of evangelisation.

Henry Venn (1796 1873) was an Anglican clergyman who, like his father and grandfather before him, was influential in the evangelical movement and campaigned for social reform, eradication of the slave trade, and better education and economic progress in the British colonies so as to enable them to become responsible for their own affairs. Venn was Secretary of the Church Missionary Society from 1841 to 1873, and alongside practical training and appointment of missionaries and ministers he spent time developing a theology of mission and principles for its practice. This book, published in its second edition in 1881, was edited by William Knight who had access to Venn's private journals and correspondence (from which he used substantial quotations), and met Venn's niece, who provided the portrait of her uncle used as the frontispiece of the book. The appendix contains some of Venn's own accounts of his early missionary work.

Henry Martyn (1781-1812) was born in Cornwall and educated at Cambridge. After hearing about the success of William Carey's mission at Serampore, he abandoned his intended career as a barrister to become a missionary, and joined the East India Company as a chaplain. During six years spent mostly in India he produced Hindi, Urdu and Persian translations of the New Testament. He is best remembered for these and other scripture translations which remained popular in India until the end of the nineteenth century. This memoir draws on Martyn's personal letters and diary. It was first published in London in 1816, soon after Martyn's untimely death in Persia, and appeared in a second edition (reissued here) in 1819. Part 1 covers his early life, Part 2 begins with his arrival in India and describes his missionary work, and Part 3 recounts Martyn's exhausting journey to Persia and his death.

George Smith (1833 1919) spent many years in India as an educator and editor of the Calcutta Review. He was a great supporter of missionary work and became secretary of the foreign mission committee of the Free Church of Scotland in 1870. He also wrote popular books of missionary biography including this two-volume Life of Alexander Duff (1879). Duff (1806 1878) was the first foreign missionary of the Church of Scotland and a leading figure in promoting Christian education in India. Duff pioneered what he called 'downward filter theory' which centred on educating India's upper caste through English in the hope that this elite group would then take responsibility for the evangelisation and modernisation of South Asia. Volume 2 describes Duff's life from 1843 until his death in 1878, covering his contribution to the 1854 educational reforms in India and the founding of the University of Calcutta.

George Smith (1833 1919) spent many years in India as an educator and editor of the Calcutta Review. He was a great supporter of missionary work and became secretary of the foreign mission committee of the Free Church of Scotland in 1870. He also wrote popular books of missionary biography including this two-volume Life of Alexander Duff (1879). Duff (1806 1878) was the first foreign missionary of the Church of Scotland and a leading figure in promoting Christian education in India. Duff pioneered what he called 'downward filter theory' which centred on educating India's upper caste through English in the hope that this elite group would then take responsibility for the evangelisation and modernisation of South Asia. Volume 1 describes Duff's life until 1843, covering his education in Scotland, his arrival in Calcutta and the founding of his school, the General Assembly Institution.

Robert Moffat, Scottish missionary and linguist, arrived in South Africa in 1817 under the aegis of the London Missionary Society. He pioneered missionary activity among the Tswana people and became deeply influential in South Africa, helping to open up the 'missionary road' north of the Cape and later criticising the Afrikaners and becoming an advocate of British imperial rule in the region. He was also the first transcriber of the Setswana language. Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa (1842) is an autobiographical account of Moffat's time as a missionary and contains, as he states in the preface, a 'faithful record of events which have occurred within the range of his experience and observation' that 'supplies much that may serve to illustrate the peculiar attributes of African society.' Missionary Labours was hugely popular with the Victorian readership and became a classic narrative of missionary activity in Africa.

This work, published in 1864, is the 'popular edition' of John Clark Marshman's account of the missionaries William Carey, William Ward and Joshua Marshman (his father), originally published in 1859 in two volumes as The Life and Times of the Serampore Missionaries. It documents the lives of the three main Serampore Missionaries from their humble origins and conversions to the Baptist Church to their pioneering work in Western Bengal. This shorter edition nevertheless contains a wealth of detail on the administration and politics of colonial India, on the experiences of the missionaries and in particular their efforts in advancing education among the indigenous people. It covers the founding of schools and later the renowned Serampore College, the missionaries' Bible translations into various languages including Bengali (Bangla) and Chinese, and their efforts to promote literacy in indigenous languages. Ward's pioneering study of Hinduism is also reissued in this series.

Based on John Williams' meticulous documentation of his travels, this 1837 volume offers an insight into the perilous life of a missionary in the early nineteenth century. The author, an ironmonger by trade, set sail for the South Sea Islands in 1817 with the intention of spreading the gospel and introducing modern technology to the region. As well as recounting the frequent threats to his safety from angry natives, war, natural disaster and disease, Williams provides detailed surveys of the peoples, languages and natural environment he encountered and describes with great exuberance and humour 'the impression made upon barbarous people by their first intercourse with civilised man'. Made more poignant by the author's death at the hands of cannibals just two years after the book's publication, this is an extraordinary account of the perseverance and ingenuity of a man who became a hero and martyr for the Protestant missionary movement.

George Fox (1810-1886) compiled this memoir of his younger brother to inspire Rugby schoolboys to emulate this devout alumnus and become missionaries themselves. It was first published in 1850; the 1880 edition reissued here was the sixth printing and included a new preface and appendix recounting the successful establishment of the Rugby Fox Mastership at Masulipatam, India, where Fox had preached among the Telugu people of the British Madras Presidency. Containing an impressive quantity of personal letters and excerpts from his journal, the book provides insights into Fox's spiritual development and religious trials in the first half of the nineteenth-century. It includes unsympathetic accounts of the Telugu and India in general, but also recounts Fox's missionary strategies and goals, often reporting specific conversations or incidents. This content provides useful source material for scholars studying the British mission to India, the British empire, or nineteenth-century personal devotion.

Missional ethics is concerned with the way in which the believing community's behaviour is in and of itself a witness to the wisdom and goodness of God. The debate surrounding the relationship between word and deed, or evangelism and social action, remains a significant issue within evangelical missiology. Martin Salter seeks to address one aspect of that debate, namely the missional significance of ethics, by conducting detailed exegesis of key biblical texts. He argues that biblical ethics is neither entirely separate from, nor merely preparatory for mission, but is an integral part of the church's mission. Missional ethics is a theme which arises from the biblical texts and is not imposed upon them. The church as both organism and institution embody a missional ethic which includes worship, justice, and charity. Word and deed belong together as an integral whole. Salter's valuable study concludes by offering a definition of missional ethics.

Twenty-first-century society is diverse, and Christians must be able to understand other cultures and communicate effectively between and among them. Following up on the bestselling "Hurt: Inside the World of Today's Teenagers," this new addition to the Youth, Family, and Culture series explores the much-needed skill of Cultural Intelligence (CQ), the ability to work effectively across national, ethnic, and even organizational cultures. While rooted in sound, scholarly research, "Cultural Intelligence "is highly practical and accessible to general readers. It will benefit students as well as guide ministry leaders interested in increasing their cultural awareness and sensitivity. Packed with assessment tools, simulations, case studies, and exercises, "Cultural Intelligence "will help transform individuals and organizations into effective intercultural communicators of the gospel.
EXCERPT
What do you do when you encounter someone who isn't like you? How do you feel? What goes on inside you? How do you relate to him or her? These are the kinds of questions we want to explore in this book. Few things are more basic to life than expressing love and respect for people who look, think, believe, act, and see differently than we do. We want to adapt to the barrage of cultures around us while still remaining true to ourselves. We want to let the world change us so that we can be part of changing the world. And we want to move from the "desire" to love across the chasm of cultural difference to the "ability" to express our love for people of difference. Relating lovingly to our fellow human beings is central to what it means to be human. And when it comes down to it, Christian ministry at its core is interacting with all kinds of people in ways that give them glimpses of Jesus in us.
The billions of us sharing planet Earth together have so much in common. We're all born. We all die. We're all created in the image of God. We eat, sleep, persevere, and care for our young. We long for meaning and purpose, and we develop societies with those around us. But the way we go about the many things we have in common is deeply rooted in our unique personalities and cultures. So although we have so much in common, we have as much or more about us that's different.

In 1543, in a small village in Mexico, a group of missionary friars received from a mysterious Indian messenger an unusual carved image of Christ crucified. The friars declared it the most poignantly beautiful depiction of Christ's suffering they had ever seen. Known as the Cristo Aparecido (the "Christ Appeared"), it quickly became one of the most celebrated religious images in colonial Mexico. Today, the Cristo Aparecido is among the oldest New World crucifixes and is the beloved patron saint of the Indians of Totolapan.
In Biography of a Mexican Crucifix, Jennifer Scheper Hughes traces popular devotion to the Cristo Aparecido over five centuries of Mexican history. Each chapter investigates a single incident in the encounter between believers and the image. Through these historical vignettes, Hughes explores and reinterprets the conquest of and mission to the Indians; the birth of an indigenous, syncretic Christianity; the violent processes of independence and nationalization; and the utopian vision of liberation theology. Hughes reads all of these through the popular devotion to a crucifix that over the centuries becomes a key protagonist in shaping local history and social identity. This book will be welcomed by scholars and students of religion, Latin American history, anthropology, and theology.

Foreword by Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury

Mission is contrived from and performed over lived contexts, but the visions that guide and drive mission are oftentimes blinded by power, position, protection, and plenitude. This collection visits those matters with queering attention to the shadows empires cast over the contexts of mission, and to the collusion and complicity of Christians and churches with empires past (as in the case of Rome) and present (as in the case of the United States of America). In the interests of those in mission fields who survived, but continue to agonize under the burdens of empires, the contributors to this work dare to re-vision the course and cause of mission. Writing from minoritized settings in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Oceania, the authors interweave the principles and practices of mission with the opportunities in decolonial theology and hermeneutics, minoritized and migrant Christologies, repatriation and the courage to get up and get out, indigenous insights and wisdom, mission archives, stories of resistance and endurance in zones of contact and violence, restless souls and returning spirits, and life-centered spiritual (en)countering. In Mission and Context as with previous volumes in this series-empires do not have the final word, nor the final world.

In Wayward Christian Soldiers, leading evangelical theologian Charles Marsh offers a powerful indictment of the political activism of evangelical Christian leaders and churches in the United States. With emphasis on repentance and renewal, this important work advises Christians how to understand past mistakes and to avoid making them in the future.
Over the past several years, Marsh observes, American evangelicals have achieved more political power than at any time in their history. But access and influence have come at a cost to their witness in the world and the integrity of their message. The author offers a sobering contrast between the contemporary evangelical elite, which forms the core of the Republican Party, and the historic Christian tradition of respect for the mystery of God and appreciation for human fallibility. The author shows that the most prominent voices in American evangelicalism have arrogantly redefined Christianity on the basis of partisan politics rather than scripture and tradition. The role of politics in distorting the Christian message can be seen most dramatically in the invasion of Iraq, he argues: Some 87% of American evangelicals supported going to war, while every single evangelical church outside the United States opposed it. The Jesus who storms into Baghdad behind the wheel of a Humvee, Marsh points out, is not the Jesus of the Gospel. Indeed, not since the nazification of the German church under Hitler has the political misuse of Christianity led to such catastrophic global consequences.
Is there an alternative? This book proposes that the renewal of American churches requires a season of concentrated attention to faith's essential affirmations--a time of hospitality, peacemaking, and contemplative prayer. Offering an authentic Christian alternative to the narcissistic piety of popular evangelicalism, Wayward Christian Soldiers represents a unique entry into the increasingly pivotal debate over the role of faith in American politics.
"With Wayward Christian Soldiers, Charles Marsh again shows that he is one of the most astute observers of evangelicalism today."
--Jim Wallis, author of God's Politics

From the New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved, a fascinating look at the world of Christian women celebrities Since the 1970s, an important new figure has appeared on the center stage of American evangelicalism-the celebrity preacher's wife. Although most evangelical traditions bar women from ordained ministry, many women have carved out unofficial positions of power in their husbands' spiritual empires or their own ministries. The biggest stars-such as Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, and Victoria Osteen-write bestselling books, grab high ratings on Christian television, and even preach. In this engaging book, Kate Bowler, an acclaimed historian of religion and the author of the bestselling memoir Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved, offers a sympathetic and revealing portrait of megachurch women celebrities, showing how they must balance the demands of celebrity culture and conservative, male-dominated faiths. Whether standing alone or next to their husbands, the leading women of megaministry play many parts: the preacher, the homemaker, the talent, the counselor, and the beauty. Boxed in by the high expectations of modern Christian womanhood, they follow and occasionally subvert the visible and invisible rules that govern the lives of evangelical women, earning handsome rewards or incurring harsh penalties. They must be pretty, but not immodest; exemplary, but not fake; vulnerable to sin, but not deviant. And black celebrity preachers' wives carry a special burden of respectability. But despite their influence and wealth, these women are denied the most important symbol of spiritual power-the pulpit. The story of women who most often started off as somebody's wife and ended up as everyone's almost-pastor, The Preacher's Wife is a compelling account of women's search for spiritual authority in the age of celebrity.

This is the first truly global study of the Society of Jesus's early missions. Up to now historians have treated the early-modern Catholic missionary project as a disjointed collection of regional missions rather than as a single world-encompassing example of religious globalization. Luke Clossey shows how the vast distances separating missions led to logistical problems of transportation and communication incompatible with traditional views of the Society as a tightly centralized military machine. In fact, connections unmediated by Rome sprung up between the missions throughout the seventeenth century. He follows trails of personnel, money, relics and information between missions in seventeenth-century China, Germany and Mexico, and explores how Jesuits understood space and time and visualized universal mission and salvation. This pioneering study demonstrates that a global perspective is essential to understanding the Jesuits and will be required reading for historians of Catholicism and the early-modern world.

Sowohl in der biblischen Traditionals auch im Bereich der Neurowissenschaften steht die "Leiblichkeit" des Menschen im Zentrum der Wahrnehmung. Dies darf als gemeinsamer Ausgangspunkt fur ein konstruktives Gesprach zwischen biblischer Theologie und gegenwartiger Neurowissenschaft festgehalten werden. Der Blick richtet sich auch auf die "Dimension der' Geschichtlichkeit', die fur das alttestamentliche Verstandnis des Menschen von fundamentaler Bedeutung ist, aber auch den neurowissenschaftlichen Blick auf den Menschen sehr stark pragt. Die "Identitat" eines Menschen begegnet uns als eine "narrative Konstruktion". Die' Seele' wird dazu aufgefordert, nicht zu vergessen, was ihr an Gutem widerfahren ist. Dabei begegnet uns die biblische Tradition als grosse Hoffnungsg schichte.

As a pastor, the author loved to do evangelism, but noticed most in his congregation didn't share his enthusiasm, despite their desire to share the gospel. Sjogren presents a collection of 101 ways that Christians can reach out to those around them. These "read-and-do" concepts are designed to be read and then done with a few friends, a small group, or an entire church.