|
Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Christian institutions & organizations > Christian spiritual & Church leaders
 |
Chivalry
(Paperback)
Henry Frith, Leon Gautier
|
R822
Discovery Miles 8 220
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
|
A pioneer in the commercialization of religion, George
Whitefield (1714-1770) is seen by many as the most powerful leader
of the Great Awakening in America: through his passionate ministry
he united local religious revivals into a national movement before
there was a nation. An itinerant British preacher who spent much of
his adult life in the American colonies, Whitefield was an
immensely popular speaker. Crossing national boundaries and
ignoring ecclesiastical controls, he preached outdoors or in public
houses and guild halls. In London, crowds of more than thirty
thousand gathered to hear him, and his audiences exceeded twenty
thousand in Philadelphia and Boston. In this fresh interpretation
of Whitefield and his age, Frank Lambert focuses not so much on the
evangelist's oratorical skills as on the marketing techniques that
he borrowed from his contemporaries in the commercial world. What
emerges is a fascinating account of the birth of consumer culture
in the eighteenth century, especially the new advertising methods
available to those selling goods and services--or salvation.
Whitefield faced a problem similar to that of the new Atlantic
merchants: how to reach an ever-expanding audience of anonymous
strangers, most of whom he would never see face-to-face. To contact
this mass "congregation," Whitefield exploited popular print,
especially newspapers. In addition, he turned to a technique later
imitated by other evangelists such as Dwight L. Moody, Billy
Sunday, and Billy Graham: the deployment of advance publicity teams
to advertise his coming presentations. Immersed in commerce
themselves, Whitefield's auditors appropriated him as a
well-publicized English import. He preached against the excesses
and luxuries of the spreading consumer society, but he drew heavily
on the new commercialism to explain his mission to himself and to
his transatlantic audience.
A seminal figure in late antique Christianity and Christian
orthodoxy, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus published a collection of
more than 240 letters. Whereas these letters have often been cast
aside as readers turn to his theological orations or
autobiographical poetry for insight into his life, thought, and
times, Self-Portrait in Three Colors focuses squarely on them,
building a provocative case that the finalized collection
constitutes not an epistolary archive but an autobiography in
epistolary form-a single text composed to secure his status among
provincial contemporaries and later generations. Shedding light on
late-ancient letter writing, fourth-century Christian
intelligentsia, Christianity and classical culture, and the
Christianization of Roman society, these letters offer a
fascinating and unique view of Gregory's life, engagement with
literary culture, and leadership in the church. As a single unit,
this autobiographical epistolary collection proved a powerful tool
in Gregory's attempts to govern the contours of his authorial image
as well as his provincial and ecclesiastical legacy.
|
You may like...
Index; 2003
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Hardcover
R835
Discovery Miles 8 350
Teaching Grade R
L. Excell, V. Linington
Paperback
(1)
R467
Discovery Miles 4 670
|