What happens when two bishops known for their liturgical sensibilities travel to study alternative Christian communities on two continents? Bishops Mary Gray-Reeves and Michael Perham traveled throughout the U.S. and U.K. to study fresh expressions of church and identify the principles that link these new forms of worship and community. The Hospitality of God captures their practical and inspiring findings and builds a bridge between fresh new voices and the institutional church.

On 28 February 2013, a 600-year-old tradition was shattered: the conservative Pope Benedict XVI made a startling announcement. He would resign. Reeling from the news, the College of Cardinals rushed to Rome to congregate in the Sistine Chapel to pick his successor. Their unlikely choice? Francis, the first non-European pope in 1,200 years, a one time tango club bouncer, a passionate football fan, a man with the common touch.

From the prize-winning screenwriter of The Theory of Everything and Darkest Hour, this is a fascinating, revealing and often funny tale of two very different men whose destinies converge with each other - they both live in the Vatican - and the wider world.

How did these two men become two of the most powerful people on Earth? What's it like to be the Pope? What does the future hold for the Catholic Church and its 1 billion followers?

The Two Popes is a dual biography that masterfully combines these two popes' lives into one gripping narrative. From Benedict and Francis' experiences of war in their homelands - when they were still Joseph and Jorge - and the sexual abuse scandal that continues to rock the Church to its foundations, to the intrigue and the occasional comedy of life in the Vatican, The Pope glitters with the darker and the lighter details of life inside one of the world's most opaque but significant institutions.

When Bartolomeo Sacchi ('Platina', 1421-1481) wrote his Vitae pontificum (Lives of the Popes) and presented it to Pope Sixtus IV in 1475, he surely could not have imagined how influential it would become over the centuries. His was the first papal history composed as a humanist Latin narrative and, as such, marked a distinct breakthrough in relation to the Liber pontificalis, the standard medieval chronicle of the papacy. Whatever Platina's intentions for the book, it soon came to be regarded as the official history of the Roman pontiffs. After the editio princes of Venice 1479, updated and extended editions continued to be produced until late in the eighteenth century. The largely untold story of Platina's Lives of the Popes and its fortuna is the focus of this book. The lives were particularly popular because of Platina's frank criticisms of papal behaviour which did not live up to his humanist moral values. He reminded the popes that they were mere human beings and urged them not to indulge in luxury and nepotism. Catholics, whether or not they agreed with such indictments, read the lives eagerly, while Protestants naturally appreciated Platina's fault-finding approach towards the papacy. The role which censorship played in the reception of the lives was previously unknown. This book examines the censorship process (1587-1592) in detail, including a critical edition of the assessments and corrections by English and Italian censors newly uncovered in the Vatican and in Milan.

"Weaver fills an important gap in women's studies through herinvestigation of the intersection of the women's movement with the lives ofcontemporary Roman Catholic women." -- Iris

"Mary JoWeaver has charted the course of this new consciousness among Roman Catholicwomen." -- Rosemary Radford Ruether

"This is the firstfull-scale study of how the U.S. women's movement has intersected with the lives andaspirations of American Roman Catholic women." -- Elizabeth Johnson, Religious Studies Review

In these reflections on leadership in Church and State, Frank Brennan states ideals and proposes practical challenges in addresses ranging from his non-partisan 'Light on the Hill' address to the Australian Labor Party after the 2013 federal election to his address to the representatives of the world's Jesuit universities. He reflects on the leadership of past prime ministers Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser. He offers insights into tested leadership with his ANZAC Centenary Address in the Harvard Memorial Chapel. He challenges church leaders to be more transparent and compassionate in their responses before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He draws inspiration from leaders like Pope Francis, El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero and Redfern's Fr Ted Kennedy. Frank writes with the conviction that we the people are seeking spiritual and political leaders who can inspire us to dedicate ourselves to taking up the burdens of the fallen in the Great War and, with the same high courage and steadfastness with which they went into battle, to setting our hands to the tasks they left unfinished (some of which they could not possibly have imagined a century ago), and giving our utmost to make the world a better and happier place for all people, through whatever means are open to us. As well as being bloodied and tested, our new leaders need to be nurtured, encouraged, and espoused. They need strong moral contours to navigate the modern demands of leadership when taking on the big issues like climate change and entrenched inequality.

Of all the men who have served the Catholic Church as pope, who were the ten most influential? The Bishops of Rome have been Christianity's most powerful leaders for nearly two millennia, and their influence has extended far beyond the purely spiritual. The popes have played a central role in the history of Europe and the wider world, not only shouldering the spiritual burdens of their ancient office, but also in contending with - and sometimes precipitating - the cultural and political crises of their times. In an acclaimed series of BBC radio broadcasts Eamon Duffy explored the impact of ten popes he judged to be among 'the most influential in history'. With this book, readers may now also enjoy Duffy's portraits of ten exceptional men who shook the world. The book begins with St Peter, the Rock upon whom the Catholic Church was built, and follows with Leo the Great (fifth century), Gregory the Great (sixth century), Gregory VII (eleventh century), Innocent III (thirteenth century), Paul III (sixteenth century), and Pius IX (nineteenth century). Among twentieth-century popes, Duffy examines the lives and contributions of Pius XII, who was elected on the eve of the Second World War, the kindly John XXIII, who captured the world's imagination, and John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in 450 years. Each of these ten extraordinary individuals, Duffy shows, shaped their own worlds, and in the process, helped to create ours.

This first full-length study of the Anglo-Saxon episcopate explores the activities of the bishops in a variety of arenas, from the pastoral and liturgical to the political, social, legal and economic, so tracing the development of a particularly English episcopal identity over the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries. It makes detailed use of the contemporary evidence, previously unexploited as diffuse, difficult and largely non-narrative, rather than that from after the Norman Conquest; because this avoids the prevailing monastic bias, it shows instead that differences in order (between secular and monk-bishops) had almost no effect on their attitudes toward their episcopal roles. It therefore presents a much more nuanced portrait of the episcopal church on the eve of the Conquest, a church whose members constantly worked to create a well-ordered Christian polity through the stewardship of the English monarchy and the sacralization of political discourse: an episcopate deeply committed to pastoral care and in-step with current continental liturgical and theological developments, despite later ideologically-charged attempts to suggest otherwise; and an institution intricately woven, because of its tremendous economic and political power, into the very fabric of English local and regional society. MARY FRANCIS GIANDREA teaches at George Mason University

Faithful Catholics are beginning to realize it's not their imagination. Pope Francis has led them on a journey from joy to unease to alarm and even a sense of betrayal. They can no longer pretend that he represents merely a change of emphasis in papal teaching. Assessing the confusion sown by this pontificate, Lost Shepherd explains what's at stake, what's not at stake, and how loyal believers should respond.

Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, also known as Gregory the Theologian, lived an illustrious life as an orator, poet, priest, and bishop. Until his death, he wrote scores of letters to friends and colleagues, clergy members and philosophers, teachers of rhetoric and literature, and high-ranking officials at the provincial and imperial levels, many of which are preserved in his self-designed letter collection. Here, for the first time in English, Bradley K. Storin has translated the complete collection, offering readers a fresh view on Gregory's life, social and cultural engagement, leadership in the church, and literary talents. Accompanying the translation are an introduction, a prosopography, and annotations that situate Gregory's letters in their biographical, literary, and historical contexts. This translation is an essential resource for scholars and students of late antiquity and early Christianity.

The introduction summarizes the clear picture of diocesan administration and the state of religious life in the see of Lincoln' given by the Memoranda.

Do you have the leadership skills you need to solve problems, reach goals, and develop others? The COACH Model (R) is a radically different approach to leading people. Rather than provide answers, leaders ask questions to draw out what God has already put into others. ICF Professional Certified Coach and speaker Keith Webb teaches Christian leaders how to create powerful conversations to assist others to solve their own problems, reach goals, and develop their own leadership skills in the process. Whether leaders are working with employees, teenagers, or a colleague living in another city, they'll find powerful tools and techniques to increase leadership effectiveness. Based on first-hand experience and taught around the world, The COACH Model for Christian Leaders is packed with stories and illustrations that bring the principles and practice to life and transform leaders' conversations into powerful results.

National polls show that approximately 50 million adult Americans are born-again Christians. Yet most Americans see their culture as secular, and the United States is viewed around the world as a secular nation. Further, intellectuals and journalists often portray born-again Christians, despite their numbers, as outsiders who endanger public life. But is American culture really so neatly split between the religious and the secular? Is America as "modern" and is born-again Christian religious belief as "pre-modern" as many think?

In the 1980s, born-again Christians burst into the political arena with stunning force. Gone was the image of "old-fashioned" fundamentalism and its anti-worldly, separatist philosophy. Under the leadership of the Reverend Jerry Falwell and allied preachers, millions broke taboos in place since the Scopes trial constraining their interaction with the public world. They claimed new cultural territory and refashioned themselves in the public arena. Here was a dynamic body of activists with an evangelical vision of social justice, organized under the rubric of the "Moral Majority."

Susan Harding, a cultural anthropologist, set out in the 1980s to understand the significance of this new cultural movement. The result, this long-awaited book, presents the most original and thorough examination of Christian fundamentalism to date. Falwell and his co-pastors were the pivotal figures in the movement. It is on them that Harding focuses, and, in particular, their use of the Bible's language. She argues that this language is the medium through which born-again Christians, individual and collective, come to understand themselves as Christians. And it is inside this language that much of the born-again movement took place. Preachers like Falwell command a Bible-based poetics of great complexity, variety, creativity, and force, and, with it, attempt to mold their churches into living testaments of the Bible. Harding focuses on the words--sermons, speeches, books, audiotapes, and television broadcasts--of individual preachers, particularly Falwell, as they rewrote their Bible-based tradition to include, rather than exclude, intense worldly engagement. As a result of these efforts, born-again Christians recast themselves as a people not separated from but engaged in making history. "The Book of Jerry Falwell" is a fascinating work of cultural analysis, a rare account that takes fundamentalist Christianity on its own terms and deepens our understanding of both religion and the modern world.

Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) was the leading theorist of the Renaissance humanist movement and the author of major works on Latin style, scholastic logic, and other topics. In "On the Donation of Constantine" he uses new philological methods to attack the authenticity of the most important document justifying the papacy's claims to temporal rule, in a brilliant analysis that is often seen as marking the beginning of modern textual criticism. Widely translated throughout Europe during the Reformation, the work was placed on the Church's Index of Prohibited Books. This volume provides a new translation with introduction and notes by G. W. Bowersock, commissioned for the I Tatti Renaissance Library, along with a translation of the Donation of Constantine document itself.

The first twenty distinctions, translated here, comprise a treatise on law in general and contain a discussion of the nature of law, voluntary action, and the power of popes, bishops, and secular authorities. Accompanying the translation of the distinctions is a translation of the so-called ordinary gloss, a commentary on the distinctions that took its final form in the thirteenth century and was usually found around the margin texts of the 'Decretum.'

A Battle Is Raging for This Generation The role of a father is one of the most influential roles in a person's life. Yet an unprecedented number of men are abandoning this noble calling. As a result, we see violence and poverty on the rise, families broken and a lost generation immersed in immorality and corruption. In this dynamic, powerful book, bestselling author Kris Vallotton reveals that the war for culture starts with the battle for men's hearts. With passion and insight, he gives men the tools they need to unlock the full potential of their souls, eradicate the orphan spirit and fully step into their God-given destinies. It's time for an epic awakening that unites generations, inspires change and empowers the hearts of men. It's time for men to become mighty again, restoring fractured families and unleashing life in a culture of death. It's time for an uprising. "Men of this generation desperately need a wake-up call. Kris Vallotton issues the call with compassion and conviction."--Samuel Rodriguez, president and CEO, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference "With very practical strategies and examples, Uprising provides a roadmap where all trails lead home and dads fulfill their God-given purpose."--Jentezen Franklin, senior pastor, Free Chapel; New York Times bestselling author

Chaplain Richard M. Budd has made a welcome, concise, well written and researched contribution to an overlooked chapter in chaplain history. Anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of how the professional and fully institutionalized chaplaincy of today's military came about would do well by consulting Budd's book." --Bradley L. Carter, "On Point,"
Military chaplains have a long and distinguished tradition in the United States, but historians have typically ignored their vital role in ministering to the needs of soldiers and sailors. Richard M. Budd corrects this omission with a thoughtful history of the chaplains who sought to create a viable institutional structure for themselves within the U.S. Army and Navy that would best enable them to minister to the fighting men.

Despite the chaplaincy's long history of accompanying American armies into battle, there has never been consensus on its role within the military, among the churches, or even among chaplains themselves. Each of these constituencies has had its own vision for chaplains, and these ideas have evolved with changing social conditions and military growth. Moreover, chaplains, acting as members of one profession operating within the specific environment of another, raised questions of whether they could or should integrate themselves into the military. In effect they had to learn to serve two institutional masters, the church and the government, simultaneously.

Budd provides a history of the struggle of chaplains to professionalize their ranks and to obtain a significant measure of autonomy within the military's bureaucratic structure--always with the ultimate goal of more efficiently bringingtheir spiritual message to the troops.

This collection of essays seeks to acknowledge the lifetime contribution of Eric Kemp to the study, teaching and reform of the ecclesiastical laws of England, and to re-evaluate the development and practice of canon law in the early Church, Middle Ages, Reformation period and beyond.