This is the first full-length study of the place and meaning of pilgrimage in European Renaissance culture. It makes new material available and also provides fresh perspectives on canonical writers such as Rabelais, Montaigne, Margurite de Navarre, Erasmus, Petrarch, Augustine, and Gregory of Nyssa. Wes Williams undertakes a bold exploration of various interlinking themes in Renaissance pilgrimage: the location, representation, and politics of the sacred, together with the experience of the everyday, the extraordinary, the religious, and the represented. Williams also examines the literary formation of the subjective narrative voice in his texts, and its relationship to the rituals and practices he reviews. This wide-ranging and timely new work aims both to gain a sense of the shapes of pilgrim experience in the Renaissance and to question the ways in which recent theoretical and historical research in the area has determined the differences between fictional worlds and the real.

Harry Emerson Fosdick was one of the most popular liberal preachers of the early 20th century, and his The Meaning of Prayer is considered by many one of the finest studies of the meditative communion with God. This lovely little book features daily devotional readings focused on understanding prayer, reflecting upon: . The Naturalness of Prayer . Prayer and the Goodness of God . Hindrances and Difficulties . Unanswered Prayer . Prayer as Dominant Desire . Unselfishness in Prayer ..and other issues arising from conversing with the divine. This warm, friendly guidebook to a profoundly personal act remains an important exploration of one of the world's dominant faiths... just as it was when it was first published in 1915. American theologian HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK (1878-1969) was born in New York, educated at Colgate and Columbia Universities, and served as professor of practical theology at Union Theological Seminary from 1915 to 1946. Among his many works are A Guide to Understanding the Bible (1938) and A Book of Public Prayers (1960).

Wanneer gebed iets is wat jy elke dag moet doen, ’n gesprek met die plafon of die vervelige herhaling van dieselfde woorde het die wonder van gebed vir jou verlore geraak.

In hierdie heruitgawe van Ferdinand Deist se klassieke topverkoper boek oor gebed gesels hy met mense wat wil bid, maar nie kán nie.

Hierdie is geen kitskursus in die kuns van gebed nie, maar 'n toeganklike sagte begeleiding vir elkeen om die geheim van gebed terug te vind.

How do we practice real conversation with God? Instead of prayer becoming an agenda of our needs for God to handle, how can we experience his presence as part of our everyday life? How do we hear what he is saying back to us? As we explore the disciplines of prayer and listening through these six sessions, we will draw closer to God in everything that we do.

All pilgrimages should be stopped.' This blunt assertion by Martin Luther, echoed unanimously by the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers, is the pivot of Professor Davies's fascinating and original study. Why were pilgrimages condemned? To answer the question he gathers together material to illustrate the nature of pilgrimages and the motives behind them, extending from patristic times to the Middle Ages. Then he studies the effects of the condemnation on the flourishing pilgrimage trade. During the nineteenth century, the Holy Land again attracted visitors, even among Protestants; here is another change which needs to be explained. Pilgrimages may have been resurrected in our day, but there has been little examination in depth of the criticisms previously levelled against them among Protestants. A substantial chapter attempts to fill this gap, at the same time supplying a modern theology of pilgrimage. The book ends with a review of the devotional aspects of modern pilgrimages, and with suggestions about possible services, use of the Bible, meditations and soon. J. G. Davies was Professor and former Head of the Department of Theology in the University of Birmingham.

This is a study of the social construction and the impression management of the public forms of worship of Catholicism and Anglicanism. Interest centres on the dilemmas of the liturgical actors in handling a transaction riddled with ambiguities and potential misunderstandings. Simmel, Berger and Goffman are used in an original manner to understand these rites which pose as much of a problem for sociology as for their practitioners.;These rites are treated as forms of play and hermeneutics is linked to a negative theology to understand their performative basis. The study is an effort to link sociology to theology in a way that serves to focus on an issue of social praxis.