This volume focuses on Catholic Church history in Australia by lookimg at certain figures (Archdeacon John McEencroe, Lwesi Harding, Bishop Chalres Henry Davis, Cardonal Gilroy) as well as themes: Catholc Social Justice and parliamentary politics, humanae vitae and Tridentine clericalism, and the emergence of Catholic education offices.

Revising dominant accounts of Puritanism and challenging the literary history of sentimentalism, Sympathetic Puritans argues that a Calvinist theology of sympathy shaped the politics, religion, rhetoric, and literature of early New England. Scholars have often understood and presented sentimentalism as a direct challenge to stern and stoic Puritan forebears: the standard history traces a cult of sensibility back to moral sense philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment, not Puritan New England. In contrast, Van Engen's work unearths the pervasive presence of sympathy in a large archive of Puritan sermons, treatises, tracts, poems, journals, histories, and captivity narratives. Sympathetic Puritans also demonstrates how two types of sympathy - the active command to fellow-feel (a duty), as well as the passive sign that could indicate salvation (a discovery) - pervaded Puritan society and came to define the very boundaries of English culture, affecting conceptions of community, relations with Native Americans, and the development of American literature. By analyzing Puritan theology, preaching, prose, and poetry, Van Engen re-examines the Antinomian Controversy, conversion narratives, transatlantic relations, Puritan missions, Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative - and Puritan culture more generally - through the lens of sympathy. Demonstrating and explicating a Calvinist theology of sympathy in seventeenth-century New England, the book reveals the religious history of a concept that has largely been associated with more secular roots.

English-born Francis Asbury was one of the most important religious leaders in American history. Asbury single-handedly guided the creation of the American Methodist church, which became the largest Protestant denomination in nineteenth-century America, and laid the foundation of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements that flourish today. John Wigger has written the definitive biography of Asbury and, by extension, a revealing interpretation of the early years of the Methodist movement in America. Asbury emerges here as not merely an influential religious leader, but a fascinating character, who lived an extraordinary life. His cultural sensitivity was matched only by his ability to organize. His life of prayer and voluntary poverty were legendary, as was his generosity to the poor. He had a remarkable ability to connect with ordinary people, and he met with thousands of them as he crisscrossed the nation, riding more than one hundred and thirty thousand miles between his arrival in America in 1771 and his death in 1816. Indeed Wigger notes that Asbury was more recognized face-to-face than any other American of his day, including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

This book is dedicated to those Aboriginal women, men andchildren who gave their lives for this land, and to those who survived but have lost their spiritual connection with the land

What is the difference between an intellectual, factual knowledge of God and the actual change that occurs when you enter into an intimate relationship of love with Jesus?

Matthew Braden, a devoted servant of the Lord, explores that question in this heartfelt work, emphasizing that true faith means more than believing you are guaranteed a place in heaven. He illustrates that it is not enough to simply know all the right answers or to be born into a “Christian” home.

He looks back on how he lost his way after growing up in the church, giving in to “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16). All the while, he would have claimed that he loved God. But time slowly uncovered the reality that his “Christian” life was just a veil for the sin that held him captive.

The author reveals how the Holy Spirit ignited his faith, challenging his heart with questions such as:

What does it really mean to love God?
What does true, saving faith in Jesus Christ look like?
How can you engage in authentic discipleship?

Matthew uses many thought provoking questions to challenge his readers to examine what they believe and how it affects the way they live. He also notes that choosing to put your faith in Jesus and surrender your will is not an intellectual determination—it is a decision of the heart.

Forget what you think you know, challenge what you have heard, and investigate the Word of God for yourself with the insights in Factual or Actual?

Scholars disputing the identity of the Church of England during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries describe it as either forming a Calvinist consensus or partaking of an Anglican middle way steeped in an ancient catholicity. Debating Perseverance argues that these conversations have given insufficient attention to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints (the belief that a person who is saved can never be lost), which became one of the most distinctive doctrines of the Reformed tradition. In this book, Jay Collier sheds light on the influence of the early church and the Reformed churches on the fledgling Church of England by surveying several debates on perseverance in which readings of Augustine were involved. Collier begins with a reassessment of the Lambeth Articles (1595) and the heated Cambridge debates in which they were forged, demonstrating how readings of Augustine on perseverance influenced the final outcome of that document. He then investigates the failed attempt of the British delegation to the Synod of Dort to achieve solidarity with the international Reformed community on perseverance in a way that was also respectful of different readings of Augustine and the early church. The study returns to English soil to evaluate the Synod of Dort's effect on the supposedly Arminian Richard Montagu and his strategy to distance the Church of England from the consensus of the Reformed churches. It finishes by surveying a Puritan debate that occurred following England's civil war in which Augustine's teachings on perseverance continued to influence the way the English made policy and drafted confessional statements. In surveying these debates, Collier uncovers competing readings and receptions of Augustine on perseverance within the English church-one favoring the perseverance of the saints and the other denying it. Debating Perseverance recognizes England's struggles with perseverance as emblematic of its troubled pursuit of a Reformed and ancient catholicity.

Conservative evangelicalism has transformed American politics, disseminating a sometimes fearful message not just through conventional channels, but through subcultures and alternate modes of communication. Within this world is a "Religion of Fear," a critical impulse that dramatizes cultural and political conflicts and issues in frightening ways that serve to contrast "orthodox" behaviors and beliefs with those linked to darkness, fear, and demonology. Jason Bivins offers close examinations of several popular evangelical cultural creations including the Left Behind novels, church-sponsored Halloween "Hell Houses," sensational comic books, especially those disseminated by Jack Chick, and anti-rock and -rap rhetoric and censorship. Bivins depicts these fascinating and often troubling phenomena in vivid (sometimes lurid) detail and shows how they seek to shape evangelical cultural identity.
As the "Religion of Fear" has developed since the 1960s, Bivins sees its message moving from a place of relative marginality to one of prominence. What does it say about American public life that such ideas of fearful religion and violent politics have become normalized? Addressing this question, Bivins establishes links and resonances between the cultural politics of evangelical pop, the activism of the New Christian Right, and the political exhaustion facing American democracy.
Religion of Fear is a significant contribution to our understanding of the new shapes of political religion in the United States, of American evangelicalism, of the relation of religion and the media, and the link between religious pop culture and politics.

What if sex, gender, and sexuality were designed to tell a much greater story than we could ever imagine? What if we had a part to play in that story? With gentle compassion and steadfast truth, Ryan Andrew Smith explores what the Bible says about sex, gender, marriage, and sexuality in a way that will appeal to Christians and non-Christians alike. A great resource for individuals, groups, and churches, Trust the Circle also presents ways that Christians can engage our sexually evolving culture with grace, love, and truth. Regardless of your views regarding sex and sexuality, you will find this resource helpful in understanding what the Bible says about these important and timely topics.

The emergence of formative Judaism has traditionally been examined in light of a theological preoccupation with the two competing religious movements, 'Christianity' and 'Judaism' in the first centuries of the Common Era. In this book Ariel Schremer attempts to shift the scholarly consensus away from this paradigm, instead privileging the rabbinic attitude toward Rome, the destroyer of the temple in 70 C.E., over their concern with the nascent Christian movement. The palpable rabbinic political enmity toward Rome, says Schremer, was determinative in the emerging construction of Jewish self-identity. He asserts that the category of heresy took on a new urgency in the wake of the trauma of the Temple's destruction, which demanded the construction of a new self-identity. Relying on the late 20th-century scholarly depiction of the slow and measured growth of Christianity in the empire up until and even after Constantine's conversion, Schremer minimizes the extent to which the rabbis paid attention to the Christian presence. He goes on, however, to pinpoint the parting of the ways between the rabbis and the Christians in the first third of the second century, when Christians were finally assigned to the category of heretics.

Barth stands before us as the greatest theologian of the twentieth century, yet the massive corpus of work which he left behind, the multi volume Church Dogmatics, can seem daunting and formidable to readers today. Fortunately his Dogmatics in Outline first published in English in 1949, contains in brilliantly concentrated form even in shorthand, the essential tenets of his thinking. Built around the assertions made in the Apostles Creed the book consists of a series of reflections on the foundation stones of Christian doctrine. Because Dogmatics in Outline derives from very particular circumstances namely the lectures Barth gave in war-shattered Germany in 1946, it has an urgency and a compassion which lend the text a powerful simplicity. Despite its brevity the book makes a tremendous impact, which in this new edition will now be felt by a fresh generation of readers.

Gary Miller shares more heralded articles that have appeared in newspapers and magazines throughout the nation in this fourth volume of Outdoor Truths. Each entry is brief and stands alone from the other articles. It is the perfect deer-stand or coffee table book that can be enjoyed at different times. While some people may think of these articles as devotionals for hunters and fishers, the author has never viewed them that way. The reason is because he's never envisioned his audience as only faithful Christians but instead as people who may be unsure about Christianity or the church. The only thing he's always been sure about his readers is that by and large, hunters and fishers are not atheists. They see the handiwork of someone bigger whenever they spend time in the woods or on the water. These articles will help you navigate what you already know. If you love the outdoors, aren't sure about faith, but believe in God-or if you're a dedicated Christian-then you'll treasure these writings.

This book is a detailed account of and commentary on Thomas Aquinas's most influential work: the Summa Theologiae. Intended for students and general readers interested in medieval philosophy and theology, the book will also appeal to professors and scholars, although it does not presuppose any previous knowledge of its subject. Following a scholarly account of Aquinas's life, the book explores his purposes in writing the Summa Theologiae and works systematically through each of its three Parts. It also relates their contents and Aquinas's teachings to that of other works and other thinkers both theological and philosophical. In addition to being expository, the volume aims to help readers think about the value of the Summa Theologiae for themselves. The concluding chapter considers the impact Aquinas's best-known work has had since its first appearance, and why it is still studied today. Davies's study is a solid and reflective introduction both to the Summa Theologiae and to Aquinas in general.

For too long, scholars have published new research on Edwards without paying due attention to the work he took most seriously: biblical exegesis. Edwards is recognized as an innovative theologian who wielded tremendous influence on revivalism, evangelicalism, and New England theology. What is often missed is how much time he devoted to studying and understanding the Bible. He kept voluminous notebooks on Scripture and died with unrealized plans for major treatises on the Bible. More and more experts now recognize the importance of this aspect of his life; this book brings together the insights of leading Edwards scholars on this topic. The essays in Jonathan Edwards and Scripture set Edwards' engagement with Scripture in the context of seventeenth-century Protestant exegesis and eighteenth-century colonial interpretation. They provide case studies of Edwards' exegesis in varying genres of the Bible and probe his use of Scripture to develop theology. The authors also set his biblical interpretation in perspective by comparing it with that of other exegetes. This book advances our understanding of the nature and significance of Edwards' work with Scripture and opens new lines of inquiry for students of early modern Western history.

Joseph W. Williams examines the changing healing practices of pentecostals in the United States over the past 100 years, from the early believers, who rejected mainstream medicine and overtly spiritualized disease, to the later generations of pentecostals and their charismatic successors, who dramatically altered the healing paradigms they inherited. Williams shows that over the course of the twentieth century, pentecostal denunciations of the medical profession often gave way to ''natural'' healing methods associated with scientific medicine, natural substances, and even psychology. By 2000, figures such as the pentecostal preacher T. D. Jakes appeared on the Dr. Phil Show, other healers marketed their books at mainstream retailers such as Wal-Mart, and some developed lucrative nutritional products that sold online and in health food stores across the nation. Exploring the interconnections, resonances, and continued points of tension between adherents and some of their fiercest rivals, Spirit Cure chronicling adherents' embrace of competitors' healing practices and illuminates pentecostals' dramatic transition from a despised minority to major players in the world of American evangelicalism and mainstream American culture.

""'A painstakingly researched, meticulously documented, cogently reasoned and eminently readable book. It represents an important step forward in New Testament study which henceforward scholars, even if they do not agree with it will not be able to ignore.' Times Literary Supplement 'For those who are concerned to penetrate to the historical realities within the gospel records this is an extremely important book.' Expository Times 'Can only be described as epoch-making.' Jewish Chronicle"" In this, Geza Vermes' best known book, there emerges perhaps the closest portrayal that we have of a genuinely historical Jesus. Freed from the weight and onus of Christian doctrine or Jewish animus, Jesus here appears as a vividly human, yet profoundly misunderstood, figure, thoroughly grounded and contextualised within the extraordinary intellectual and cultural cross currents of his day. Jesus the Jew is a remarkable portrait by a brilliant scholar writing at the height of his powers, informed by insights from the New Testament, Jewish literature, and the Dead Sea Scrolls alike.

This is the credo and seminal text of the movement which was later characterized as liberation theology. The book burst upon the scene in the early seventies, and was swiftly acknowledged as a pioneering and prophetic approach to theology which famously made an option for the poor, placing the exploited, the alienated, and the economically wretched at the centre of a programme where "the oppressed and maimed and blind and lame" were prioritized at the expense of those who either maintained the status quo or who abused the structures of power for their own ends. This powerful, compassionate and radical book attracted criticism for daring to mix politics and religion in so explicit a manner, but was also welcomed by those who had the capacity to see that its agenda was nothing more nor less than to give "good news to the poor", and redeem God's people from bondage.

This brings together some of the most important Catholic teaching of the new millennium.

The two-volume work The New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers offers a comparative study of two collections of early Christian texts: the New Testament; and the texts, from immediately after the New Testament period, which are conventionally referred to as the Apostolic Fathers.
The second volume, Trajectories through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, discusses broad theological, literary, and historical issues that arise in the comparative study of these texts, and which are of importance to the study of early Christianity. It deals with the most important current debates concerning both the Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament, such as baptism, Pauline theology, the function of apocalyptic elements, Church order, and Jewish and Christian identity.

In The Reformation of Feeling, Susan Karant-Nunn looks beyond and beneath the formal doctrinal and moral demands of the Reformation in Germany to examine the emotional tenor of the programs that the emerging creeds-revised Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism/Reformed theology-developed for their members. As revealed by the surviving sermons from this period, preaching clergy of each faith both explicitly and implicitly provided their listeners with distinct models of a mood to be cultivated. To encourage their parishioners to make an emotional investment in their faith, all three drew upon rhetorical elements that were already present in late medieval Catholicism and elevated them into confessional touchstones.
Looking at archival materials containing direct references to feeling, Karant-Nunn focuses on treatments of death and sermons on the Passion. She amplifies these sources with considerations of the decorative, liturgical, musical, and disciplinary changes that ecclesiastical leaders introduced during the period from the late fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. Within individual sermons, Karant-Nunn also examines topical elements-including Jews at the crucifixion, the Virgin Mary's voluminous weeping below the Cross, and struggles against competing denominations-that were intended to arouse particular kinds of sentiment. Finally, she discusses surviving testimony from the laity in order to assess at least some Christians' reception of these lessons on proper devotional feeling.
This book is exceptional in its presentation of a cultural rather than theological or behavioral study of the broader movement to remake Christianity. As Karant-Nunn conclusively demonstrates, in the eyes of the Reformation's formative personalities strict adherence to doctrine and upright demeanor did not constitute an adequate piety. The truly devout had to engage their hearts in their faith.

Just because you feel like you're in bondage, it doesn't mean you have to stay there.

After reading this book, I will have the insight needed to rupture the enemy's grip on my life. I will gain the invaluable tools needed to fight in the spirit and take up my God-given authority as more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus.

Many believers are not victorious and not living lives of purpose and destiny because they don't understand the schemes and wiles of the devil.

Using powerful teachings, this book will unveil and expose the devil and his kingdom to the very core of his ministry, strategies, and weapons he uses against the church today.

The church has fallen asleep. We do not understand the things of the Spirit. We don't understand the enemy of our souls. He comes to kill, steal, and destroy using satanic strategies, game plans, and arsenals of weapons that he wants us to believe are nonchalant, easygoing, harmless, and unpredictable.

The church is not teaching and equipping believers to teach our hands to war in the spirit. In Psalm 144:1, David asked God, "Lord, teach my hands to war." Now, instead of our hands being taught to fight the good fight, we find ourselves in handcuffs--limited, depleted, and spiritually anemic.

This book will help you unlock your spiritual handcuffs so you can understand the works of the devil and expose him before he sets foot on the battlefield of your life. You will learn how to crush the head of the serpent in any season of your life, and how you can see him coming in the blind spots of your walk with the Lord.

It's time for believers to be trained, equipped, and become a spiritual army. It's time to fight and expose the so-called devil and his entrapments. We will rise up and take back what he has stolen from us once and for all in the unmatchable name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Savior. Jesus will be proud that He picked us for the ultimate battle.

One of Aquinas's best known works after the Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles is a theological synthesis that explains and defends the existence and nature of God without invoking the authority of the Bible. A detailed expository account of and commentary on this famous work, Davies's book aims to help readers think about the value of the Summa Contra Gentiles (SCG) for themselves, relating the contents and teachings found in the SCG to those of other works and other thinkers both theological and philosophical. Following a scholarly account of Aquinas's life and his likely intentions in writing the SCG, the volume works systematically through all four books of the text. It is, therefore, a solid and reflective introduction both to the SCG and to Aquinas more generally. The book is aimed at students of medieval philosophy and theology, and of Aquinas in particular. It will interest teachers of medieval philosophy and theology, though it does not presuppose previous knowledge of Aquinas or of his works. Davies's book is the longest and most detailed account and discussion of the SCG available in English in one volume.

Follow Me - A Seasonal Journey

A Personal Worship Resource for the Church Calendar Year

(Includes Journal with Audio Narration and Music)

Featuring the Paintings of Daniel Bonnell with Reflections from Contributing Writer, Roger Housden

Here you will find a rarified and evocative combination of the arts (music, art, and poetry)buttressing the clear meaning of the liturgical church's yearly calendar.

Dr. Jim Townsend, David C. Cook Publishing Theological Editor, Retired

Lana Lee Marler's "Follow Me - A Seasonal Journey" is a dynamic devotional resource, crossing the Christian Church year with our invitation from Jesus Christ to, "Follow Me."

She offers in these pages a wonderfully rich relating of scripture, art, music, poetry, reflections and provocative questions to the seasons of the Christian calendar while also providing generous space for journaling.

The Rev. Dr. William E. White, Senior Pastor, St. Peter's Lutheran Church, Lexington, SC The Psalmist admonished us: "O taste and see that the Lord is good."Most of us do not expose ourselves enough to resources other than the written word to cultivate our "taste" (awareness) of the Living Lord. This beautiful work by Lana Lee Marler will change that. As you live with it, you will find yourself "tasting" and "seeing" the Lord.

Dr. Maxie D. Dunnam, President Emeritus of Asbury Theological Seminary

Our lives are not real, not fully alive, until they are based on a certain consciousness of the Triune God moving in and all around us. A life of prayer can bring such an awareness. Lana Lee Marler has created a real gift and resource for us in this lovely prayer journal based on the ancient liturgical calendar of the Christian Church. She uses art and poetry and song to invite us to reflect and log the prayers we hear in our hearts and minds, which opens us to more fully participate in the eternal, holy conversation.

Dr. Andy Andrews, Dean of St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, Memphis, TN