The essence of Jesus' moral vision is this: His followers are to love God and to love others with everything they've got. Love is not one of the virtues but the essence and summary of "all virtue." Scot McKnight calls this double commandment to love "The Jesus Creed." We can't wait until we're adults to begin loving God and loving others. In this book Scot works out the Jesus Creed for high school and college students, seeking to show how it makes sense, giving shape to the moral lives of young adults. "The Jesus Creed for Students" is practical, filled with stories, backed up and checked by youth pastors, and it includes questions for further study.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'When one of the world's leading scholars of civil war tells us that a country is on the brink of violent conflict, we should pay attention. This is an important book' Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Die Civil wars are the biggest danger to world peace today - this book shows us why they happen, and how to avoid them. We are now living in the world's greatest era of civil wars. While violence has declined worldwide, major civil wars are now being fought in countries including Iraq, Syria and Libya, and smaller civil wars are being fought in India and Malaysia. Even countries we thought could never experience another civil war - such as the USA, Sweden and Ireland - are showing signs of unrest. So how can we stop them? In How Civil Wars Start, acclaimed expert Professor Barbara F. Walter, who has advised on political violence everywhere from the CIA to the U.S. Senate to the United Nations, explains the rise of civil wars and the conditions that create them - not least when countries are not quite democratic. As democracies across the world backslide and citizens become more polarised, civil wars will become even more widespread and last longer than they have in the past - but this urgent and important book shows us a path back toward peace.

In Broken Planet, Dr Sharon Dirckx, scientist and apologist, offers a measured and thoughtful case for how there could be a God of love that allows natural disasters. The question of suffering is one of the greatest hurdles to Christian faith. When believers respond to the question of why there is suffering in the world, they often turn to the free-will defence. This states that humans make choices for good or ill that can bring about suffering in the lives of others. However, that doesn't explain why children die of cancer, or why the latest earthquakes, tsunamis or pandemics have been so destructive. These seem to happen not because of our choices, but in spite of them. So how do we make sense of these events? Dr. Sharon Dirckx blends argument, science and first-person narrative in this unique book, weaving answers to real questions with compassion and empathy, while also acknowledging the element of mystery we will always live with while on earth. Dr Dirckx addresses topics such as: If God exists, why would he make a world with earthquakes and tsunamis? Why is there so much suffering in a natural disaster? Are natural disasters God's judgement? Is my illness a punishment from God? What kind of God would allow natural disasters and diseases? If you have ever struggled to reconcile the idea of a loving God with all the pain in our world, this book will encourage you that belief in such a God is not as unreasonable as it may seem. In fact, it may be where God is revealed most profoundly.

Kenneth Cragg was one of the West's most gifted interpreters of Islam and one of the most well-known figures of the Middle Eastern Church. During his 45 years in the Middle East, Cragg was an assistant Bishop of Jerusalem and scholar, he focussed on the Christian understanding of other faiths, particularly Islam. A major figure in Christian-Muslim conversations he was a prolific writer whose books became a forum of intellectual debate about Islam and Christian-Muslim relations. This set re-issues two of his lesser-known but no less important books, which illustrate his deep knowledge of the Qur'an and his lifelong interest in Islamic and Christian theology.

This 9th edition of Martin Gilbert’s Atlas of Jewish History spans over four thousand years of history in 196 maps, starting with the worldwide migration of the Jews from ancient Mesopotamia and coming up into the first decades of the twenty-first century. It presents a vivid picture of a fascinating people and the trials and tribulations which have haunted the Jewish story, as well as Jewish achievements. The themes covered include: Prejudice and Violence – from the destruction of Jewish independence between 722 and 586 BC to the flight from German persecution in the 1930s. Also covers the incidence of anti-Semitic attacks in the Americas and Europe. Migrations and Movements – from ancient dispersals from the promised land, to new maps on the ingathering of exiles from Arab and Muslim lands from 1948, and from the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1992. Society, Trade and Culture – from Jewish trade routes between 800 and 900, the geography of the Jews of China, of India, to communal life in the ghettoes and the situation of world Jewry in the opening years of the twenty-first century. Politics, Government and War – from the Court Jews of the fifteenth century to the founding and growth of the modern State of Israel. This new edition now includes an additional 39 of Martin Gilbert’s maps, across the whole range of Jewish history, originally published across a range of publications, now gathered in this one volume for the first time. Over 50 years on from its first publication, this book is still an indispensable guide to Jewish history.

What can we learn from Augustine about apologetics? This book shows how Augustine defended the faith in late antiquity and how his approach to engaging the culture has great significance for the apologetic task today. Joshua Chatraw and Mark Allen, coauthors of the award-winning Apologetics at the Cross (an Outreach magazine and Gospel Coalition Resource of the Year), recover Augustine's mature apologetic voice to address the challenges facing today's church. The Augustine Way offers a compelling argument for Christian witness that is rooted in tradition and engaged with contemporary culture. It focuses on Augustine's best-known works, Confessions and The City of God, to retrieve his scriptural and ecclesial approach for a holistic apologetic witness. This book will be useful for students as well as for pastors, church leaders, and practitioners of Christian apologetics. It puts pastors and churches back at the center of apologetics, transcending popular contemporary methods with a view to a more effective witness in post-Christendom.

• This volume provides a combination of the major schools of thought on the Salem witch trials and incorporates the current scholarship on the subject. Events are presented in a narrative format that delivers the drama of the trials and leaves instructors free to explore specific topics of their choosing in greater depth. An analysis of key issues is provided at the end of each chapter. • The third edition has been significantly updated to include an expanded section on the European origins of witch hunts and an update and expand epilogue which discusses the witch hunts – real and imagined, historical and cultural – since 1692. Allowing students new to the phenomenon of the witch-hunts and trials to better understand their origins and impact upon the national psyche. • The bibliography has been substantially updated, an extensive list of internet resources, sources of primary documents, documentaries, movies, artwork, and resources to assist lecturers with using this book in their classrooms and students to further their studies.

There are as many paths to holiness as there are saints in Heaven...but Christians can't follow them all. Yet there's one thing every saint practices that anyone can imitate: the simple art of loving God, which the beloved St. Francis de Sales explains here. Under his wise guidance, readers will discover the secrets to growing holy through the simple things in life -- work, play, and rest. They'll learn to avoid the distractions (even the religious ones) that weary the soul...and they'll soon be able to focus all their energy simply on loving God.

Traditions of Christian Spirituality Series. Traces the spiritual legacy of Saint Augustine and of his wide-ranging legacy in the Augustinian order.

First published edition of documents and letters from a highly-significant incident within the nineteenth-century Catholic church. The row between Bishop Herbert Vaughan of Salford and the Jesuits became a cause celebre in the 1870s and was only settled eventually in Rome after the personal intervention of the pope. While the immediate issue was the provision of secondary education, at stake were key questions of authority that had troubled the English Catholic community for centuries; the solution played a major part in determining the relationship between the newly restored bishops and the Religious Orders. This volume brings together for the first time all the relevant English and foreign archival sources and enables the reader to take a balanced view of the whole issue. The documents and letters [including Vaughan's private diary] paint an intriguing and not always flattering picture of the principal combatants. Bishop Vaughan [later Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster] was a determined champion of his own and his fellow-bishops' rights as diocesan bishops. Against him stood the leaders of the Jesuit Order, jealous of their traditional privileges and heirs to centuries of service to the English Catholic community. By the 1870s that community wasbeginning to develop a commercial and professional middle class who demanded secondary education for their children. Many of them looked to the Jesuits to provide it and they claimed the right to do so, irrespective of the wishesand rights of the bishop. The source material is accompanied by an introduction placing them into their social and historical context, and explanatory notes. It forms an important addition to an understanding of the nineteenth-century English Catholic Church. Father Martin John Broadley is a priest in the Catholic diocese of Salford; he also lectures at the University of Manchester.

Political division. Racial tension. Vaccine wars. In Agents of Grace, award-winning writer, journalist, and podcast host Daniel Darling equips us to discern what's worth fighting for, how to move beyond our profound disagreements, and how to live as agents of Jesus's love. When Daniel Darling was fired as spokesperson for the National Religious Broadcasters Association, it wasn't his exit that made national news--it was the way he handled it. Daniel's charitable response to those he had worked with was so radical that it made headlines. But why has kindness among Christians become so startling? In Agents of Grace, Daniel explores practical ways we can follow the Bible's command to "strive actively for peace" even in a painfully divided church, country, and world. On a very personal level, he helps us climb out of cynicism about how the people of God treat each other, especially when we are trying to heal from such pain in our own lives. Beautifully written, Agents of Grace draws on modern-day examples and biblical truths to address: Divisions that keep us from obeying Jesus's command to love one another Virtues that will lead us to a peace-filled life The theological differences that are worth fighting for, and those that are not How to avoid apathy and heal from past hurt, even amid hypocrisy and corruption The difference between forgiveness, reconciliation, and trust   In this hope-filled book, Daniel issues a clarion call to live as bridgebuilders in a divided country, healers in a hurting church, and countercultural Jesus-followers in a world that needs to know God's love.

Histories you can trust. The Oxford History of the Holy Land covers the 3,000 years which saw the rise of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - and relates the familiar stories of the sacred texts with the fruits of modern scholarship. Beginning with the origins of the people who became the Israel of the Bible, it follows the course of the ensuing millennia down to the time when the Ottoman Empire succumbed to British and French rule at the end of the First World War. Parts of the story, especially as known from the Bible, will be widely familiar. Less familiar are the ways in which modern research, both from archaeology and from other ancient sources, sometimes modify this story historically. Better understanding, however, enables us to appreciate crucial chapters in the story of the Holy Land, such as how and why Judaism developed in the way that it did from the earlier sovereign states of Israel and Judah and the historical circumstances in which Christianity emerged from its Jewish cradle. Later parts of the story are vital not only for the history of Islam and its relationships with the two older religions, but also for the development of pilgrimage and religious tourism, as well as the notions of sacred space and of holy books with which we are still familiar today. From the time of Napoleon on, European powers came increasingly to develop both cultural and political interest in the region, culminating in the British and French conquests which carved out the modern states of the Middle East. Sensitive to the concerns of those for whom the sacred books of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are of paramount religious authority, the authors all try sympathetically to show how historical information from other sources, as well as scholarly study of the texts themselves, enriches our understanding of the history of the region and its prominent position in the world's cultural and intellectual history.

How did America’s white evangelicals, from often progressive history, come to right-wing populism? Addressing populism requires understanding how its historico-cultural roots ground present politics. How have the very qualities that contributed much to American vibrancy—an anti-authoritarian government-wariness and energetic community-building—turned, under conditions of distress, to defensive, us-them worldviews? Readers will gain an understanding of populism and of the socio-political and religious history from which populism draws its us-them policies and worldview. The book ponders the tragic cast of the white evangelical story: (i) the distorting effects of economic and way-of-life duress on the understanding of history and present circumstances and (ii) the tragedy of choosing us-them solutions to duress that won’t relieve it, leaving the duress in place. Readers will trace the trajectory from economic, status loss, and way-of-life duresses to solutions in populist, us-them binaries. They will explore the robust white evangelical contribution to civil society but also to racism, xenophobia, and sexism. White evangelicals not in the ranks of the right—their worldview and activism—are discussed in a final chapter. This book is valuable reading for students of political and social sciences as well as anyone interested in US politics.

This newly redesigned edition of Campbell's seminal 1949 work combines the insights of modern psychology with the author's revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology. Illustrated.

This book uses gender as a framework to offer unique insights into the socio-cultural foundations of Buddhism. Moving away from dominant discourses that discuss women as a single monolithic, homogenous category-thus rendering them invisible within the broader religious discourse-this monograph examines their sustained role in the larger context of South Asian Buddhism and reaffirms their agency. It highlights the multiple roles played by women as patrons, practitioners, lay and monastic members, etc. within Buddhism. The volume also investigates the individual experiences of the members, and their equations and relationships at different levels-with the Samgha at large, with their own respective Bhiksu or Bhiksuni Sangha, with the laity, and with members of the same gender (both lay and monastic). It rereads, reconfigures and reassesses historical data in order to arrive at a new understanding of Buddhism and the social matrix within which it developed and flourished. Bringing together archaeological, epigraphic, art historical, literary as well as ethnographic data, this volume will be of interest to researchers and scholars of Buddhism, gender studies, ancient Indian history, religion, and South Asian studies.

Since its publication in 2000, The Early Christian World has come to be regarded by scholars, students and the general reader as one of the most informative and accessible works in English on the origins, development, character and major figures of early Christianity. In this new edition, the strengths of the first edition are retained. These include the book's attractive architecture that initially takes a reader through the context and historical development of early Christianity; the essays in critical areas such as community formation, everyday experience, the intellectual and artistic heritage, and external and internal challenges; and the profiles on the most influential early Christian figures. The book also preserves its strong stress on the social reality of early Christianity and continues its distinctive use of hundreds of illustrations and maps to bring that world to life. Yet the years that have passed since the first edition was published have seen great advances made in our understanding of early Christianity in its world. This new edition fully reflects these developments and provides the reader with authoritative, lively and up-to-date access to the early Christian world. A quarter of the text is entirely new and the remaining essays have all been carefully revised and updated by their authors. Some of the new material relates to Christian culture (including book culture, canonical and non-canonical scriptures, saints and hagiography, and translation across cultures). But there are also new essays on: Jewish and Christian interaction in the early centuries; ritual; the New Testament in Roman Britain; Manichaeism; Pachomius the Great and Gregory of Nyssa. This new edition will serve its readers for many years to come.

The fast consolidating identities along religious and ethnic lines in recent years have considerably 'minoritised' Muslims in India. The wide-ranging essays in this volume focus on the intensified exclusionary practices against Indian Muslims, highlighting how, amidst a politics of violence, confusing policy frameworks on caste and class lines, and institutionalised riot systems, the community has also suffered from the lack of leadership from within. At the same time, they have emerged as a 'mass' around which the politics of 'vote bank', 'appeasement', 'foreigners', 'Pakistanis within the country', etc. are innovated and played upon, making them further apprehensive about asserting their legitimate right to development. The important issue of the double marginalisation of Muslim women and attempts to reform the Muslim Personal Law by some civil society groups is also discussed. Contributed by academics, activists and journalists, the articles thus discuss issues of integration, exclusion and violence, and attempt to understand categories like 'identity', 'minority', 'multiculturalism', and 'nationalism' with regard to and in the context of Indian Muslims. The volume will be of great interest to those in sociology, politics, history, cultural studies, minority studies, Islamic studies, policy studies, geography, etc.

Explores the nature and function of bhakti or devotional involvement in religious practice in India in areas where it is seldom sought or where its existence has been doubted or even denied.

Originally published in 1961, this book originated in the belief that there was an urgent need for a greater association between philosophers and scientists and of both with men of religion. The problem of bringing this association into being is approached from different angles by the two authors, who, while agreeing on the main thesis, differ on many details, and the discussion is largely concerned with an examination of the points of difference. It ranges over the significance of scientific concepts, such as ether, energy, space and time, the place of mathematics in science and of linguistics in philosophy, the nature of scientific thought in relation to the universe as a whole, problems of life, mind, ethics and theology. It also raises questions of importance concerning the present attitudes of organizations dealing with these matters towards their respective concerns. While the main purpose is always kept in view, a certain amount of discursiveness allows for the introduction of incidental matters of interest in themselves as well as in their relation to the central theme. The book has been written for the layman, and the student, while not, by over-simplification, offending the expert and the erudite.