Starting a new organization is risky business. And churches are no exception. Many new Protestant churches are established without denominational support and, therefore, have many of the same vulnerabilities other startups must overcome. Millions of Americans are leaving churches, half of all churches do not add any new members, and thousands of churches shutter their doors each year. These numbers suggest that American religion is not a growth industry. On the other hand, more than 1000 new churches are started in any given year. What moves people who might otherwise be satisfied working for churches to take on the riskier role of starting one? In Church Planters, sociologist Richard Pitt uses more than 125 in-depth interviews with church planters to understand their motivations. Pitt's work endeavors to uncover themes in their sometimes miraculous, sometimes mundane answers to the question: "why take on these risks?" He examines how they approach common entrepreneurial challenges in ways that reduce uncertainty and lead them to believe they will be successful. By combining the evocative stories of church planters with insights from research on commercial and social entrepreneurship, Pitt explains how these religion entrepreneurs come to believe their organizational goals must be accomplished, that they can be accomplished, and that they will be accomplished.

A well-researched and scholarly examination of the relationship between Protestant missions and imperialism in the past 200 years.

This comprehensive study represents the first effort by an historian to examine the relationship of the mainstream Protestant Churches to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The focus is on the National Council of Churches, the principal ecumenical organization of the national Protestant religious establishment. Drawing on hitherto little-used and unknown archival resources and extensive interviews with participants, Findlay reveals the widespread participation of the predominantly white churches in the efforts moving toward black freedom that continued throughout the sixties. He documents the churches' active involvement in the March on Washington in 1963 and the massive lobbying effort to secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, their powerful support of the struggle to end legal segregation in Mississippi, and their efforts to respond to the Black Manifesto and the rise of black militancy before and during 1969. Findlay chronicles initial successes, then growing frustration as the national liberal coalition, of which the churches were a part, disintegrated as the events of the 1960s unfolded. For the first time, Findlay's study makes clear the highly significant role played by liberal religious groups in the turbulent, exciting, moving, and historic events of the 1960s.

The aesthetics of everyday life, as reflected in art museums and galleries throughout the western world, is the result of a profound shift in aesthetic perception that occurred during the Renaissance and Reformation. In this book, William A. Dyrness examines intellectual developments in late Medieval Europe, which turned attention away from a narrow range liturgical art and practices and towards a celebration of God's presence in creation and in history. Though threatened by the human tendency to self-assertion, he shows how a new focus on God's creative and recreative action in the world gave time and history a new seriousness, and engendered a broad spectrum of aesthetic potential. Focusing in particular on the writings of Luther and Calvin, Dyrness demonstrates how the reformers' conceptual and theological frameworks pertaining to the role of the arts influenced the rise of realistic theater, lyric poetry, landscape painting, and architecture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

'Death doesn't wait till the ends of our lives to meet us and to make an end, ' says Walter Wangerin. 'Instead, we die a hundred times before we die; and all the little endings on the way are like a slowly growing echo of the final BANG ' Yet out of our many losses, our 'little deaths, ' comes a truer recognition of life. It is found in our relationships with ourselves, with our world, with others, and with our Creator. This is the dancing that can come out of mourning: the hope of restored relationships. Mourning into Dancing defines the stages of grief, names the many kinds of loss we suffer, shows how to help the grief-stricken, gives a new vision of Christ's sacrifice, and shows how a loving God shares our grief. We learn from this book that the way to dancing is through the valley of mourning--that grief is a poignant reminder of the fullness of life Christ obtained for us through his resurrection. In the words of writer and critic John Timmerman, Mourning into Dancing 'could well be the most important book you ever read

From the turn of the twentieth century until the end of the Irish Civil War, Protestant nationalists forged a distinct counterculture within an increasingly Catholic nationalist movement. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, Conor Morrissey charts the development of nationalism within Protestantism, and describes the ultimate failure of this tradition. The book traces the re-emergence of Protestant nationalist activism in the literary and language movements of the 1890s, before reconstructing their distinctive forms of organisation in the following decades. Morrissey shows how Protestants, mindful of their minority status, formed interlinked networks of activists, and developed a vibrant associational culture. He describes how the increasingly Catholic nature of nationalism - particularly following the Easter Rising - prompted Protestants to adopt a variety of strategies to ensure their voices were still heard. Ultimately, this ambitious and wide-ranging book explores the relationship between religious denomination and political allegiance, casting fresh light on an often-misunderstood period.

This book approaches Ulster Protestantism through its theatrical and cultural intersection with politics, re-establishing a forgotten history and engaging with contemporary debates. Anchored by the perspectives of ten writers - some of whom have been notably active in political life - it uniquely examines tensions going on within. Through its exploration of class division and drama from the early twentieth century to the present, the book restores the progressive and Labour credentials of the community's recent past along with its literary repercussions, both of which appear in recent decades to have diminished. Drawing on over sixty interviews, unpublished scripts, as well as rarely-consulted archival material, it shows - contrary to a good deal of cliched polemic and safe scholarly assessment - that Ulster Protestants have historically and continually demonstrated a vigorous creative pulse as well as a tendency towards Left wing and class politics. St. John Ervine, Thomas Carnduff, John Hewitt, Sam Thompson, Stewart Parker, Graham Reid, Ron Hutchinson, Marie Jones, Christina Reid, and Gary Mitchell profoundly challenge as well as reflect their communities. Illuminating a diverse and conflicted culture stretching beyond Orange Order parades, the weaving together of the lives and work of each of the writers highlights mutual themes and insights on their identity, as if part of some grander tapestry of alternative twentieth-century Protestant culture. Ulster Protestantism's consistent delivery of such dissenting voices counters its monolithic and reactionary reputation.

This is a collection of documents on church-state relations in modern history. It collects virtually all of the major documents associated with the evolution of the post-Reformation churches - Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox - in their relationship to the simultaneously developing modern state in the West.

Confessionalisation and Erudition in Early Modern Europe examines the consequences of the sixteenth-century Reformation for the study of ancient texts and of the past in general. The volume offers the most comprehensive account thus far of the relationship between religious identity-formation and the history of knowledge in early modern Europe.

As America has become more pluralistic, Protestantism, with its long roots in American history and culture, has hardly remained static. This finely crafted portrait of a remarkably complex group of Christian denominations describes Protestantism's history, constituent subgroups and their activities, and the way in which its dialectic with American culture has shaped such facets of the wider society as healthcare, welfare, labor relations, gender roles, and political discourse.

Part I provides an introduction to the religion's essential beliefs, a brief history, and a taxonomy of its primary American varieties. Part II shows the diversity of the tradition with vivid accounts of life and worship in a variety of mainline and evangelical churches. Part III explores the vexed relationship Protestantism maintains with critical social issues, including homosexuality, feminism, and social justice. The appendices include biographical sketches of notable Protestant leaders, a chronology, a glossary, and an annotated list of resources for further study.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2017 SHORTLISTED FOR THE ELIZABETH LONGFORD PRIZE 2017 'A magnificent study of one of history's most compelling and divisive figures' Richard J. Evans When Martin Luther nailed a sheet of paper to the church door of a small university town in 1517, he set off a process that changed the Western world for ever. Within a few years Luther's ideas had spread like wildfire. His attempts to reform Christianity by returning it to its biblical roots split the Western Church, divided Europe and polarised people's beliefs, leading to religious persecution, social unrest and war; and in the long run his ideas would help break the grip of religion on every sphere of life. Yet Luther was a deeply flawed human being: a fervent believer tormented by spiritual doubts; a prolific writer whose translation of the Bible would shape the German language yet whose attacks on his opponents were vicious and foul-mouthed; a married ex-monk who liberated human sexuality from the stigma of sin but who insisted that women should know their place; a religious fundamentalist, Jew-hater and political reactionary who called 'for the private and public murder of the peasants' who had risen against their lords in response to his teaching. And perhaps surprisingly, the man who helped create in the modern world was not modern himself: for him the devil was not a figure of speech but a real, physical presence. As an acclaimed historian, Lyndal Roper explains how Luther's impact can only be understood against the background of the times. As a brilliant biographer, she gives us the flesh-and-blood figure. She reveals the often contradictory psychological forces that drove Luther forward and the dynamics they unleashed, which turned a small act of protest into a battle against the power of the Church. A New Statesman, Spectator, History Today, Guardian and Sunday Times Book of the Year

When Donald Trump was married to his first wife Ivana Ivana Zelnickova in 1977, the family minister who officiated the wedding was the preacher and author of The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale. Perhaps more than any other figure in American public life in the last decade, Donald Trump has been able to reimagine Peale's message of positive thinking to his political advantage. "I never think of the negative," he said after the opening of Trump Tower in 1983. Both Trump and Peale have appealed to people who, like themselves, have felt marginalized by an intellectual and cultural elite. Peale's 1952 book, which helped to drive the religious revival of the 1950s, remains a perennial bestseller, and has affected the lives of a vast public in the United States and around the world. In God's Salesman, Carol V. R. George used interviews with Peale himself as well as exclusive access to his manuscript collection to provide the first full-length scholarly account of Peale and his highly visible career. George explores the evolution of Peale's message of Practical Christianity, the belief that when positive thinking was combined with affirmative prayer, the technique of "imaging," and purposeful action, the result was a changed life. It was a message with special appeal for many in the post-War middle class struggling to rebuild their lives and have a voice in society. George examines the formative influences on Peale's thinking, especially his devout Methodist parents, his early exposure to and then enthusiastic acceptance of Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James, and his almost instinctive attraction to evangelicalism, particularly as it was manifested politically. Twenty-five years after its initial publication, and with a new foreword by Kate Bowler, God's Salesman remains a timely portrait of the man and his movement, and the vital role that both played in the rethinking and restructuring of American religious life over the last seventy years.

In 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, an act often linked with the start of the Reformation. In this work, Eric Leland Saak argues that the 95 Theses do not signal Luther's break from Roman Catholicism. An obedient Observant Augustinian Hermit, Luther's self-understanding from 1505 until at least 1520 was as Brother Martin Luther, Augustinian, not Reformer, and he continued to wear his habit until October 1524. Saak demonstrates that Luther's provocative act represented the culmination of the late medieval Reformation. It was only the failure of this earlier Reformation that served as a catalyst for the onset of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. Luther's true Reformation discovery had little to do with justification by faith, or with his 95 Theses. Yet his discoveries in February of 1520 were to change everything.

At the twilight of the Weimar Republic, politicians, scientists, and theologians were engaged in debates surrounding the so-called Jewish Question. When the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, these discussions took on a new sense of urgency and poignancy. As state measures against Jews unfolded, theological conceptions of the meaning of Israel and Judaism began to impact living, breathing Jewish persons. In this study, Ryan Tafilowski traces the thought of the Lutheran theologian Paul Althaus (1888-1966), who once greeted the rise of Hitler as a gift and miracle of God, as he negotiated the Jewish Question and its meaning for his understanding of Germanness across the Weimar Republic, the Nazi years, and the post-war period. In particular, the study uncovers the paradoxical categories Althaus used to interpret the ongoing theological significance of the Jewish people, whom he considered both an imminent threat to German ethnic identity and yet a mysterious cipher by which Germans might decode their own spiritual destiny in world history. Sketching the peculiar contours of Althaus theology of Israel, this study offers a fresh interpretation of the Erlangen Opinion on the Aryan Paragraph, which is an important artifact not only of the Kirchenkampf, but also of the complex and ambivalent history of Christian antisemitism. By bringing Althaus into conversation with some of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century -- from Karl Barth and Emil Brunner to Rudolf Bultmann and Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- Tafilowski broadens the scope of his inquiry to vital questions of political theology, ethnic identity, social ethics, and ecclesiology. As Christian theologians must once again reckon with questions of national self-understanding under the pressures of mass migration and resurgent nationalisms, this investigation into the logic of ethno-nationalist theologies is a timely contribution.

`I evidently saw that unless the great God of his infinite grace and bounty, had voluntarily chosen me to be a vessel of mercy, though I should desire, and long, and labour until my heart did break, no good could come of it . . . How can you tell you are Elected?' (GA, 47) In seventeenth-century England, the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, with its belief in the predetermined salvation of the few and damnation of the many, led many Christians to an anguished search for evidence of God's favour. John Bunyan's Grace Abounding records this spiritual crisis and its gruelling fluctuations between hope and despair in all its psychological intensity. It is a classic of spiritual autobiography - a genre which flourished in seventeenth-century England, as anxiety over one's spiritual state encouraged rigorous self-scrutiny and the sharing of spiritual experiences. This edition sets Grace Abounding alongside four of the most interesting and varied contemporary spiritual autobiographies, making its cultural milieu more meaningful to the modern reader. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

No other German has shaped the history of early-modern Europe more than Martin Luther. In this comprehensive and balanced biography we see Luther as a rebel, but not as a lone hero; as a soldier in a mighty struggle for the universal reform of Christianity and its role in the world. The foundation of Protestantism changed the religious landscape of Europe, and subsequently the world, but the author chooses to show not simply as a reformer, but as an individual. In his study of the Wittenberg monk, Heinz Schilling - one of Germany's leading social and political historians - gives the reader a rounded view of a difficult, contradictory character, who changed the world by virtue of his immense will.