This book proposes that Philip Melanchthon was responsible for transforming traditional university natural philosophy into a specifically Lutheran one. Motivated by desire to check civil disobedience and promote a Lutheran orthodoxy, he created a natural philosophy based on Aristotle, Galen and Plato, incorporating contemporary findings of Copernicus and Vesalius. The fields of astrology, anatomy, botany and mathematics all constituted a natural philosophy in which Melanchthon wished to demonstrate God's Providential design in the physical world. Rather than dichotomizing or synthesizing the two distinct areas of 'science' and 'religion', Kusukawa advocates the need to look at 'Natural philosophy' as a discipline quite different from either 'modern science' or 'religion': a contextual assessment of the implication of the Lutheran Reformation on university education, particularly on natural philosophy.

In shaping the modern academy and in setting the agenda of modern Christian theology, few institutions have been as influential as the German universities of the nineteenth century. This book examines the rise of the modern German university from the standpoint of the Protestant theological faculty, focusing especially on the University of Berlin (1810), Prussia's flagship university in the nineteenth century. In contradistinction to historians of modern higher education who often overlook theology, and to theologians who are frequently inattentive to the social and institutional contexts of religious thought, Thomas Albert Howard argues that modern university development and the trajectory of modern Protestant theology in Germany should be understood as interrelated phenomena.

By the middle of the nineteenth century much clearly gendered, anti-Catholic literature was produced for the Protestant middle classes. Nineteenth Century Anti-Catholic Discourses explores how this writing generated a series of popular Catholic images and looks towards the cultural, social and historical foundation of these representations. Diana Peschier places the novels of Charlotte Bronte within the framework of Victorian social ideologies, in particular the climate created by rise of anti-Catholicism and thus provides an alternative reading of her work.

This book is an examination of the puritanism of a series of divines, including Dering, Cartwright, Whitaker and Chaderton, all of whom passed through the University of Cambridge between 1560 and 1600. Dr Lake gives a detailed analysis of their careers and opinions. The personal and ideological links between them are established and in the process some idea of the range of opinions current among puritan divines in this period is built up. The aim of the work is to arrive, through this process of comparison and juxtaposition, at the kernel of shared attitudes and beliefs that justify the inclusion of all these men within a coherent puritan tradition.

The Protestant Clergy of Early Modern Europe provides a comprehensive survey of the Protestant clergy in Europe during the confessional age. Eight contributions, written by historians with specialist research knowledge in the field, offer the reader a wide-ranging synthesis of the main concerns of current historiography. Themes include the origins and the evolution of the Protestant clergy during the age of Reformation, the role and function of the clergy in the context of early modern history, and the contribution of the clergy to the developments of the age (the making of confessions, education, the reform of culture, social and political thought).

This study challenges critical assumptions about the role of religion in shaping women's experiences of authorship. Feminist critics have frequently been uncomfortable with the fact that conservative religious and political beliefs created opportunities for women to write with independent agency. The seventeenth-century Protestant women discussed in this book range across the religio-political and social spectrums and yet all display an affinity with modern feminist theologians. Rather than being victims of a patriarchal gender ideology, Lady Anne Sothwell, Anna Trapnel and Lucy Hutchinson, among others, were both active negotiators of gender and active participants in wider theological debates. By placing women's religious writing in a broad theological and socio-political context, Erica Longfellow challenges traditional critical assumptions about the role of gender in shaping religion and politics, and, alongside it, the role of women in defining gender and thus influencing religion and politics.

Catholic thought and Lutheran thought are differently structured, embodying divergent conceptions of self and God. Failing to grasp the Lutheran paradigm, Catholics have wrenched Luther into an inappropriate framework. Roman/Lutheran ecumenism, culminating in the 'Joint Declaration' of 1999, attempts to reconcile incompatible systems, based on different philosophical presuppositions. Drawing on a wealth of material, both Continental and Anglo-Saxon, the author thinks through these structural questions within a historical context. But how - within a religion of revelation - can God be conceptualised as both foundational to the self and yet also as an 'other' with whom the self inter-relates? Kierkegaard is shown in a complex model to hold together strengths which historically have been exemplified by the two traditions. This is an important work in systematic theology which considers questions quite fundamental to Western religion. It should be of interest to theologians of all backgrounds and also to church historians.

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Coventry harboured a community of Lollards, adherents of medieval England's only popular heresy. Allowed to flourish relatively unmolested for decades, the Coventry Lollards came under close episcopal scrutiny in 1511 and 1512 when Geoffrey Blyth, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, began a concerted effort to uncover and eradicate their community. This volume presents a remarkable record of the testimony compiled during Blyth's crackdown, along with all other surviving evidence for heretical activities in Coventry. The documents, offered here both in their original languages of Latin and Middle English and in modern English translation, give new insights into the nature of religious dissent in the years just prior to the first stirrings of the English Reformation.

This book reconsiders the existence of an early Stuart Puritan movement, and examines the ways in which Puritan clergymen encouraged greater sociability with their like-minded colleagues, both in theory and in practice, to such an extent that they came to define themselves as 'a peculiar people', a community distinct from their less faithful rivals. Their voluntary communal rituals encouraged a view of the world divided between 'us' and 'them'. This provides a context for a renewed examination of the thinking behind debates on ceremonial nonconformity and reactions to the Laudian changes of the 1630s. From this a new perspective is developed on arguments about emigration and church government, arguments that proved crucial to Parliamentarian unity during the English Civil War.

With the voyage of the Mayflower in 1620, New England history began as a Puritan foundational experiment within the wilderness. The stirring history of North America s beginnings in the politics of religion are reconstructed here by means of personal testimonies.

The Early Reformation on the Continent offers a fresh look at the formative years of the European Reformation and the origins of Protestant faith and practice. Taking into account recent work on Erasmus and Luther, Owen Chadwick provides a balanced view of the raison d'être for the changes which the reforming communities sought to introduce and the difficulties and disagreements concerning these. The reader is taken back to the origins and development of each topic examined and given an authoritative, accessible, and informative account.

Rev. George D. Byers, Presbyterian missionary at Kachek, Hainan island, China, was murdered by bandits in front of his home on June 24, 1924, setting off an extraterritorality incident that involved American, British, and Chinese government officials ranging from the local Chinese military commander to the British consul at Hoihow, Hainan, the Chinese Foreign Minister Wellington Koo, U.S. Congressmen, Presbyterians in China and the U.S., and friends of the Byers family. Based on American and British consular archives and those of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and members of the Hainan mission, this is the story of how Mrs. Byers and her ally, Mrs. Mabel Roys, the sole woman on the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions (BFM), successfully got the government and their church to take action. Kathleen L. Lodwick is a Professor of History at the Pennsylvania State University, Lehigh Valley.

In a sweeping reconsideration of the relation between religion and modernity, Jose Casanova surveys the roles that religions may play in the public sphere of modern societies.
During the 1980s, religious traditions around the world, from Islamic fundamentalism to Catholic liberation theology, began making their way, often forcefully, out of the private sphere and into public life, causing the "deprivatization" of religion in contemporary life. No longer content merely to administer pastoral care to individual souls, religious institutions are challenging dominant political and social forces, raising questions about the claims of entities such as nations and markets to be "value neutral," and straining the traditional connections of private and public morality.
Casanova looks at five cases from two religious traditions (Catholicism and Protestantism) in four countries (Spain, Poland, Brazil, and the United States). These cases challenge postwar--and indeed post-Enlightenment--assumptions about the role of modernity and secularization in religious movements throughout the world.
This book expands our understanding of the increasingly significant role religion plays in the ongoing construction of the modern world.

This book marks a major development in our understanding of the religious history of both Europe and North America during the first half of the eighteenth century. It studies the early history of the Protestant revival movements from a pan-European, as well as Anglo-American viewpoint, and shows the interrelationships and movements among the major Protestant communities. It is a contribution to the history not only of religious belief and practice, but also to that of the successes and failures of eighteenth-century statecraft in dealing with problems of religious excitement and division during an age of enlightenment. It is based on a vast range of archival resources and published scholarly work ranging from Eastern Europe to the American colonies.

The fascinating connection between the spirit and the letter has had a deep impact on the work of theological scholarship. In this volume, 26 experts examine the connection of spirit and letter by means of examples from the perspectives of philology, hermeneutics, philosophy, theological history, and practical theology. From this multi-disciplinary view, a picture emerges of a dynamic fraught with crisis, with which the specific consciousness of each era interpreted and transformed a unique religious tradition.

The Lutheran Reformation of the early sixteenth century brought about immense and far-reaching change in the structures of church and state, and in religious and secular ideas. This book investigates the relationship between the law and religious ideology in Luther's Germany, showing how they developed in response to the momentum of Lutheran teachings and influence. John Witte, Jr. argues that it is not enough to understand the Reformation in either only theological or legal terms but that a perspective is required which takes proper account of both.

Jesus Christ was both the unique Son of God-the Messiah foretold in Scripture-and a man of his time and culture. Charts of the Gospels and the Life of Christ helps you to know him better by clearly organizing the facts that surrounded his life. Whether you're a student, pastor, teacher, or simply someone who wants to take your study of the Bible deeper, this book helps you to see Jesus from a variety of perspectives. Divided into four sections, notable topics include: A Harmonistic Overview of the Four Gospels Sections Found in All Four Gospels Old Testament Citations in the Gospels Roman Rulers of the Land Where Christ Lived Periods of the Life of Christ Christ's Parables in the Presence/Absence of His Enemies The Kingdom in the Teachings of Jesus and the Gospels ZondervanCharts are ready references for those who need the essential information at their fingertips. Accessible and highly useful, the books in this library offer clear organization and thorough summaries of issues, subjects, and topics that are key for Christian students and learners. The visuals and captions will cater to any teaching methodology, style, or program.

Ab 1906 erschienen unter der Leitung des Kulturphilosophen Paul Hinneberg im Leipziger Teubner-Verlag die ersten Bande einer ehrgeizigen Enzyklopadie: "Die Kultur der Gegenwart, ihre Entwicklung und ihre Ziele" lautete der Titel dieser systematisch aufgebauten Gesamtdarstellung der Gegenwartskultur. Ernst Troeltsch oblag die Abfassung des Abschnittes uber Protestantisches Christentum und Kirche in der Neuzeit, der 1906 in erster Auflage erschien und 1909 in einer stark erweiterten zweiten Auflage, die 1922 noch einmal unverandert abgedruckt wurde. Im vorliegenden Band wird Troeltschs Studie erstmals als separate Buchausgabe prasentiert. Troeltsch rekonstruiert in dieser Abhandlung die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Protestantismus von der Reformation bis in die Gegenwart. Als Leitfaden dient ihm die Unterscheidung zwischen einer altprotestantischen Epoche, die starker dem Mittelalter angehoert, und der neuprotestantischen Epoche, die er eher der aufgeklarten Neuzeit zurechnet. Troeltsch macht die epochalen Differenzen durchsichtig, indem er insbesondere die Wandlungen in den Kulturbeziehungen und damit in der Kulturbedeutung des Protestantismus herausstreicht. Dieser Beitrag in der "Kultur der Gegenwart" begrundete Troeltschs Ruhm als Kulturtheoretiker des Neuprotestantismus.

Candise Farmer inspires those who face difficulties by exploring what the Bible says about God and suffering. She inductively leads the reader through several practical steps to growing in grace during difficult times...

`Fundamentalism' is a label used often pejoratively of religious conservatism. Evangelicals are growing in number and power around the world and are frequently regarded as fundamentalist. This volume examines fundamentalism as a mentality which has greatly affected evangelicalism, but which some evangelicals now wish to leave behind.

Educated people have become bereft of sophisticated ways to develop their religious inclinations. A major reason for this is that theology has become vague and dull. In The Character of God, author Thomas E. Jenkins maintains that Protestant theology became boring by the late nineteenth century because the depictions of God as a character in theology became boring. He shows how in the early nineteenth century, American Protestant theologians downplayed biblical depictions of God's emotional complexity and refashioned his character according to their own notions, stressing emotional singularity. These notions came from many sources, but the major influences were the neoclassical and sentimental literary styles of characterization dominant at the time. The serene benevolence of neoclassicism and the tender sympathy of sentimentalism may have made God appealing in the mid-1800s, but by the end of the century, these styles had lost much of their cultural power and increasingly came to seem flat and vague. Despite this, both liberal and conservative theologians clung to these characterizations of God throughout the twentieth century.
Jenkins argues that a way out of this impasse can be found in romanticism, the literary style of characterization that supplanted neoclassicism and sentimentalism and dominated American literary culture throughout the twentieth century. Romanticism emphasized emotional complexity and resonated with biblical depictions of God. A few maverick religious writers-- such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, W. G. T. Shedd, and Horace Bushnell--did devise emotionally complex characterizations of God and in some cases drew directly from romanticism. But their strange andsometimes shocking depictions of God were largely forgotten in the twentieth century. s use "theological" as a pejorative term, implying that an argument is needlessly Jenkins urges a reassessment of their work and a greaterin understanding of the relationship between theology and literature. Recovering the lost literary power of American Protestantism, he claims, will make the character of God more compelling and help modern readers appreciate the peculiar power of the biblical characterization of God.

What's working and not working in your congregation? You'll explore the factors that inspired and motivated changes to reverse decline as other congregations wrestled with the same issues you're facing: ministry to current members, ministry to the unchurched, worship, changing neighborhoods, and more.