This book highlights the expansion of the influential Pentecostal Hillsong Church global megachurch network from Australia across global cities. Ethnographic research in Amsterdam and New York City shows that global cities harbor nodes in transnational religious networks in which media play a crucial role. By taking a lived religion approach, media is regarded as integral part of everyday practices of interaction, expression and consumption of religion. Key question raised is how processes of mediatization shape, alter and challenge this thriving cosmopolitan expression of Pentecostalism. Current debates in the study of religion are addressed: religious belonging and community in global cities; the interrelation between media technology, religious practices and beliefs; religion, media and social engagement in global cities; media and emerging modes of religious leadership and authority. In this empirical study, pressing societal issues like institutional responses to sexual abuse of children, views on gender roles, misogyny and mediated constructions of femininity are discussed.

This is a study of the organized anti-Catholic movement in nineteenth-century Britain. The passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 was in some respects a triumph for religious toleration, but it was followed by a substantial Protestant backlash. This was further stimulated by the theological and evangelistic concerns of evangelicals, the growth of Catholicism in Britain, and the political actions of Irish and British Tories. In this meticulously researched book, John Wolffe examines the anti-Catholic societies which played an important part in the shaping of public opinion, and which exercised significant leverage on politics, notably in 1834-5 and between 1845 and 1855. He explores the cultural and social dimensions of anti-Catholicism, relating them to the values and impact of evangelicalism at a variety of social levels. The Protestant Crusade in Great Britain makes an important contribution to our understanding of Victorian religion, particularly in respect of the interaction between England, Ireland, and Scotland. Dr Wolffe demonstrates that, while the Protestant crusade failed in terms of most of its specific objectives, its impact on the life of the nation was nevertheless far-reaching.

This third volume completes the text of the cycle of 294 English Wycliffite sermons; the first two volumes appeared in 1983 and 1987 respectively. The 120 sermons here were intended to provide material for all the weekday occasions for which the Sarum rite offers a separate gospel reading; such complete coverage of ferial days is unparalleled in English medieval homiliaries, and seems unknown elsewhere in contemporary European cycles of sermons. The introduction to the present book, which is intended to be used along with the material in the previous volumes, describes the state of the text in these manuscripts and their relation to each other. Two further chapters consider questions relating to the whole cycle: the fidelity of the biblical translation in the sermons to the Vulgate texts; and the complicated issue of the relation between these English sermons and the Latin sermons of John Wyclif himself (this chapter is by Pamela Gradon). A fourth volume will provide a commentary on the individual sermons, consider the recurrent issues discussed within them, and offer suggestions concerning the origins of the collection.

These Lollard sermons are edited from British Library MS Additional 41321; Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson c.751; Manchester, John Rylands Library MS 412; with introductory sections: I. The Manuscripts, by Jeremy Griffiths, and II. The Language, by Jeremy Smith; and three other introductions written by Gloria Cigman which contain extensive information about the texts and the manuscripts. They are distinctive in their intense preoccupation with the role of the preacher and the exposition of the scriptures, and in the total absence of narrative exempla. They were evidently composed for both popular transmission and as a manual for the preacher, who is sometimes urged to elaborate, or directed to other material relevant to his theme, or offered multiple exegesis for his own instruction and from which to select when preaching. There is a consistent flavour of popular Lollardy in the vocabulary and attitudes expressed. Marked differences between the sermons, however, suggest more than one sermon-writer and an overall intention to demonstrate different preaching methods. This edition includes an introductory discussion, glossary, and notes to the text, together with a two-part index of scriptural texts, one sermon by sermon, the other alphabetical.

The treatises in this volume were first published when the persecution of nonconformists was reaching a fierce climax. Seasonable Counsel, subtitled Advice to Sufferers, presents Bunyan's reflections on how believers were to understand and respond to this experience. His own sufferings are reflected in his essentially practical discussion of the many issues raised and in the vigorous speech-based language of the mature preacher and writer. A Discourse upon the Pharisee and the Publicane is an exposition of the parable in Luke xviii. The work gives Bunyan's ultimate thoughts on justification by faith, which show a development from his earlier position. There is a shrewd analysis of the characters, with a lively and original discussion of body language. The introduction to this volume relates Bunyan's arguments and experience to their context, including contemporary ideas on persecution and toleration and on the connection between faith and justification.

Pentecostalism is a growing movement in world Christianity. However, the growth of Pentecostalism in South Africa has faced some challenges, including the abuse of religion by some prophets. This book first names these prophets and the churches they lead in South Africa, and then makes use of literary and media analysis to analyse the religious practices by the prophets in relation to cultism. Additionally, the book analyses the "celebrity cult" and how it helps promote the prophets in South Africa. The purpose of this book is threefold: First, to draw parallels between the abuse of religion and cultism. Second, to illustrate that it is cultic tendencies, including the celebrity cult, that has given rise to many prophets in South Africa. Last, to showcase that the challenge for many of these prophets is that the Pentecostal tradition is actually anti-cultism, and thus there is a need for them to rethink their cultic tendencies in order for them to be truly relevant in a South African context.

This third volume in a twelve-volume series provides reliable, modern scholarly texts for three important but lesser-known works, all of which were written in the mid-1660s, early in Bunyan's career, while he was imprisoned in Bedford. Christian Behaviour is a manual of the good works required of the Christians towards their families and neighbors, The Holy City a rapturous meditation on the millennial kingdom of Christ, and The Resurrection of the Dead a defense of the doctrine of bodily resurrection. Each presents themes later developed in Bunyan's famous allegories, offering insight into the development of Bunyan's thought and the background of his greatest achievements.

A scholarly edition of The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan: Barren Fig-Tree; Strait Gate; Heavenly Footman by Graham Midgley. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

A scholarly edition of The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan: Good News for the Vilest of Men; The Advocateship of Jesus Christ by Richard L. Greaves. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

`A major contribution to our understanding of the English Revolution.' Ann Hughes, Professor of Early Modern History, Keele University. John Goodwin [1594-1665] was one of the most prolific and controversial writers of the English Revolution; his career illustrates some of the most important intellectual developments of the seventeenth century. Educated at Queens'College, Cambridge, he became vicar of a flagship Puritan parish in the City of London. During the 1640s, he wrote in defence of the civil war, the army revolt, Pride's Purge, and the regicide, only to turn against Cromwell in 1657. Finally, repudiating religious uniformity, he became one of England's leading tolerationists. This richly contextualised study, the first modern intellectual biography of Goodwin, explores the whole range of writingsproduced by him and his critics. Amongst much else, it shows that far from being a maverick individualist, Goodwin enjoyed a wide readership, pastored one of the London's largest Independent congregations and was well connected tovarious networks. Hated and admired by Anglicans, Presbyterians and Levellers, he provides us with a new perspective on contemporaries like Richard Baxter and John Milton. It will be of special interest to students of Puritanism,the English Revolution, and early modern intellectual history. JOHN COFFEY is Reader in Early Modern History at the University of Leicester.

Martin Luther - monk, priest, intellectual, or revolutionary - has been a controversial figure since the sixteenth century. Most studies of Luther stress his personality, his ideas, and his ambitions as a church reformer. In this book, Christopher Ocker brings a new perspective to this topic, arguing that the different ways people thought about Luther mattered far more than who he really was. Providing an accessible, highly contextual, and non-partisan introduction, Ocker says that religious conflict itself served as the engine of religious change. He shows that the Luther affair had a complex political anatomy which extended far beyond the borders of Germany, making the debate an international one from the very start. His study links the Reformation to pluralism within western religion and to the coexistence of religions and secularism in today's world. Luther, Conflict, and Christendom includes a detailed chronological chart.

This book analyses the most sung contemporary congregational songs (CCS) as a global music genre. Utilising a three-part music semiology, this research engages with producers, musical texts, and audiences/congregations to better understand contemporary worship for the modern church and individual Christians. Christian Copyright Licensing International data plays a key role in identifying the most sung CCS, while YouTube mediations of these songs and their associated data provide the primary texts for analysis. Producers and the production milieu are explored through interviews with some of the highest profile worship leaders/songwriters including Ben Fielding, Darlene Zschech, Matt Redman, and Tim Hughes, as well as other music industry veterans. Finally, National Church Life Survey data and a specialized survey provide insight into individual Christians' engagement with CCS. Daniel Thornton shows how these perspectives taken together provide unique insight into the current global CCS genre, and into its possible futures.

Ireland has long been regarded as a 'land of saints and scholars'. Yet the Irish experience of Christianity has never been simple or uncomplicated. The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland describes the emergence, long dominance, sudden division, and recent decline of Ireland's most important religion, as a way of telling the history of the island and its peoples. Throughout its long history, Christianity in Ireland has lurched from crisis to crisis. Surviving the hostility of earlier religious cultures and the depredations of Vikings, evolving in the face of Gregorian reformation in the 11th and 12th centuries and more radical protestant renewal from the 16th century, Christianity has shaped in foundational ways how the Irish have understood themselves and their place in the world. And the Irish have shaped Christianity, too. Their churches have staffed some of the religion's most important institutions and developed some of its most popular ideas. But the Irish church, like the island, is divided. After 1922, a border marked out two jurisdictions with competing religious politics. The southern state turned to the Catholic church to shape its social mores, until it emerged from an experience of sudden-onset secularization to become one of the most progressive nations in Europe. The northern state moved more slowly beyond the protestant culture of its principal institutions, but in a similar direction of travel. In 2021, fifteen hundred years on from the birth of Saint Columba, Christian Ireland appears to be vanishing. But its critics need not relax any more than believers ought to despair. After the failure of several varieties of religious nationalism, what looks like irredeemable failure might actually be a second chance. In the ruins of the church, new Columbas and Patricks shape the rise of another Christian Ireland.

This collection of essays examines the traumatic religious upheavals of early- and mid-sixteenth century England from the point of view of the early Protestants, a group which has been seriously neglected by recent scholarship. Leading British and American scholars re-examine early Protestantism, arguing that it was a complex movement which could have evolved in a number of directions. They explore its approach to issues of gender roles, the place of printing and print culture, and the ways in which Protestantism continued to be influenced by medieval religious culture.

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.

Written by a leading expert on the Puritans, this brief, informative volume offers a wealth of background on this key religious movement. This book traces the shaping, triumph, and decline of the Puritan world, while also examining the role of religion in the shaping of American society and the role of the Puritan legacy in American history. Francis J. Bremer discusses the rise of Puritanism in the English Reformation, the struggle of the reformers to purge what they viewed as the corruptions of Roman Catholicism from the Elizabethan church, and the struggle with the Stuart monarchs that led to a brief Puritan triumph under Oliver Cromwell. It also examines the effort of Puritans who left England to establish a godly kingdom in America. Bremer examines puritan theology, views on family and community, their beliefs about the proper relationship between religion and public life, the limits of toleration, the balance between individual rights and one's obligation to others, and the extent to which public character should be shaped by private religious belief.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

This book presents a comprehensive account of the historical development of the Charismatic Movement in Taiwan, placing it within the context of Taiwan's religious and political history. Judith C. P. Lin unearths invaluable sources of the Japan Apostolic Mission, the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International Formosa Chapter, and Jean Stone Willans' short stay in Taiwan in 1968. Lin describes and analyzes how the efforts of 1970s charismatic missionaries in Taiwan-including Pearl Young, Nicholas Krushnisky, Donald Dale, Allen J. Swanson, and Ross Paterson-shaped the theological convictions of later Taiwanese charismatic leaders. She also explores significant developments in the Taiwanese Church which contributed to the gradual and widespread recognition of the Charismatic Movement in Taiwan from 1980 to 1995. Lin offers a thorough treatment of history, reconfigures historiography from a Taiwanese perspective, and challenges the academic circle to take seriously the "Taiwanese consciousness" when engaging Taiwan's history.

A choice lies before you: Either waste your life or live with risk. Either sit on the sidelines or get in the game. After all, life was no cakewalk for Jesus, and he didn't promise it would be any easier for his followers. We shouldn't be surprised by resistance and persecution. Yet most of us play it safe.
We pursue comfort. We spend ourselves to get more stuff. And we prefer to be entertained. We are all tempted by the idea of security, the possibility of a cozy Christianity with no hell at the end. But what kind of life is that really? It's a far cry from adventurous and abundant, from truly rich and really full, and it's certainly not the heights and the depths Jesus calls us to.
Discover in these pages a foundation for fearlessness. Hear God's promise to go with you into the unknown. And let Risk Is Right help you see the joys of a faith-filled and seriously rewarding life of Jesus-dependent abandon
Risk Is Right is a significantly expanded version of a chapter previously published in the book Don't Waste Your Life (chapter 5).

This book investigates the life and leadership of Lewi Pethrus, a monumental figure in Swedish and international Pentecostalism. Joel Halldorf describes Pethrus' role in the emergence of Pentecostalism in Sweden, the ideals and practices of Swedish Pentecostalism, and the movement's turn to professional party politics. When Pentecostals in the USA ventured into politics, they became allied with the Republican party, and later Donald Trump. The Swedish Pentecostals took another route: while culturally conservative, they embraced the progressive economic politics of the Social Democratic party. During the 2010s, they have also rejected the nationalism of the growing populist movement. Halldorf analyzes and explains these differences between Swedish evangelicals and Pentecostals on the one hand, and the Religious Right in the USA on the other.

Paul Freston's book is a pioneering comparative study of the political aspects of the new mass evangelical Protestantism of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia. The book examines twenty-seven countries from the three major continents of the Third World, burrowing deep into the specificities of each country's religious and political fields. The conclusion looks at the implications of evangelical politics for democracy, nationalism and globalization. This unique account of the politics of global evangelicalism will be of interest across disciplines and in many different parts of the world.

Lutheran theology and religious practice re-shaped traditions from the ritual heritage of the Medieval Latin Church. Throughout the cultural history of European Lutheran areas, what came to be seen as 'the arts' may be discussed in the light of (changing) Lutheran traditions: the cultural heritage of Martin Luther. This volume presents a collection of nine essays on Lutheran traditions and the arts within the 500 years since the Reformation, as a special issue of the journal 'Transfiguration' in connection with the Tenth International Congress for Luther Research hosted at the Department of Church History, University of Copenhagen.

A scholarly edition of The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan: The Poems by Graham Midgley. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

For 50 years, Margaret Mead told Americans how cultures worked, and Americans listened. While serving as a curator at the American Museum of Natural History and as a professor of anthropology at Columbia University, she published dozens of books and hundreds of articles, scholarly and popular, on topics ranging from adolescence to atomic energy, Polynesian kinship networks to kindergarten, national morale to marijuana. At her death in 1978, she was the most famous anthropologist in the world and one of the best-known women in America. She had amply achieved her goal, as she described it to an interviewer in 1975, "To have lived long enough to be of some use." As befits her prominence, Mead has had many biographers, but there is a curious hole at the center of these accounts: Mead's faith. Margaret Mead: A Twentieth-Century Faith introduces a side of its subject that few people know. It re-narrates her life and reinterprets her work, highlighting religious concerns. Following Mead's lead, it ranges across areas that are typically kept academically distinct: anthropology, gender studies, intellectual history, church history, and theology. It is a portrait of a mind at work, pursuing a unique vision of the good of the world.