In recent years, there has been an upsurge of interest in religion and religious issues. Some have linked this to a neo-liberal form of individualism, while others noted that secularism has left people bereft of a humanly necessary link with the transcendent. The importance of identity issues has also been remarked upon. This book examines how liberal forms of religion are allowing people to engage with religion on their own terms, while also feeling part of something more universal. Looking at liberal approaches to the Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Protestant and Roman Catholic Christianity and Islam - this book teases out how postmodern culture has shaped the way in which people engage with these religions. It also compares and contrasts how liberal thinking and theology have been expressed in each of the faiths examined, as well as the reactionary responses to its emergence. By considering how liberalism has influenced the narrative around the Abrahamic faiths, this book demonstrates how malleable faith and spirituality can be. As such, it will be of interest to scholars working in Religious Studies, Theology, Sociology and Cultural Anthropology.

This book provides a serious study of Irish evangelicalism. The authors examine the social history of popular Protestantism in Ulster from the Evangelical Revival in the mid-18th century to the conflicts generated by proposals for Irish Home Rule at the end of the 19th century. Many of the central themes of the book are at the forefront of recent work on popular religion including the relationship between religion and national identity, the role of women in popular religion, the causes and consequences of religious revivalism, and the impact of social change on religious experience. The authors draw on a wide range of primary sources from the early 18th to the late 19th century. In addition, they display an impressive mastery of the wider literature on popular religion in the period. This book should be of interest to students and teachers of social history, political history, history of ideas and religious history.

John Wesley (1703-1791), leader of British Methodism, was one of the most prolific literary figures of the eighteenth century, responsible for creating and disseminating a massive corpus of religious literature and for instigating a sophisticated programme of reading, writing and publishing within his Methodist Societies. John Wesley, Practical Divinity and the Defence of Literature takes the influential genre of practical divinity as a framework for understanding Wesley's role as an author, editor and critic of popular religious writing. It asks why he advocated the literary arts as a valid aspect of his evangelical theology, and how his Christian poetics impacted upon the religious experience of his followers.

Growing Up: Pastoral Nurture for the Later Years is a sensitive volume devoted to helping older adults retain their status as meaningful members of their congregations and communities. In an honest approach, based on the foundations that old age is supposed to happen, the future belongs to the old, and vocation for people of faith is lifelong, Thomas Robb provides personal and Biblical perspectives, as well as research from over 20 years as a pastor, on the life process and the feelings, worries, and expectations accompanying growing up and growing old. He then molds these concerns into a challenge for congregations and their spiritual leaders to actively assist the aged in coping with and overcoming fears and barriers limiting the fullest expression of faith in God. This insightful book describes the tasks and suggests programs for pastors and congregations everywhere in meeting the challenge, making life for the aged more than shuffleboard and bingo, pot-luck dinners and day trips. Dimensions of pastoral ministries that nurture women and men who, at midlife and beyond, seek to find their way through the unexpected and unplanned, through the third of life following parenthood and careers, are described in detail. Pastors, church leaders, congregations, professors of courses in ministry and aging, aging church members, and seminary students will benefit immensely from the wealth of information presented in Growing Up: Pastoral Nurture for the Later Years.

Published in 1989, this bibliography considers religious seminaries that are affiliated with the various denominations of the theological institutions established in the United States by the Protestants in the early 1800s, it also considers non-denominational and independent settings. Divided into two sections, the first short section considers the relationship between the civil governments and the seminaries, the second, organized by denomination into 15 chapters provides an extensive bibliography with annotations. The work pulls together a wealth of reference material and identifies salient works, whether book, article, dissertation or essay, to provide a much-needed resource for those interested in seminary education in the United States, whether scholar, student, policy maker, or interested citizen.

A new translation with expanded introductions and annotations.

This title was first published in 2003:This book offers a bold reading of Protestant tradition from a rhetorical and literary perspective. Arguing that Protestant thought is based in a rhetorical performance of authority, Hobson draws on a wide range of modern and postmodern thought to defend this account of rhetorical authority from various charges of authoritarianism. With close readings of Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard and Barth, this book develops a new 'rhetorical theology of the Word' and also a new critique of secular modernity, with particular reference to modern literature and the thought of Nietzsche. Confronting the related issues of rhetoric and authority, Hobson provides a provocative account of modern theology which offers new perspectives on theology's relationship to literature and postmodern thought.

Spinoza is praised as a father of atheism, a precursor of the Enlightenment, an 'anti-theologian' and a father of political liberalism.A When the religious dimension of Spinoza's thought cannot be ignored, it is usually dismissed as some form of mysticism or pantheism. This book explores the positive references to Christianity presented throughout Spinoza's works, focusing particularly on the Tractatus Theologico-politicus.A Arguing that advocates of the anti-Christian or un-Christian Spinoza fail to look beyond Spinoza's ethics, which has the least to say about Christianity, Graeme Hunter offers a fresh interpretation of Spinoza's most important works and his philosophical and religious thought.A A While there isA no evidence that SpinozaA became a Christian in any formal sense,A Hunter argues thatA his aim was neither to be heretical nor atheistic, but rather to effect a radical reform of Christianity and a return to simple Biblical practices.A This book presents a unique contribution to current debate for students and specialist scholars in philosophy of religion, the history of philosophy and early modern history.

Through the lens of American Lutheranism, this book offers a unique examination into the intersection of religion, war, foreign policy, church politics, and nationalism during the contentious 1960s and 1970s. It contributes a two-pronged investigation of American history during the Vietnam War era. First, it outlines how this diverse group of Christians understood foreign policy and the churches' relationship to it. Lutherans offer a broad spectrum of religious, political, and diplomatic points of view because they never have represented a homogenous or unified group in U.S. history. Second, this investigation provides the perspective of one cross section of Americans who often remain hidden from historic memory: the silent majority as so labeled during the Richard M. Nixon administration. Most Lutherans held 'moderate' religious and political ideologies, but Lutherans also had representatives from the far left and far right. Lutherans also signify the Cold War context of this decade with a relatively uniform hostility toward the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. Yet, simultaneously they vigorously debated whether or not Communists had infiltrated U.S. institutions and contentiously disagreed about the Vietnam War. Further reflecting America at that time, by the mid-1970s they had reached a tentative reconciliation with one another because the infighting had so tired them. In doing so, they healed some of the wounds created by a decade of conflict but failed to learn lessons from the experience because they refused to dialogue further about it.

Reforms and processes of change have become an increasingly pervasive characteristic of European Protestant churches in the last fifteen to twenty years. Driven by perceptions of crises, such as declining membership rates, dwindling finances, decreasing participation in church rituals, and less support of traditional church doctrine, but also changes of governance of religion more generally, many churches feel compelled to explore new forms of operations, activities, and organisational structures. What is the inner dynamic and nature of these processes? This book explores this question by applying perspectives from organisational studies and bringing them into dialogue with ecclesiological categories, seeking to provide a richer understanding of the field of processes of change in churches. Among the questions asked are: What are the implications - organisationally and ecclesiologically - of viewing reform as a church practice, and how does this relate to much more comprehensive waves of public sector reforms? How is church leadership configured and exercised, how is democratic leadership related to the authority of ordained ministry, and how does leadership take on new forms in the context of churches? And how do churches incorporate organisational practices of planned change and renewal, such as social entrepreneurship?

From William Langland's Piers Plowman, through the highly polemicized literary culture of fifteenth-century Lollardy, to major Reformation writers such as Simon Fish, William Tyndale and John Bale, and into the 1590s, this book argues for a vital reassessment of our understanding of the literary and cultural modes of the Reformation. It argues that the ostensibly revolutionary character of early Protestant literary culture was deeply indebted to medieval satirical writing and, indeed, can be viewed as a remarkable crystallization of the textual movements and polemical personae of a rich, combative tradition of medieval writing which is still at play on the London stage in the age of Marlowe and Shakespeare. Beginning with a detailed analysis of Piers Plowman, this book traces the continued vivacity of combative satirical personae and self-fashionings that took place in an appropriative movement centred on the figure of the medieval labourer. The remarkable era of Protestant 'plowman polemics' has too often been dismissed as conventional or ephemeral writing too stylistically separate to be linked to Piers Plowman, or held under the purview of historians who have viewed such texts as sources of theological or documentary information, rather than as vital literary-cultural works in their own right. Radical Pastoral, 1381-1594 makes a vigorous case for the existence of a highly politicised tradition of 'polemical pastoral' which stretched across the whole of the sixteenth century, a tradition that has been largely marginalised by both medievalists and early modernists.

The Convent of Wesel was long believed to be a clandestine assembly of Protestant leaders in 1568 that helped establish foundations for Reformed churches in the Dutch Republic and northwest Germany. However, Jesse Spohnholz shows that that event did not happen, but was an idea created and perpetuated by historians and record keepers since the 1600s. Appropriately, this book offers not just a fascinating snapshot of Reformation history but a reflection on the nature of historical inquiry itself. The Convent of Wesel begins with a detailed microhistory that unravels the mystery and then traces knowledge about the document at the centre of the mystery over four and a half centuries, through historical writing, archiving and centenary commemorations. Spohnholz reveals how historians can inadvertently align themselves with protagonists in the debates they study and thus replicate errors that conceal the dynamic complexity of the past.

The last forty years has witnessed a 'golden age' of Quaker Studies scholarship, with the bulk of this work into the history and sociology of Quakerism being undertaken by scholars who are also Quakers. For the scholars involved, their Quakerism has both prompted their research interests and affected their lives as Quakers. This book presents a unique study into Quakerism: it draws together the key theories of Quaker origins, subsequent history, and contemporary sociology, into a single volume; and it allows each of the contributors the opportunity to reflect on what led to the initial choice of research topic, and how their findings have in turn affected their Quaker lives. The result is a unique contribution to Quaker theory as well to the discussion on insider/outsider research. This book is invaluable to anyone interested in Quakerism, research into religion, notions of outsider objectivity within academia, and areas of theology, religious history and sociology in general.

Kierkegaard has always enjoyed a rich reception in the fields of theology and religious studies. This reception might seem obvious given that he is one of the most important Christian writers of the nineteenth century, but Kierkegaard was by no means a straightforward theologian in any traditional sense. He had no enduring interest in some of the main fields of theology such as church history or biblical studies, and he was strikingly silent on many key Christian dogmas. Moreover, he harbored a degree of animosity towards the university theologians and churchmen of his own day. Despite this, he has been a source of inspiration for numerous religious writers from different denominations and traditions. Tome II is dedicated to tracing Kierkegaard's influence in Anglophone and Scandinavian Protestant religious thought. Kierkegaard has been a provocative force in the English-speaking world since the early twentieth century, inspiring almost contradictory receptions. In Britain, before World War I, the few literati who were familiar with his work tended to assimilate Kierkegaard to the heroic individualism of Ibsen and Nietzsche. In the United States knowledge of Kierkegaard was introduced by Scandinavian immigrants who brought with them a picture of the Dane as much more sympathetic to traditional Christianity. The interpretation of Kierkegaard in Britain and America during the early and mid-twentieth century generally reflected the sensibilities of the particular theological interpreter. Anglican theologians generally found Kierkegaard to be too one-sided in his critique of reason and culture, while theologians hailing from the Reformed tradition often saw him as an insightful harbinger of neo-orthodoxy. The second part of Tome II is dedicated to the Kierkegaard reception in Scandinavian theology, featuring articles on Norwegian and Swedish theologians influenced by Kierkegaard.

The first history of the deaconess movement in the United States In the late nineteenth century, a new movement arose within American Protestant Christianity. Unsalaried groups of women began living together, wearing plain dress, and performing nursing, teaching, and other works of welfare. Modeled after the lifestyles of Catholic nuns, these women became America's first deaconesses. Sanctified Sisters,the first history of the deaconess movement in the United States, traces its origins in the late nineteenth century through to its present manifestations. Drawing on archival research, demographic surveys, and material culture evidence, Jenny Wiley Legath offers new insights into who the deaconesses were, how they lived, and what their legacy has been for women in Protestant Christianity. The book argues that the deaconess movement enabled Protestant women-particularly single women-to gain power in a male-dominated Protestant world. They created hundreds of new institutions within Protestantism and created new roles for women within the church. While some who study women's ordination draw a line from the deaconesses' work to the struggle for women's ordination in various branches of Protestant Christianity, Legath argues that most deaconesses were not interested in ordination. Yet, while they didn't mean to, they did end up providing a foundation for today's ordination debates. Their very existence worked to open the possibility of ecclesiastically authorized women's agency.

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.

'a vital resource' TLS 'Compelling collection' Literary Review The Reformation was a seismic event in history whose consequences are still unfolding in Europe and across the world. Martin Luther's protests against the marketing of indulgences in 1517 were part of a long-standing pattern of calls for reform in the Christian Church. But they rapidly took a radical and unexpected turn, engulfing first Germany, and then Europe, in furious arguments about how God's will was to be 'saved'. However, these debates did not remain confined to a narrow sphere of theology. They came to reshape politics and international relations; social, cultural, and artistic developments; relations between the sexes; and the patterns and performances of everyday life. They were also the stimulus for Christianity's transformation into a truly global religion, as agents of the Roman Catholic Church sought to compensate for losses in Europe with new conversions in Asia and the Americas. Covering both Protestant and Catholic reform movements, in Europe and across the wider world, this compact volume tells the story of the Reformation from its immediate, explosive beginnings, through to its profound longer-term consequences and legacy for the modern world. The story is not one of an inevitable triumph of liberty over oppression, enlightenment over ignorance. Rather, it tells how a multitude of rival groups and individuals, with or without the support of political power, strove after visions of 'reform'. And how, in spite of themselves, they laid the foundations for the plural and conflicted world we now inhabit.

How are cathedrals and churches understood? Are they shop windows, through which to gaze at the riches on offer within the Christian life? Are they flagships of the Spirit? Are they both sacred spaces and community utilities? 'Shop-window, flagship, common ground' views the rich ministry and innovative mission of cathedrals through the novel lens of metaphor; and it offers comparative insights on cathedrals and cathedral-like churches. Located in the emerging international field of cathedral studies, the book explores the usage and inferences of a range of metaphors, including 'shop-windows of the Church of England', 'flagships of the Spirit', 'beacons of the Christian faith', 'magnets', and 'sacred space, common ground'. This volume also shows how such metaphors can stimulate different types of research about the function of cathedral and church buildings. With a Foreword by Professor Grace Davie, the book suggests that cathedrals and cathedral-like churches may play a role within 'vicarious religion' theory. It will provide a thought-provoking critique for practitioners and a valuable contribution for scholars of cathedral studies, congregational studies and ecclesiology.

Christian Theology: The Basics is a concise introduction to the nature, tasks and central concerns of theology - the study of God within the Christian tradition. Providing a broad overview of the story that Christianity tells us about our human situation before God, this book will also seek to provide encouragement and a solid foundation for the reader's further explorations within the subject. With debates surrounding the relation between faith and reason in theology, the book opens with a consideration of the basis of theology and goes on to explore key topics including: The identity of Jesus and debates in Christology The role of the Bible in shaping theological inquiry The centrality of the Trinity for all forms of Christian thinking The promise of salvation and how it is achieved. With suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter along with a glossary Christian Theology: The Basics, is the ideal starting point for those new to study of theology.

The followers of the martyred Bohemian priest Jan Hus (1371-1415) formed one of the greatest challenges to the medieval Latin Church. Branded as heretics, outlawed, then forced to fight for their faith as well as their lives, the Hussites occupy one of the most colorful and challenging chapters of European religious history. The essays reprinted in this book (along with one here first published in English and additional notes) explore the essence of the early Hussite movement by focusing on the nature and development of heresy both as accusation and identity. Heresy and Hussites in Late Medieval Europe first examines the definition of heresy, and its comparative nature across Europe. It investigates the unique practices of popular religion in local communities, while examining theology and its unavoidable conflicts. The repressive policy of crusade and the growth of martyrdom with its inevitable contribution to the formation of Hussite history is explored. The social application of religious ideas, its revolutionary outcomes, along with the intentional use of art in pedagogy and propaganda, situates the Czech heretics in the fifteenth century. An examination of leading personalities, together with the eventual and more formal church administration, rounds out the study of this remarkable era.

Throughout the world, in a great variety of cultures, divisive monuments, ceremonies, and processions assert and reinforce claims to territory, legitimacy, and dominance. These contested symbols and rituals strengthen and lend meaning to communal boundaries; confer and renew identities; and inflame tensions between groups, polarizing communities and, at times, triggering violence. In Contentious Rituals, Jonathan S. Blake focuses on one such controversial tradition: Protestant parades in the streets of Northern Ireland. Marchers say they are celebrating their culture and commemorating their history, as they have done for two centuries. Catholics see the parades as carnivals of bigotry and strident assertions of power. The result is heightened inter-communal friction and occasional violence. Drawing on over 80 interviews, an original survey, and ethnographic observations, Blake investigates why participants choose to march in parades that are known to be a primary source of sectarian conflict today. His analysis reveals their reasons for acting, the meanings supplied to them, and how they make sense of the contention that surrounds them. Ultimately, he discovers, many paraders are not interested in the politics of their actions at all, but rather in allure of the action itself: the satisfactions of joining with others to express a collective identity and carry on a cherished tradition. An insightful exploration of the characteristics and dynamics of nationalism in action, Contentious Rituals offers an innovative approach to the contested politics of culture in divided societies and a new explanation for an old source of conflict in Northern Ireland.

Awarded the Hermann-Sasse-Preis by the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany Martin Luther read and preached the biblical text as the record of God addressing real, flesh-and-blood people and their daily lives. He used stories to drive home his vision of the Christian life, a life that includes struggling against temptation, enduring suffering, praising God in worship and prayer, and serving one's neighbor in response to God's callings and commands. Leading Lutheran scholar Robert Kolb highlights Luther's use of storytelling in his preaching and teaching to show how Scripture undergirded Luther's approach to spiritual formation. With both depth and clarity, Kolb explores how Luther retold and expanded on biblical narratives in order to cultivate the daily life of faith in Christ.

The Irish Presbyterian Mind considers how one protestant community responded to the challenges posed to traditional understandings of Christian faith between 1830 and 1930. Andrew R. Holmes examines the attitudes of the leaders of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland to biblical criticism, modern historical method, evolutionary science, and liberal forms of protestant theology. He explores how they reacted to developments in other Christian traditions, including the so-called 'Romeward' trend in the established Churches of England and Ireland and the 'Romanisation' of Catholicism. Was their response distinctively Presbyterian and Irish? How was it shaped by Presbyterian values, intellectual first principles, international denominational networks, identity politics, the expansion of higher education, and relations with other Christian denominations? The story begins in the 1830s when evangelicalism came to dominate mainstream Presbyterianism, the largest protestant denomination in present-day Northern Ireland. It ends in the 1920s with the exoneration of J. E. Davey, a professor in the Presbyterian College, Belfast, who was tried for heresy on accusations of being a 'modernist'. Within this timeframe, Holmes describes the formation and maintenance of a religiously-conservative intellectual community. At the heart of the interpretation is the interplay between the Reformed theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith and a commitment to common evangelical principles and religious experience that drew protestants together from various denominations. The definition of conservative within the Presbyterian Church in Ireland moved between these two poles and could take on different forms depending on time, geography, social class, and whether the individual was a minister or a member of the laity.