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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Homer in Wittenberg draws on manuscript and printed materials to demonstrate Homer's foundational significance for educational and theological reform during the Reformation in Wittenberg. In the first study of Melanchthon's Homer annotations from three different periods spanning his career, and the first book-length study of his reading of a classical author, William Weaver offers a new perspective on the liberal arts and textual authority in the Renaissance and Reformation. Melanchthon's significance in the teaching of the liberal arts has long been recognized, but Homer's prominent place in his educational reforms is not widely known. Homer was instrumental in Melanchthon's attempt to transform the university curriculum, and his reforms of the liberal arts are clarified by his engagements with Homeric speech, a subject of interest in recent Homer scholarship. Beginning with his Greek grammar published just as he arrived in Wittenberg in 1518, and proceeding through his 1547 work on dialectic, Homer in Wittenberg shows that teaching Homer decisively shaped Melanchthon's redesign of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Melanchthon embarked on reforming the liberal arts with the ultimate objective of reforming theological education. His teaching of Homer illustrates the philosophical principles behind his use of well-known theological terms including sola scriptura, law and gospel, and loci communes. Homer's significance extended even to a practical theology of prayer, and Wittenberg scholia on Homer from the 1550s illustrate how the Homeric poem could be used to exercise faith as well as literary judgment and eloquence.

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.

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 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).

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.

Contingent Citizens features fourteen essays that track changes in the ways Americans have perceived the Latter-day Saints since the 1830s. From presidential politics, to political violence, to the definition of marriage, to the meaning of sexual equality-the editors and contributors place Mormons in larger American histories of territorial expansion, religious mission, Constitutional interpretation, and state formation. These essays also show that the political support of the Latter-day Saints has proven, at critical junctures, valuable to other political groups. The willingness of Americans to accept Latter-day Saints as full participants in the United States political system has ranged over time and been impelled by political expediency, granting Mormons in the United States an ambiguous status, contingent on changing political needs and perceptions. Contributors: Matthew C. Godfrey, Church History Library; Amy S. Greenberg, Penn State University; J. B. Haws, Brigham Young University; Adam Jortner, Auburn University; Matthew Mason, Brigham Young University; Patrick Q. Mason, Claremont Graduate University; Benjamin E. Park, Sam Houston State University; Thomas Richards, Jr., Springside Chestnut Hill Academy; Natalie Rose, Michigan State University; Stephen Eliot Smith, University of Otago; Rachel St. John, University of California Davis

This book describes the history in late 19th-century Russia and immigration to Canada of an ethnic and religious group known as Doukhobors, or Spirit Wrestlers. The book is a translation into English of the Russian original authored by Grigorii Verigin, published in 1935. The book's narrative starts with the consolidation of Doukhobor beliefs inspired by the most famous Doukhobor leader, Petr Verigin. It describes the arrival of Doukhobors in Canada, their agricultural and industrial accomplishments in Saskatchewan and British Columbia, and the clashes and misunderstandings between Doukhobors and the Canadian government. The narrative closes in 1924, with the scenes of Petr Verigin's death in a yet unresolved railway car bombing, and of his funeral. The author emphasizes the most crucial component of Doukhobor beliefs: their pacifism and unequivocal rejection of wars and military conflicts. The book highlights other aspects of Doukhobor beliefs as well, including global community, brotherhood and equality of all the people on earth, kind treatment of animals, vegetarianism, as well as abstinence from alcohol and tobacco. It also calls for social justice, tolerance, and diversity.

This book explores the impact of the sixteenth-century Reformation on the plays of William Shakespeare. Taking three fundamental Protestant concerns of the era - (double) predestination, conversion, and free will - it demonstrates how Protestant theologians, in England and elsewhere, re-imagined these longstanding Christian concepts from a specifically Protestant perspective. Shakespeare utilizes these insights to generate his distinctive view of human nature and the relationship between humans and God. Through in-depth readings of the Shakespeare comedies 'The Merry Wives of Windsor', 'Much Ado About Nothing', 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', and 'Twelfth Night', the romance 'A Winter's Tale', and the tragedies of 'Macbeth' and 'Hamlet', this book examines the results of almost a century of Protestant thought upon literary art.