With the decision to provide of a scholarly edition of the Works of John Wesley in the 1950s, Methodist Studies emerged as a fresh academic venture. Building on the foundation laid by Frank Baker, Albert Outler, and other pioneers of the discipline, this handbook provides an overview of the best current scholarship in the field. The forty-two included essays are representative of the voices of a new generation of international scholars, summarising and expanding on topical research, and considering where their work may lead Methodist Studies in the future.
Thematically ordered, the handbook provides new insights into the founders, history, structures, and theology of Methodism, and into ongoing developments in the practice and experience of the contemporary movement. Key themes explored include worship forms, mission, ecumenism, and engagement with contemporary ethical and political debate.

This is a collection of texts on prayer, taken from Greek and Russian sources. The spiritual teaching of the Orthodox Church appears here in its classic and traditional form, but expressed in unusually direct and vivid language. The Art of Prayer is concerned in particular with the most frequently used and best loved of all Orthodox prayers - the Jesus Prayer. It deals also with the general question 'What is Prayer?', with the different degrees of prayer from ordinary oral prayer to unceasing prayer of the heart, with the dangers of illusion and discouragement, and the need for seclusion and inner peace.

Robert Frykenberg's insightful study explores and enhances historical understandings of Christian communities, cultures, and institutions within the Indian world from their beginnings down to the present. As one out of several manifestations of a newly emerging World Christianity, in which Christians of a Post-Christian West are a minority, it has focused upon those trans-cultural interactions within Hindu and Muslim environments which have made Christians in this part of the world distinctive. It seeks to uncover various complexities in the proliferation of Christianity in its many forms and to examine processes by which Christian elements intermingled with indigenous cultures and which resulted in multiple identities, and also left imprints upon various cultures of India.
Thomas Christians believe that the Apostle Thomas came to India in 52 A.D./C.E., and that he left seven congregations to carry on the Mission of bringing the Gospel to India. In our day the impulse of this Mission is more alive than ever. Catholics, in three hierarchies, have become most numerous; and various Evangelicals/Protestant communities constitute the third great tradition. With the rise of Pentecostalism, a fourth great wave of Christian expansion in India has occurred. Starting with movements that began a century ago, there are now ten to fifteen times more missionaries than ever before, virtually all of them Indian. Needless to say, Christianity in India is profoundly Indian and Frykenberg provides a fascinating guide to its unique history and culture.

This reference work incorporates the insights and expertise of leading liturgists and scholars of liturgy at work today, comprising 200 entries on important topics in the field, from vestments and offertories to ordination and divine unction. It is systematically organized and alphabetically arranged for ease of use. It also includes comprehensive bibliographies and reading lists, to bring the work fully up to date and to encourage further reading and research.

The dramatic events of the days leading up to Easter Sunday are expressed through biblical readings and the reflections of several well-known Iona Community members: Ruth Burgess - Jan Sutch Pickard - Tom Gordon - Brian Woodcock - Peter Millar - Kathy Galloway - Leith Fisher - Joy Mead - John Davies - Yvonne Morland Connecting the denials, betrayals, suffering and eventual new dawn of this life-changing week with what is happening in our own world today, this book accompanies the reader as an insightful guide. To travel through Holy Week with awareness leads to a greater understanding of God and ourselves.

From the moment that Tsars as well as hierarchs realized that having their subjects go to confession could make them better citizens as well as better Christians, the sacrament of penance in the Russian empire became a political tool, a devotional exercise, a means of education, and a literary genre. It defined who was Orthodox, and who was 'other.' First encouraging Russian subjects to participate in confession to improve them and to integrate them into a reforming Church and State, authorities then turned to confession to integrate converts of other nationalities. But the sacrament was not only something that state and religious authorities sought to impose on an unwilling populace. Confession could provide an opportunity for carefully crafted complaint. What state and church authorities initially imagined as a way of controlling an unruly population could be used by the same population as a way of telling their own story, or simply getting time off to attend to their inner lives. Good for the Souls brings Russia into the rich scholarly and popular literature on confession, penance, discipline, and gender in the modern world, and in doing so opens a key window onto church, state, and society. It draws on state laws, Synodal decrees, archives, manuscript repositories, clerical guides, sermons, saints' lives, works of literature, and visual depictions of the sacrament in those books and on church iconostases. Russia, Ukraine, and Orthodox Christianity emerge both as part of the European, transatlantic religious continuum-and, in crucial ways, distinct from it.

The Sacraments of baptism and confirmation are called the sacraments of enlightenment. They are called this because they illuminate the Christian heart and invite us into a community of enlightenment and wisdom. They are the essential passages through which Christians pass in their progressive understanding of the divine. In Come to the Light, Richard Fragomeni meditates on the meaning of the elements that make up baptism and confirmation: water, fire, and oil. Water is the wave into which we are plunged that brings both life and death, that draws us down deep into God. Fire is the refining purity and the passion for God that transforms our souls. The oil is the balm that soothes us and anoints us as we move to a different state in our relationship with God.

How can the Body and Blood of Christ, without ever leaving heaven, come to be really present on eucharistic altars where the bread and wine still seem to be? Thirteenth and fourteenth century Christian Aristotelians thought the answer had to be "transubstantiation."
Acclaimed philosopher, Marilyn McCord Adams, investigates these later medieval theories of the Eucharist, concentrating on the writings of Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham, with some reference to Peter Lombard, Hugh of St. Victor, and Bonaventure. She examines how their efforts to formulate and integrate this theological datum provoked them to make significant revisions in Aristotelian philosophical theories regarding the metaphysical structure and location of bodies, differences between substance and accidents, causality and causal powers, and fundamental types of change. Setting these developments in the theological context that gave rise to the question draws attention to their understandings of the sacraments and their purpose, as well as to their understandings of the nature and destiny of human beings.
Adams concludes that their philosophical modifications were mostly not ad hoc, but systematic revisions that made room for transubstantiation while allowing Aristotle still to describe what normally and naturally happens. By contrast, their picture of the world as it will be (after the last judgment) seems less well integrated with their sacramental theology and their understandings of human nature.

This essay collection, devoted to exploring the richness of Christian musical traditions in the Americas, reflects the distinctive critical perspectives of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music, an association of scholars dedicated to exploring the intersections of Christian faith and musical scholarship. Now in our sixteenth year, we seek to celebrate our work in the world and bring it to a larger audience by offering a cross- section of the most outstanding scholarship from an international array of writers. The proposed collection follows a first collection published to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the Society (Exploring Christian Song, M. Jennifer Bloxam and AndrewShenton, editors, Lexington Books, 2017). That first volume focused on Christian song in a variety of different contexts. Our proposed collection surveys a broad geographical areaand demonstrates the enormous diversity of music-making and scholarship within that area. While there are some studies that focus on a single country or region and its sacred music (see the literature survey below), this will be the first collection to present a representative cross-section of the range of sacred music in the Americas and the approaches to studying them in context. The essays in this collection are ecumenical, reflecting the breadth of Christian traditions. The essays include several by distinguished senior scholars in the field (including David Music, Baylor University; and Jeff Warren, Quest University, Canada). Several essays are by noted specialists in the field (including Jesse Karlsberg, Emory University; and Cathy Ann Elias, DePaul University), and several by younger scholars (including Hannah Denecke, Florida State University; and Natasha Walsh, York University, Canada). SCSM is particularly keen to promote the work of students. The work of these rising stars thus appears alongside the work of veteran scholars working in the area of Christian sacred music, ensuring a stimulating mix of subjects, viewpoints, and methodologies.

An examination of interactions between sight and hearing in Italian church decoration from 1260-1320. Giotto and other artists used naturalism to activate worshipers' spiritual listening, a source of anxiety for authorities in this "age of vision." This book has received the Weiss-Brown Publication Subvention Award from the Newberry Library, supporting the publication of outstanding works on European civilization before 1700 in the areas of music, theater, French or Italian literature, and cultural studies.

This is a book for pacesetters -- church leaders who desire to help their churches break free of the things that turn them in on themselves and keep them from being outward-looking and outward-moving communities of Jesus Christ. The ingrown church is a common phenomenon. It is the 'norm' for contemporary evangelical and Protestant churches. But ingrownness is a pathology. It can destroy the vital spiritual health of a church. It must, therefore, be combated with the norms of Scripture. And that is why this book was written. Outgrowing the Ingrown Church is a masterful mix of biblical principle, objective analysis, and personal experience. It traces the author's own growing awareness of the problem of ingrownness in his calling as a pastor, seminary professor, and evangelist/missionary. In his own discovery of the power and presence of God he discovered the tendency of the church to live by its own power and resources. This is a book written to help change churches by changing the individuals who read it. It offers one an unparalleled challenge to be evaluated, revitalized, and then used by God for the work of ministry. Thus it is a book not merely for pastors, but for the whole body of Christ. 'I have never been as excited about any book concerning church growth as when I read this book . . . . (His biblical) principles, if followed, transform individual lives and then lead to a movement within a church to change the whole congregation, ' writes John Guest in the foreword

Hymns and the music the church sings are tangible means of expressing worship. As worship is one of the central functions of the church and it occupies a prime focus, a renewed sense of awareness to our theological presuppositions and cultural cues must be maintained to ensure a proper focus in worship. Hymns and Hymnody is an introductory textbook in three volumes describing the most influential hymnists, liturgists, and musical movements of the church. This academically grounded resource evaluates both the historical and theological perspectives of the major hymnists and composers that have impacted the church over the course of twenty centuries. Volume 1 explores the early church and concludes with the Renaissance era hymnists. Each chapter contains five elements: historical background, theological perspectives communicated in their hymns/compositions, contribution to liturgy and worship, notable hymns, and bibliography. The missions of Hymns and Hymnody are to provide biographical data on influential hymn writers for students and interested laypeople, and to provide a theological analysis of what the cited composers have communicated in the theology of their hymns. It is vital for those involved in leading the worship of the church to recognize that what they communicate is in fact theology. This latter aspect is missing in accessible formats for the current literature.

The second of four volumes containing the edited texts, commentaries and source notes for each of the nearly nine hundred occasions of special worship and for each of the annual commemorations in England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Since the sixteenth century, the governments and established churches of the British Isles have summoned the nation to special acts of public worship during periods of anxiety and crisis, at times of celebration, or for annual commemoration and remembrance. These special prayers, special days of worship and anniversary commemorations were national events, reaching into every parish in England and Wales, in Scotland, and in Ireland. They had considerable religious, ecclesiastical, political, ideological, moral and social significance, and they produced important texts: proclamations, council orders, addresses and - in England and Wales, and in Ireland - prayers or complete liturgieswhich for specified periods supplemented or replaced the services in the Book of Common Prayer. Many of these acts of special worship and most of the texts have escaped historical notice. National Prayers. Special Worship since the Reformation, in four volumes, provides the edited texts, commentaries and source notes for each of the nearly nine hundred occasions of special worship, and for each of the annual commemorations. The second volume,General Fasts, Thanksgivings and Special Prayers in the British Isles 1689-1870, contains the texts and commentaries for the numerous and frequent special prayers, fast days and thanksgivings during the wars which consolidated the 1688 revolution, through the long imperial wars of the eighteenth century, and the wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France, as well as prayers and thanksgivings associated with Jacobite risings, epidemics, socialunrest, and episodes in the lives of the kings and queens.

This study proceeds historically, from the origins of the Eucharist up to our own day. Unlike most studies of this kind, it includes an introduction to and developmental summary of the diverse Eucharistic liturgies of the Christian East. It also explores the various Western rites (Ambrosian, Gallican, and Mozarabic) in addition to the Roman. With regard to theological themes, the authors give special attention to the topics of real presence (including the "consecration" of the bread and wine) and eucharistic sacrifice, the most central and most ecumenically challenging issues since the sixteenth-century Reformations. Making the book especially teacher- and student-friendly are the summary points at the end of each chapter. Each chapter also contains an abundance of liturgical texts for ease of reference.