Emphasizes the English hymn as a literary entity within denominational and historical contexts. The author sets forth a number of definitions for hymnody and congregational song, and then examines the development of the various forms in England and the United States. With a listing of works for further reading, an index to all hymns discussed, and chronology.

You can know undeniably that Jesus is real and fully-present, even when your feelings and circumstances scream the opposite.

Best-selling author and journalist Max Davis had his life turned upside down when he experienced a supernatural encounter with a nine-year-old, nonverbal, autistic boy named Josiah Cullen. This special boy, who lived in Minnesota, had prophetic visions and messages from God about Max, who lived in Louisiana, even though the two had never met or had any contact. These messages, which Josiah typed with one finger, were packed with amazing biblical insight and highly detailed specifics about Max's life--details that Josiah could not possibly have known unless they were revealed to him by the Holy Spirit.

As a skeptical journalist who pursues truth, Max gained undeniable evidence that God is real and knows us personally. Even more compelling is that the prophetic messages centered around Max's personal prayer life. Just like in John 1:48 when Jesus let Nathanael know He saw him praying under the fig tree, through Josiah, God was letting Max know that He sees us when we pray too, even though circumstances often scream the opposite. Life can be brutal, and we tend to equate pain and struggle with the absence of God. Yet nothing could be further from the truth! Regardless of how things may appear, Jesus is real, alive, and fully present, and living in that awareness changes everything.

In Jesus, Josiah, and Me, Max Davis shows you that it is possible to encounter the living Jesus in a richer and more tangible way--that you can cultivate an awareness of His reality and know your prayers are affecting outcomes. More than an amazing account of Max's encounter with an autistic boy that sparks faith and hope, it's a story that unveils the mystery of experiencing God's presence and power like never before!

This book will encourage your faith by showing you that you can encounter the living Jesus in a richer and more tangible way. It will unveil the mystery of experiencing God's presence and power like never before.

A.W. Tozer maintained that a theologian's message must be 'both timeless and timely', a sentiment borne out in the fact that his writing on worship still acts as an urgent warning today. Tozer is primarily concerned with the loss of the concept of 'majesty' from the popular mind and more importantly from the thinking of the church. He sees the church as having surrendered her once lofty concept of God - not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge. With this comes a further loss of religious awe and a sense of the divine presence, of an appropriate spirit of worship and of our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. Tozer addresses this problem, to go back to the causes of the decline and to understand and correct the errors that have given rise to our devotional poverty. 'It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate,' he tells us. What is needed is a restoration of our knowledge of the holy.

This volume of the Jerusalem Talmud publishes the first two tractates of the Second Order, Sabbat and 'Eruvin. These tractates deal with discussion of all regulations regarding Shabbat, the weekly day of rest, including the activities prohibited on Shabbat. The tractate 'Eruvin covers questions of definition of what is allowed to do on Shabbat.

Since the 1950s, millions of American Christians have traveled to the Holy Land to visit places in Israel and the Palestinian territories associated with Jesus's life and death. Why do these pilgrims choose to journey halfway around the world? How do they react to what they encounter, and how do they understand the trip upon return? This book places the answers to these questions into the context of broad historical trends, analyzing how the growth of mass-market evangelical and Catholic pilgrimage relates to changes in American Christian theology and culture over the last sixty years, including shifts in Jewish-Christian relations, the growth of small group spirituality, and the development of a Christian leisure industry. Drawing on five years of research with pilgrims before, during and after their trips, Walking Where Jesus Walked offers a lived religion approach that explores the trip's hybrid nature for pilgrims themselves: both ordinary--tied to their everyday role as the family's ritual specialists, and extraordinary--since they leave home in a dramatic way, often for the first time. Their experiences illuminate key tensions in contemporary US Christianity between material evidence and transcendent divinity, commoditization and religious authority, domestic relationships and global experience. Hillary Kaell crafts the first in-depth study of the cultural and religious significance of American Holy Land pilgrimage after 1948. The result sheds light on how Christian pilgrims, especially women, make sense of their experience in Israel-Palestine, offering an important complement to top-down approaches in studies of Christian Zionism and foreign policy.

The modern chasm between "secular" work and "sacred" worship has had a devastating impact on Western Christianity. Drawing on years of research, ministry, and leadership experience, Kaemingk and Willson explain why Sunday morning worship and Monday morning work desperately need to inform and impact one another. Together they engage in a rich biblical, theological, and historical exploration of the deep and life-giving connections between labor and liturgy. In so doing, Kaemingk and Willson offer new ways in which Christian communities can live seamless lives of work and worship.

This volume proposes a fresh strategy for ecumenical engagement -- "Receptive Ecumenism" -- that is fitted to the challenges of the contemporary context and has already been internationally recognized as making a distinctive and important new contribution to ecumenical thought and practice. Beyond this, the volume tests and illustrates this proposal by examining what Roman Catholicism in particular might fruitfully learn from its ecumenical others.
Challenging the tendency for ecumenical studies to ask, whether explicitly or implicitly, "What do our others need to learn from us?" this volume presents a radical challenge to see ecumenism move forward into action by highlighting the opposite question "hat can we learn with integrity from our others?"
This approach is not simply ecumenism as shared mission, or ecumenism as problem-solving and incremental agreement but ecumenism as a vital long-term program of individual, communal and structural conversion driven, like the Gospel that inspires it, by the promise of conversion into greater life and flourishing. The aim is for the Christian traditions to become more, not less, than they currently are by learning from, or receiving of, each other's gifts.
The 32 original essays that have been written for this unique volume explore these issues from a wide variety of denominational and disciplinary perspectives, drawing together ecclesiologists, professional ecumenists, sociologists, psychologists, and organizational experts.

Inspired by Father Alfred Delp, who wrote a meditation titled The Shaking Reality of Advent while imprisoned by the Nazis during WWII, Bishop Peter B. Price has written a series of reflections and prayers to be read on each day of Advent. Each reflection is written that we may be 'shaken and brought to a realisation of our selves', in order to gain a new understanding of God's promise of redemption and release.

Christian Tourist Attractions, Mythmaking, and Identity Formation examines a sampling of contemporary Christian tourist attractions that position visitors as the inheritors of ancient, sacred traditions and make claims about the truth of the historical narratives that they promote. Rather than approaching these attractions as sacred expressions of religious experience or as uncontested accounts of history, the book applies recent work on mythmaking and identity formation to argue that these presentations of the past function as strategic discourses that serve material concerns in the present. From an approach informed by social and materialist theories of religion, the volume draws upon a variety of methodological approaches that enable readers to understand the often-bewildering array of objects, claims, demands, and activities (not to mention the seemingly endless array of gifts and personal items available for purchase) that appear at attractions including Ark Encounter, the Creation Museum, the Holy Land Experience, Bible Walk Museum, Christian Zionist tours of Israel, and the recently opened Museum of the Bible. Discourse analysis, practice theory, rhetorical criticism, and embodied theories of cognition help make sense not only of the Christian tourist attractions under examination but also of the ways that "religion" is entangled with contemporary social, political, and economic interests more broadly.

Mary Colwell makes a 500-mile solo pilgrimage along the Camino Frances, winding through forests, mountains, farmland, industrial sprawls and places of worship, weaving her experiences of the Camino with natural history, spirituality and modern environmentalism. Ancient pathways through the modern world are gathering places for contemplation and touch-points for unexpected kindness, intense spirituality, demon-slaying, strange goings-on and magical tales. Pilgrims pitch themselves against heat, cold, wet, dry, hunger, thirst, and sometimes pain as the nature around them offers succour, medicine and, at times, warnings. Pilgrimages are physical journeys through space as well as metaphysical journeys through time. The same tracks follow the same routes through a planet always in flux, providing still points in a turning world. Our ancestors trod them before us and left their fretful or hopeful dreams in monuments scattered across the landscape. These ornate cathedrals, standing stones, mysterious caves and secret hermitages speak of a hunger for pardon, immortality, beauty and a release from fear. Yet, undertaking a pilgrimage is acknowledging that while the world may change, humanity does not. Pilgrims have always walked in times of upheaval. In Gathering Places, author, nature campaigner and veteran solo walker Mary Colwell relates her pilgrimage along the Camino Frances in a time of global pandemic when the focus of political power in the western world was shifting. The 500 miles of pathways of the Camino wind through mountains, forests, farmland, plains, cities, villages and industrial sprawl, as well as places of worship. In a typical year, 100,000 people walk this route or part of it. Mary walked the entire path virtually alone, nature her only fellow traveller. In this delightful book, she weaves her experiences of the Camino with natural history, history, spiritual stories and modern environmentalism.

The Bible is meant to be read in the church, by the church, as the church. Although the practice of reading Scripture has often become separated from its ecclesial context, theologian Derek Taylor argues that it rightly belongs to the disciplines of the community of faith. He finds a leading example of this approach in the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who regarded the reading of Scripture as an inherently communal exercise of discipleship. In conversation with other theologians, including John Webster, Robert Jenson, and Stanley Hauerwas, Taylor contends that Bonhoeffer's approach to Scripture can engender the practices and habits of a faithful hermeneutical community. Today, as in Bonhoeffer's time, the church is called to take up and read. Featuring new monographs with cutting-edge research, New Explorations in Theology provides a platform for constructive, creative work in the areas of systematic, historical, philosophical, biblical, and practical theology.

This book is devoted to the religiosity of the medieval Christian masses in Central and Eastern Europe and its relationship with the traditional cultures of that time. Addressing such topics as the common instruction of the three prayers and the Decalogue, "Christian" magic in everyday life, the Marian devotion, and various images of heaven and eternal damnation, the author never loses sight of his main topic: the complex and powerful interaction between medieval folklore and Christianity.

The Philokalia is an important collection of writings by Fathers of the Eastern Church dating from the fourth to the fourteenth century. It exists in three versions: the Greek, complied in the eighteenth century; the Slavonic; and the Russian.

The Russian text, translated by Bishop Theophan the Recluse in the nineteenth century, and consisting of five volumes (with which a sixth is sometimes associated), is the most complete of all three versions. It is the Russian text that has been used in translating into English this selection, which presents a range of Philokalia writings concerning the Jesus Prayer.

The doctor told Wanda that she had a fourth of an ovary and that child bearing was not an option. God had promised her that she would have children. Was God going to lie to her? God fulfills His promises. After years of waiting and trying, Wanda brought five children into this world and was a mother just as was promised. With the miracle came an unwanted price since we have come to believe that Heaven has a price on some of its most cherished of gifts. It wasn't that it was authored by a loving God, but the seeds of cancer were sown as the gift was made real for five times. This young family would watch their mother succumb to a dreadful disease, slowly leaching the life from her. Wanda had a challenge understanding why the children she had been promised wouldn't be hers to raise to adulthood. Christmas would come that year before she finally died in February and the gift she craved was just to understand God's will in granting the blessing and then seemingly ripping it away in a slow death. Miracles happen to create life and miracles happen to explain why life gets cut short.

A must-read for anyone who has ever asked God, "Why me?" It's easy to trust God when things are going our way and the world makes sense. But when suffering strikes--especially seemingly senseless suffering--we are filled with doubt and stunned by events spiraling beyond our control. In the midst of suffering, we often question the very foundation of our faith--our belief in the God who says he loves us. Since our trust and obedience rest on God's character, the questions that life's tragedies force us to face are difficult, even frightening: Who is God? Can he really be trusted? What are his purposes in the face of suffering? If he can stop suffering, why doesn't he? Joni Eareckson Tada, a woman who has lived in a wheelchair for more than thirty years, and Steve Estes, a pastor and one of Joni's closest friends, explore the answers. When God Weeps is not so much a book about suffering as it is about God. It tackles tough questions about heaven and hell, horrors and hardships, and why God allows suffering in this life. Through a panoramic overview of what the Bible says about suffering, the authors make clear who God is, why he permits so much heartache and pain, and how it is we can trust him. With both a practical edge and heartfelt warmth, When God Weeps offers dependence on his love and mercy in spite of our doubts, fears, longings, and questions.

Christianity Today Book Award Winner One of Worship Leader Magazine's Editor's Picks Current discussions about worship are often driven by pragmatics and personal preferences rather than by the teaching of Scripture. True worship, however, is our response to God's gracious revelation; in order to be acceptable to God, worship must be experienced on God's terms. Respected Old Testament scholar Daniel Block examines worship in the Bible, offering a comprehensive biblical foundation and illuminating Old Testament worship practices and principles. He develops a theology of worship that is consistent with the teachings of Scripture and is applicable for the church today. He also introduces readers to a wide range of issues related to worship. The book, illustrated with diagrams, charts, and pictures, will benefit professors and students in worship and Bible courses, pastors, and church leaders.

Meditation has long been a path to self-awareness, as well as a way of consciously building a bridge into the spiritual world. Many of the most popular techniques originated in eastern traditions, but this book describes a decades-old approach that comes from western Christianity. The author starts by describing the steps necessary to make meditation possible, drawing on some of the ideas of Rudolf Steiner. He goes on to discuss different forms of meditation, such as 'review of the day', meditations on specific words and images, and meditations for the deceased. Finally he describes a specifically Christian approach, with a few words and sentences from the Gospel of St John leading to several fruitful subjects for meditation. This is a deep, insightful book from an experienced priest.

In Debating the Sacraments, Amy Nelson Burnett brings together the foundational disputes regarding the baptism and the Lord's Supper that laid the groundwork for the development of two Protestant traditions-Lutheran and Reformed-as well as of dissenting Anabaptist movements. Burnett places these disputes in the context of early print culture, tracing their development in a range of publications and their impact on the wider public. Burnett examines not only the writings of the major reformers, but also the reception of their ideas in the pamphlets of lesser known figures, as well as the role of translators, editors, and printers in exacerbating the conflict among both literate and illiterate audiences. Following the chronological unfolding of the debates, Burnett observes how specific arguments were formed in the crucible of written critique and pierces several myths that have governed our understanding of the sacramental controversies. She traces the influence of Erasmus on Luther's followers outside of Wittenberg and highlights the critical question of authority, particularly in interpreting the Bible. Erasmus and Luther disagreed not only about the relationship between the material world and spiritual reality but also on biblical hermeneutics and scriptural exegesis. Their disagreements underlay the public debates over baptism and the Lord's Supper that broke out in 1525 and divided the evangelical movement. Erasmus's position would be reflected not only in the views of Huldrych Zwingli and others who shared his orientation toward the sacraments but also in the developing theologies of the Anabaptist movement of the 1520s. The neglected period of 1525-1529 emerges as a crucial phase of the early Reformation, when evangelical theologies were still developing, and which paved the way for the codification of theological differences in church ordinances, catechisms, and confessions of subsequent decades.