Immigration and race are contentious issues in North America. As a result, immigrants from Ghana and other countries of West Africa confront major challenges in the social context of the United States, even as their experiences and accomplishments confound stereotypes. Religious congregations have often helped immigrants navigate the tricky waters of integration in the past; yet how do these particular black immigrants approach organized religion in light of their identities and aspirations? What are they looking for in religious membership, and how do they find it? In Joining the Choir, Nicolette D. Manglos-Weber takes a deeply personal look at the lives of a few central characters in Accra, Ghana and Chicago, Illinois, examining what religious membership means for them as Christians, transnational Ghanaians, and aspirational migrants. She sheds light on their search for people they can trust and their desires to transcend divisions of race, ethnicity, and nationality in the context of Evangelical Christianity. Her characters are complex, motivated, and adaptable people for whom religious membership answers some questions of integration and raises others. The stories of these migrants show how racial divides are subtly perpetuated within congregations in spite of hopes for religious-based assimilation. Yet they also reveal the potential of religious-based personal trust to bridge those divides, as an imaginative and symbolic leap of faith with the unknown stranger. Finally, their stories highlight the continuing role of religion as a portable basis of trust in the modern world, where more and more people live between nations.

Answers to the most common questions and misconceptions about the Bible Seven Things I Wish Christians Knew about the Bible is a short and readable introduction to the Bible-its origins, interpretation, truthfulness, and authority. Bible scholar, prolific author, and Anglican minister Michael Bird helps Christians understand seven important "things" about this unique book: how the Bible was put together; what "inspiration" means; how the Bible is true; why the Bible needs to be rooted in history; why literal interpretation is not always the best interpretation; how the Bible gives us knowledge, faith, love, and hope; and how Jesus Christ is the center of the Bible. Seven Things presents a clear and understandable evangelical account of the Bible's inspiration, canonization, significance, and relevance in a way that is irenic and compelling. It is a must read for any serious Bible reader who desires an informed and mature view of the Bible that will enrich their faith.

One deep problem facing the Catholic church is the question of how its teaching authority is understood today. It is fairly clear that, while Rome continues to teach as if its authority were unchanged from the days before Vatican II (1962-65), the majority of Catholics - within the first-world church, at least - take a far more independent line, and increasingly understand themselves (rather than the church) as the final arbiters of decision-making, especially on ethical questions. This collection of essays explores the historical background and present ecclesial situation, explaining the dramatic shift in attitude on the part of contemporary Catholics in the U.S. and Europe. The overall purpose is neither to justify nor to repudiate the authority of the church's hierarchy, but to cast some light on: the context within which it operates, the complexities and ambiguities of the historical tradition of belief and behavior it speaks for, and the kinds of limits it confronts - consciously or otherwise. The authors do not hope to fix problems, although some of the essays make suggestions, but to contribute to a badly needed intra-Catholic dialogue without which, they believe, problems will continue to fester and solutions will remain elusive.

Exploring the enormous upheaval caused by the English Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, this vivid new history draws on long-forgotten material from the recesses of one of the world's greatest cathedrals--the great Benedictine Durham Priory, now the Anglican Durham Cathedral. Once a bastion of the Benedictine monks in the north of England, the Priory was dissolved after nearly 500 years on the orders of King Henry VIII in 1539, in his quest to separate the church in England from its headquarters in Rome. This illuminating guide to religious history and its social and political contexts, seen through the arches of one of England's most celebrated cathedrals, examines the devastating economic and spiritual consequences of the Dissolution, revealing how one of history's most effective and chilling apparatus of plunder and ruin erased the orders of monks and nuns that had served some 650 monastic religious houses in England and Wales.

This book is about the life and thought of Origen (c.185-254 A.D.), the most important Greek-speaking Christian theologian and Biblical scholar in antiquity. His writings included works on the text of the Bible, commentaries and sermons on most of the books of the Bible, a major defense of the Christian faith against a philosophical skeptic, and the first attempt at writing systematic theology ever made. Ronald E. Heine presents Origen's work in the context of the two urban centers where he lived-Alexandria in Egypt, and Caesarea in Palestine. Heine argues that these urban contexts and their communities of faith had a discernable impact on Origen's intellectual work.
The study begins with a description of Roman Alexandria where Origen spent the first forty-six years of his life. The thought of the Alexandrian Christian community in which Origen was born and in whose service he produced his first written works is examined from the limited resources that have survived. The remains of Origen's writings produced in Alexandria provide information about his early theological views as well as the circumstances of his life in Alexandria. Heine discusses the issues of the canon and text of the Bible used by Origen and the Alexandrian Christian community and the special work called the Hexapla which he produced on the text of the Septuagint.
Origen's later life in Caesarea was shaped by pastoral as well as teaching duties. These responsibilities put him in contact with the city's large Jewish population. Heine argues that the focus of Origen's thought shifts in this period from his earlier Alexandrian occupation with Gnostic issues to the complex questions concerning the relationship between church and synagogue and the ultimate fate of the Jews. In his final years it appears that Origen was rethinking some of the views he had espoused in his earlier work.

This book examines the complex relationship between religion and business in twentieth-century America. It is the story of how Christianity's most basic institution, the local church, wrestled with the challenges and compromises of competing in the modern marketplace through adopting the advertising, public relations, and marketing methods of business. It follows these sacred promoters, and their critics, as they navigated between divinely inspired and consumer demanded. Amid an animated and contentious battleground for principles, practices and parishioners, John C. Hardin explores the landscape of selling religion in America and its evolution over the twentieth century.

The development of new forms of ministry, lay and ordained, has included worker-priests, now found in the Anglican Communion in a related form variously called Self-Supporting Ministry (SSM) or Non-Stipendiary Ministry (NSM). This book focuses on one of the most recent developments, the creation of Ordained Local Ministry. After chapters that consider preliminary questions of the nature of ministry, such as authority in the church and Holy Orders, Noel Cox argues that the crucial distinction between these and other forms of ministry is that the Ordained Local Minister (OLM) is overtly ordained specifically for a given locality (variously defined); they are a deacon or priest for a specific church, parish, benefice, or deanery, rather than of the universal church. Their introduction inevitably raises difficult ecclesiological questions, which Cox examines.

John Milbank's theology has shaped much modern political thinking both within and without the Church. In Before and Beyond the 'Big Society', Joseph Forde presents the first study devoted exclusively to John Milbank's theology of welfare, and how it has influenced policy in the Church of England since 2008. By examining the favourable response the Church gave to the 'Big Society' project in 2010-12, Forde shows that Milbank's Blue Socialist fingerprint increasingly dominates Church policy. This theology has not evolved in a vacuum, however, and Forde expertly places it in its historical and theoretical context. He offers a detailed critical discussion of Milbank's own critique of what has been the mainstream (Temple) Anglican theology of welfare in the Church of England since the 1940s, and a fresh contribution to the assessment of Anglican social theology. Finally, he demonstrates how Milbank's ideas have been furthered by other influential Anglicans. It is this influence that will carry the greatest implications for the Church of England's policy on welfare in future, making this study relevant to all who care about its contribution to the provision of welfare.

In the twenty-first century there are an increasing number of books in different fields that are evaluating critically aspects of life in the previous century. The Religious History of British people in this period is a significant part of that story. A Distinctive People will evaluate aspects of the history of one of the Christian denominations in Scotland looking at major themes such as Baptist attitudes to war and pacifism, the influence of the charismatic movement and their involvement in social action, their contribution to ecumenical relations in Scotland and relationships with fellow Baptists in other countries, together with the theological influences on Baptists, and a chapter on home mission. COMMENDATION "This thoroughly researched and engagingly written set of essays will be of keen interest, not to just to Scottish Baptists eager to know about their recent past, but also to all those concerned with the changing place of Christian belief and practice in twentieth-century Scottish society." - Brian Stanley, the University of Edinburgh, UK

Leadership in Small Churches inspires and equips men and women who are called to serve in churches of less than 100 people, which are the majority of churches in the United States. Small churches in the United States suffer from a lack of leadership. On the one hand, there is a shortage of leaders. On the other hand, leaders who serve faithfully sometimes feel ill-equipped to carry out their calling due to inadequate training, especially a lack of training specific to small churches. This volume provides guidance from scholars and practitioners with experience in small churches. Because of their experience in and commitment to ministry in small churches, these writers are well qualified to discuss the breadth of topics in this book. These topics include developing vision, handling conflict, pastoral care, preaching, discipleship, ministry to youth and children, missions, and identifying and training leaders.