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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Christianity > Protestantism & Protestant Churches > Other Protestant & Nonconformist Churches > General
The five-volume Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions
series is governed by a motif of migration ('out-of-England'). It
first traces organized church traditions that arose in Britain and
Ireland as Dissenters distanced themselves from a state church
defined by diocesan episcopacy, the Book of Common Prayer, the
Thirty-Nine Articles, and Royal Supremacy, but then follows those
traditions as they spread beyond Britain and Ireland-and also
analyses newer traditions that emerged downstream in other parts of
the world from earlier forms of Dissent. Secondly, it does the same
for the doctrines, church practices, stances toward state and
society, attitudes toward Scripture, and characteristic patterns of
organization that also originated in earlier British and Irish
dissent, but that have often defined a trajectory of influence
independent of ecclesiastical organizations. The Oxford History of
Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume V follows the spatial,
cultural, and intellectual changes in dissenting identity and
practice in the twentieth century, as these once European
traditions globalized. While in Europe dissent was often against
the religious state, dissent in a globalizing world could redefine
itself against colonialism or other secular and religious
monopolies. The contributors trace the encounters of dissenting
Protestant traditions with modernity and globalization; changing
imperial politics; challenges to biblical, denominational, and
pastoral authority; local cultures and languages; and some of the
century's major themes, such as race and gender, new technologies,
and organizational change. In so doing, they identify a vast array
of local and globalizing illustrations which will enliven
conversations about the role of religion, and in particular
Christianity.
C. S. Lewis, long renowned for his children's books as well as his
Christian apologetics, has been the subject of wide interest since
he first stepped-up to the BBC's microphone during the Second World
War. Until now, however, the reasons why this medievalist began
writing books for a popular audience, and why these books have
continued to be so popular, had not been fully explored. In fact
Lewis, who once described himself as by nature an 'extreme
anarchist', was a critical controversialist in his time-and not to
everyone's liking. Yet, somehow, Lewis's books directed at children
and middlebrow Christians have continued to resonate in the decades
since his death in 1963. Stephanie L. Derrick considers why this is
the case, and why it is more true in America than in Lewis's
home-country of Britain. The story of C. S. Lewis's fame is one
that takes us from his childhood in Edwardian Belfast, to the
height of international conflict during the 1940s, to the rapid
expansion of the paperback market, and on to readers' experiences
in the 1980s and 1990s, and, finally, to London in November 2013,
where Lewis was honoured with a stone in Poet's Corner in
Westminster Abbey. Derrick shows that, in fact, the author himself
was only one actor among many shaping a multi-faceted image. The
Fame of C. S. Lewis is the most comprehensive account of Lewis's
popularity to date, drawing on a wealth of fresh material and with
much to interest scholars and C. S. Lewis admirers alike.
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