R. Andrew Chesnut offers a fascinating portrayal of Santa Muerte, a skeleton saint whose cult has attracted millions of devotees over the past decade. Although condemned by mainstream churches, this folk saint's supernatural powers appeal to millions of Latin Americans and immigrants in the U.S. Devotees believe the Bony Lady (as she is affectionately called) to be the fastest and most effective miracle worker, and as such, her statuettes and paraphernalia now outsell those of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Saint Jude, two other giants of Mexican religiosity. In particular, Chesnut shows Santa Muerte has become the patron saint of drug traffickers, playing an important role as protector of peddlers of crystal meth and marijuana; DEA agents and Mexican police often find her altars in the safe houses of drug smugglers. Yet Saint Death plays other important roles: she is a supernatural healer, love doctor, money-maker, lawyer, and angel of death. She has become without doubt one of the most popular and powerful saints on both the Mexican and American religious landscapes.

Christian churches and groups within Anglo-American contexts have increasingly used popular music as a way to connect with young people. This book investigates the relationships between evangelical Christianity and popular music, focusing particularly on electronic dance music in the last twenty years. Author Stella Lau illustrates how electronic dance music is legitimized in evangelical activities by Christians discourses, and how the discourses challenge the divide between the secular and the sacred in the Western culture.

Unlike other existing books on the relationships between music cultures and religion, which predominantly discuss the cultural implications of such phenomenon, Popular Music in Evangelical Youth Culture examines the notion of spirituality in contemporary popular electronic dance music. Lau s emphasis on the sonic qualities of electronic dance music opens the door for future research about the relationships between aural properties of electronic dance music and religious discourses. With three case studies conducted in the cultural hubs of electronic dance music Bristol, Ibiza and New York the monograph can also be used as a guidebook for ethnographic research in popular music.

Morning Prayer Rite I, Daily Devotions, Baptism, Holy Eucharist Rites I and II, Selected Pastoral Offices, Psalter, Prayers. It is spiral bound for easy use. Designed in collaboration with the Episcopal Society for Ministry on Aging, Inc., this volume is a companion to The Hymnal 1982 Selections in Large Print.

In this delightful sleigh ride through Christmas history, Paul Kerensa answers the festive questions you never thought to ask... Did Cromwell help shape the mince pie? Was St Nicholas the first to use an automatic door? Which classic Christmas crooners were inspired by a Hollywood heatwave? And did King Herod really have a wife called Doris? Whether you mull on wine or enjoy the biggest turkey, the biggest tree or the biggest credit card bill, unwrap your story through our twelve dates of Christmas past. From Roman revelry to singing Bing, via Santa, Scrooge and a snoozing saviour, this timeless tale is perfect trivia fodder for the Christmas dinner table.

Featuring large clear print, the "Song Book" contains the words to 100 popular songs that are ideal for group sing-along sessions. The book is divided into six sections: traditional folk songs, choruses from old time variety, songs from World War II, post-war evergreens, hymns, and Christmas songs.

Christian Worship: Postcolonial Perspectives critically surveys and scrutinizes the terrain of liturgical theology through postcolonial optics. In doing so, it breaks new ground by bringing together for the first time liturgical studies and postcolonial criticism. This book provides an important enrichment - and long overdue corrective - to literature on the liturgical ordo, which has not yet learned to engage postcolonial perspectives. The volume also offers useful resources to those familiar with the more established field of postcolonial biblical/theological criticism by expanding the burgeoning academic debate about postcolonialism into the environment of worship. It therefore seeks to be a resource that will bring postcolonial perspectives to a wider audience: the church, much of which has been bypassed by the academic trajectory postcolonial criticism in theology has so far taken. Because of its inter-disciplinary nature, this book advances significant innovative material. The particular ways that material from each discipline is juxtaposed is itself highly original, and the challenges of appropriating postcolonial theological perspectives in Christian worship and liturgical practice will be met by the provision of strategies and resources to face this task. This important work of theology is, therefore, crafted to praxis in assemblies of the church as well as suitable for study in universities and seminary classrooms.

Christian Worship: Postcolonial Perspectives critically surveys and scrutinizes the terrain of liturgical theology through postcolonial optics. In doing so, it breaks new ground by bringing together for the first time liturgical studies and postcolonial criticism. This book provides an important enrichment - and long overdue corrective - to literature on the liturgical ordo, which has not yet learned to engage postcolonial perspectives. The volume also offers useful resources to those familiar with the more established field of postcolonial biblical/theological criticism by expanding the burgeoning academic debate about postcolonialism into the environment of worship. It therefore seeks to be a resource that will bring postcolonial perspectives to a wider audience: the church, much of which has been bypassed by the academic trajectory postcolonial criticism in theology has so far taken. Because of its inter-disciplinary nature, this book advances significant innovative material. The particular ways that material from each discipline is juxtaposed is itself highly original, and the challenges of appropriating postcolonial theological perspectives in Christian worship and liturgical practice will be met by the provision of strategies and resources to face this task. This important work of theology is, therefore, crafted to praxis in assemblies of the church as well as suitable for study in universities and seminary classrooms.

The Altar Call is a thorough examination of the public invitation practice within Christian evangelism. In addition to giving a comprehensive historical background that spans three continents, The Altar Call also poses the following question: If John Wesley, George Whitefield , and Jonathan Edwards are regarded as the great figures of modern evangelicalism, why did none of these important leaders practice the invitation system that became so important in so many later evangelical groups? This important study will be of interest to both religious scholars and lay people, who are curious about the antecedents, development, and current use of the altar call.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Passover and Easter constitute for Jews and Christians respectively the most important festivals of the year. Although sharing a common root, the feasts have developed in quite distinct ways in the two traditions, in part independently of one another and in part in reaction against the other. Following the pattern set in earlier volumes in this series, these two volumes bring together a group of distinguished Jewish and Christian scholars to explore the history of the two celebrations, paying particular attention to similarities and connections between them as well as to differences and contrasts. They not only present a convenient summary of current historical thought but also open up new perspectives on the evolution of these annual observances. Volume 6 focuses on the contexts in which they occur--the periods of preparation for the feasts in the respective calendars and their connection to Shavuot/Pentecost--as well as to their traditional expression in art and music. Volume 5, also in the series, focuses especially on the origins and early development of the feasts and on the way that established practices have changed in recent years. At the same time, the essays raise some fundamental questions about the future. Have modern human beings so lost the sense of sacred time in their lives, for instance, that these great feasts can never again be what they once were for former generations of believers? And what about recent attempts by some Christians to enter into their heritage by celebrating a Jewish Seder as part of their annual Holy Week and Easter services? Specialists and general readers alike will find much to interest and challenge them within these two additions to what has become a highly regarded series in the world of liturgical scholarship.

The Virgin Mary continues to attract devotees to her images and shrines. In Moved by Mary, anthropologists, geographers and historians explore how people and groups around the world identify and join with Mary in their struggle against social injustice, and how others mobilize Mary to impose ideas and rules and legitimize acts of violence and suppression. Far from an outdated practice of little relevance to the modern world, Marian pilgrimage expresses the deep and urgent concerns of a wide range of people. With examples of Marian pilgrimages from all over the world, Moved by Mary explores the ways in which men and women of different ages and religious, political, social-economic and ethnic backgrounds empower themselves to deal with modern-day issues with MaryAs help. The ethnographic cases reveal the cultural and devotional variation of Marian pilgrimage, but also global similarities. Collectively, the contributors to Moved by Mary show how in many places religion dramatically suffuses everyday life.

Infuse your days with meaning. You are part of a larger Story. And the One who began the Story is at work today, in your life, in the midst of your meetings and bills and family activities that make the days rush by and blur together. In these pages Bobby Gross opens to you--and opens you to--the liturgical year, helping you inhabit God's Story every day. Remembering God's work, Christ's death and resurrection, and the Spirit's coming will change you, drawing you into deeper intimacy with God and pointing your attention to the work of the Father, Son and Spirit right now, in and around you. You'll be reminded daily that your life is bigger than just you, that you are part of God's huge plan that started before time and will continue into eternity. Whether you're familiar or unfamiliar with following the liturgical year, this book makes it easy to do, offering here the significance and history of each season, ideas for living out God's Story in your own life, and devotions that follow the church calendar for each day of the year. "The power that overshadowed Mary and raised Jesus from the dead also guarantees the final redemption of all things in him; that same power is at work in us now," Gross writes. "Keeping liturgical time, making it sacred, opens us further to this power as, year after year, we rehearse the Story of God-remembering with gratitude, anticipating with hope--and over time live more deeply the Story of our lives."

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 contemporary Church finds itself in the context of an ecological crisis. How can we be equipped to live as disciples in such a world? Chris Voke argues that public worship plays a role in shaping the vision and values of a community and empowering it for daily life. Thus the restoration of the dimension of creation and the vision of God as creator to the content of worship services will be critical in shaping communities that can face contemporary challenges. The book shows that a grasp of the links between creation and redemption and an appreciation of the significance of Jesus' humanity will enable Christ-centred worship that gives a proper place and value to creation. This book aims to challenge present practice, to propose changes in public worship, to justify these theologically and practically and to show ways in which a vision of the Creator and his creation may be incorporated into liturgy by those responsible for planning and leading worship. Filled with theological insight and practical examples this book will be of great help to church leaders, worship leaders and theologians. 'This is a magnificent resource for preachers and worship leaders and provides a most thoughtful Christian apologetic on one of the great moral issues of our time.' - David Coffey, General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. 'I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The more people who read and respond to it, the less likely I am to have the inward shudders which I so often experience at well-meaning but sadly naive attempts to include 'ecology' or 'nature' in worship.' - R. J. Berry, Professor Emeritus, University College London

"In these companion volumes of essays, Jewish and Christian liturgical scholars examine, from historical, theological, and aesthetic perspectives, the practices and intricate interrelationships of Passover and Easter. Several essays lament the antisemitism that has infected the Easter liturgy, and one-Israel Yuval's 'Easter and Passover as Early Jewish-Christian Dialogue'-pushes beyond the oft-told tale of Jewish-Christian enmity to explore ways the development of worship patterns of the two faiths have influenced one another. Both volumes are required purchases for libraries supporting liturgical studies. Volume 5 would also be a good choice for broader collections in the history of Judaism and Christianity." -Choice

This is the first comprehensive and up-to-date account of the internal arrangement of church buildings in Western Europe between 1500 and 2000, showing how these arrangements have met the liturgical needs of their respective denominations, Catholic and Protestant, over this period. In addition to a chapter looking at the general impact of the Reformation on church buildings, there are separate chapters on the churches of the Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions between the mid-sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, and on the ecclesiological movement of the nineteenth century and the liturgical movement of the twentieth century, both of which have impacted on all the churches of Western Europe over the past 150 years. The book is extensively illustrated with figures in the text and a series of plates and also contains comprehensive guides to both further reading and buildings to visit throughout Western Europe.

Vividly evoking the sights, sounds, smells - even the tastes - of the Holy land, Tom Wright takes us on a contemporary pilgrimage to help us respond to Jesus' call today. An ideal introduction to the Christian faith, The Way of the Lord aims to lead us into a greater knowledge and love of the One who journeys with us - whether our pilgrimage is physical, or merely of heart and mind. Capturing the real excitement of 'Come and see the place' it heightens out awareness that Jesus journeys with us as he calls us out into the wider world of discipleship. For, in the glorious message of Easter: 'He is not here - he is risen!'

Based in records and iconography, this book surveys medieval festival playing in Britain more comprehensively than any other work to date. The study presents an inclusive view of the drama in the British Isles, from Kilkenny to Great Yarmouth, from Scotland to Cornwall. It offers detailed readings of individual plays-including the York Creed Play, Pentecost and Corpus Christi plays and the little studied Bodley plays, among others - as well as a summary of what is known of their production. Clifford Davidson here extends the usual chronological range to include work typically categorized as early modern, enabling a juxtaposition of earlier plays with later plays to yield a better understanding of both. Complementing documentary evidence with iconographic detail and citation of music, he pinpoints a number of common misconceptions about medieval drama. By organizing the study around the rituals of the liturgical seasons, he clarifies the relationship between liturgical feast and dramatic celebration.

Christian Ethics provides a biblical, historical, philosophical and theological guide to the field of Christian ethics. Prominent theologian David S. Cunningham explores the tradition of a ~virtue ethicsa (TM) in this creative and lively text, which includes literary and musical references as well as key contemporary theological texts and figures.

Three parts examine:

• the nature of human action and the people of God as the a ~interpretative communitya (TM) within which ethical discourse arises
• the development of a a ~virtue ethicsa (TM) approach, and places this in its Christian context
• significant issues in contemporary Christian ethics, including the ethics of business and economics, politics, the environment, medicine and sex.

This is the essential text for students of all ethics courses in theology, religious studies and philosophy.

This work is a ground-breaking study of the varieties of holy life available to, and pursued by, early medieval Irish women. The author explores a wide range of source material from legal texts, saints' lives, litanies, penitentials, canons, and poetry in order to illuminate female religious life and changes in attitudes towards it over time.

'Children are equal members of the Church by virtue of their baptism', writes Stephen Lake 'and therefore should have full access to the sacraments, the signs of God's love, and most especially to the bread and wine of the Eucharist.' This valuable resource book will assist all parishes in welcoming children to communion now that the Church of England has approved new Regulations. Let the Children Come to Communion: encourages the admission of baptized children to communion; summarizes in one place relevant practice, information and theology; shares the experience of those who have already taken this step; aims to help move the debate on, encouraging the Church into full participation. The author's fervent hope is to stir the Church into action on an important issue and to stimulate decision-making about introducing and developing this ministry with children. There are extended interviews with leading practitioners including: David Stancliffe, Stephen Venner, Diana Murrie, Margaret Withers and Mark Russell. Stephen Lake is Sub Dean and Canon Residentiary of St. Albans Cathedral. Stephen served his curacy at Sherborne Abbey before becoming Vicar of Branksome St. Aldhelm, an urban parish in Poole. He was also Rural Dean. After nine years in Branksome he moved to St. Albans in 2001. He is married to Carol and they have three children, all of whom receive Holy Communion. He is the author of the hugely successful Confirmation Prayer Book (SPCK), and also of Using Common Worship: Marriage (Church House Publishing). "Stephen Lake has written a fine, timely guide to the current discussion. I hope his vision will invite and persuade, and that we shall as a Church continue to discover the riches that await us as we listen more thoughtfully and generously to Christ's youngest friends" Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury