This book, first published in 1971, is a close analysis of some of the typical peasant uprisings of the seventeenth century. The goal of the movements in France and China was a return to an older and more traditional society, rather than a profound transformation of the social structure. In Russia, however, the peasants attempted to overturn the rigid order of a two-class structure and replace it with a more democratic society.

This book provides a critical feminist analysis of the Korean Protestant Right's gendered politics. Specifically, the volume explores the Protestant Right's responses and reactions to the presumed weakening of hegemonic masculinity in Korea's post-hypermasculine developmentalism context. Nami Kim examines three phenomena: Father School (an evangelical men's manhood and fatherhood restoration movement), the anti-LGBT movement, and Islamophobia/anti-Muslim racism. Although these three phenomena may look unrelated, Kim asserts that they represent the Protestant Right's distinct yet interrelated ways of engaging the contested hegemonic masculinity in Korean society. The contestation over hegemonic masculinity is a common thread that runs through and connects these three phenomena. The ways in which the Protestant Right has engaged the contested hegemonic masculinity have been in relation to "others," such as women, sexual minorities, gender nonconforming people, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities.

This is a much-revised version of Professor Cottret's acclaimed study of the Huguenot communities in England, first published in French by Aubier in 1985. The Huguenots in England presents a detailed, sympathetic assessment of one of the great migrations of early modern Europe, examining the social origins, aspirations and eventual destiny of the refugees, and their responses to their new-found home, a Protestant terre d'exil. Bernard Cottret shows how for the poor weavers, carders and craftsmen who constituted the majority of the exiles the experience of religious persecution was at once personal calamity, disruptive of home and family, and heaven-sent economic opportunity, which many were quick to exploit. The individual testimonies contained in consistory registers contain a wealth of personal narrative, reflection and reaction, enabling Professor Cottret to build a fully rounded picture of the Huguenot experience in early modern England. In an extended afterword Professor Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie considers the Huguenot phenomenon in the wider context of the contrasting British and French attitudes to religious minorities in the early modern period.

This book studies Korean American girls between thirteen and nineteen and their formation with regard to self, gender, and God in the context of Korean American protestant congregational life. It develops a hybrid methodology of de-colonial aims and indigenous research methods, aiming to facilitate transformative life in faith communities.

This open access book presents fresh ethnographic work from the regions of Africa and Melanesia-where the popularity of charismatic Christianity can be linked to a revival and transformation of witchcraft. The volume demonstrates how the Holy Spirit has become an adversary to the reconfirmed presence of witches, demons, and sorcerers as manifestations of evil. We learn how this is articulated in spiritual warfare, in crusades, and in healing or witch-killing raids. The contributors highlight what happens to phenomena that people address as locally specific witchcraft or sorcery when re-molded within the universalist Pentecostal demonology, vocabulary, and confrontational methodology.

Martin Luther considered the reading of God's word to be his primary task as a theologian, a pastor, and a Christian. Though he is often portrayed as reading the Bible with a bare approach of sola Scriptura-without any concern for previous generations' interpretation-the truth is more complicated. In this New Explorations in Theology (NET) volume, Reformation scholar Todd R. Hains shows that Luther read the Bible according to the rule of faith, which is contained in the church's ancient catechism of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Apostles' Creed. Hains carefully examines Luther's sermons to show how Luther taught the rule of faith as the guard and guide of Bible reading. This study will helpfully complicate your view of Luther and bring clarity to your own reading of God's Word. 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 examines the current law on the employment status of ministers of religion together with religious workers and volunteers and suggests reforms in this area of the law to meet the need for ministers to be given a degree of employment protection. It also considers the constant theme in Christian history that the clergy should not be subject to the ordinary courts and asks whether this is justified with the growth of areas such as employment law. The work questions whether it is possible to arrive at a satisfactory definition of who is a minister of religion and, along with this, who would be the employer of the minister if there was a contract of employment. Taking a comparative perspective, it evaluates the case law on the employment status of Christian and non-Christian clergy and assesses whether this shows any coherent theme or line of development. The work also considers the issue of ministerial employment status against the background of the autonomy of churches and other religious bodies from the State, together with their ecclesiology. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of law and religion, employment law and religious studies, together with both legal practitioners and human resources practitioners in these areas.

This book initiates a thorough analysis of baptism in the theology of Karl Barth, particularly how he initially stated his understanding and later modified. His theological context and methodology are analysed from its biblical roots to its relevancy for the key question of the New Testament teaching of Christian baptism and its relevancy for current ecumenical discussion, especially as it is evolved in the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches.

Early modern Protestant scholars closely engaged with Islamic thought in more ways than is usually recognized. Among Protestants, Lutheran scholars distinguished themselves as the most invested in the study of Islam and Muslim culture. Mehmet Karabela brings the neglected voices of post-Reformation theologians, primarily German Lutherans, into focus and reveals their rigorous engagement with Islamic thought. Inspired by a global history approach to religious thought, Islamic Thought Through Protestant Eyes offers new sources to broaden the conventional interpretation of the Reformation beyond a solely European Christian phenomenon. Based on previously unstudied dissertations, disputations, and academic works written in Latin in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Karabela analyzes three themes: Islam as theology and religion; Islamic philosophy and liberal arts; and Muslim sects (Sunni and Shi'a). This book provides analyses and translations of the Latin texts as well as brief biographies of the authors. These texts offer insight into the Protestant perception of Islamic thought for scholars of religious studies and Islamic studies as well as for general readers. Examining the influence of Islamic thought on the construction of the Protestant identity after the Reformation helps us to understand the role of Islam in the evolution of Christianity.

The creative clash of tradition and innovation causes many cultures to be in continuous remix. Crucibles of adaptation are present in religion, law, education, science, technology, publishing, arts, media, etc. The present volume Anabaptist ReMix: The Varieties of Cultural Engagement is a case study of one tradition-Anabaptists and Mennonites-and fragments of its transformation in the modern and post-modern era. Today, in the face of a global pandemic, climate disaster, social fragmentation, and the prospect of nuclear annihilation, the descendants of radical reformers seek to live out the wisdom of that original revolution. Theology is re-imagined as a conversation about human nature and emergent images of the divine. In this volume, the arts are re-framed as an examination of conflict, catharsis, and justice. Christian pacifism is given new partners with those in the just-war tradition. Women find a new voice to tell stories of abuse, oppression, and healing. Native American, Black, and Latinx voices call attention to buried stories calling for resurrection. The power of institutional structures is interrogated and challenged to act on prophetic missions of equality, healing, and justice.

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"A timely analysis of a religious movement that is quietly exercising enormous political influence today. Shuck's careful reading of LaHaye's troubling vision establishes unexpected connections with the leading edge of contemporary network culture."
--Mark C. Taylor, author of About Religion: Economies of Faith in Virtual Culture

"With this book, Glenn W. Shuck establishes himself as one of the foremost scholars of American evangelical Christianity. This work is both wonderfully written and creative. Based on Shuck's even-handed and insightful analysis, the reader learns about the meaning and astonishing popularity of books about end times, especially the Left Behind series. Marks of the Beast provides a dynamic lens into the meaning of religion in modern times."
--Michael O. Emerson, Director, Du Bois Center for the Advanced Study of Religion and Race, University of Notre Dame "A provocative study."
--"Berkshire Eagle""Well-researched work employing sociological, literary, and theological perspectives."--"Choice"

The "Left Behind" series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins has become a popular culture phenomenon, selling an astonishing 40 million copies to date. These novels, written by two well-known evangelical Christians, depict the experiences of those "left behind" in the aftermath of the Rapture, when Christ removes true believers, leaving everyone else to suffer seven years of Tribulation under Satan's proxy, Antichrist.

In Marks of the Beast, Shuck uncovers the reasons behind the books' unprecedented appeal, assessing why the novels have achieved a status within the evangelical community even greater than HalLindsey's 1970 blockbuster "The Late Great Planet Earth," It also explores what we can learn from them about evangelical Christianity in America.

Shuck finds that, ironically, the series not only reflects contemporary trends within conservative evangelicalism but also encourages readers--especially evangelicals--to embrace solutions that enact, rather than engage, their fears. Most strikingly, he shows how the ultimate vision put forth by the series' authors inadvertently undermines itself as the series unfolds.

Five hundred years ago a monk nailed his theses to a church gate in Wittenberg. The sound of Luther's mythical hammer, however, was by no means the only aural manifestation of the religious Reformations. This book describes the birth of Lutheran Chorales and Calvinist Psalmody; of how music was practised by Catholic nuns, Lutheran schoolchildren, battling Huguenots, missionaries and martyrs, cardinals at Trent and heretics in hiding, at a time when Palestrina, Lasso and Tallis were composing their masterpieces, and forbidden songs were concealed, smuggled and sung in taverns and princely courts alike. Music expressed faith in the Evangelicals' emerging worships and in the Catholics' ancient rites; through it new beliefs were spread and heresy countered; analysed by humanist theorists, it comforted and consoled miners, housewives and persecuted preachers; it was both the symbol of new, conflicting identities and the only surviving trace of a lost unity of faith. The music of the Reformations, thus, was music reformed, music reforming and the reform of music: this book shows what the Reformations sounded like, and how music became one of the protagonists in the religious conflicts of the sixteenth century.

American Unitarians were not onlookers to the drama of Protestantism in the nineteenth century, but active participants in its central conundrum: biblical authority. Unitarians sought what other Protestants sought, which was to establish the Bible as the primary authority, only to find that the task was not so simple as they had hoped. This book revisits the story of nineteenth century American Unitarianism, proposing that Unitarianism was founded and shaped by the twin hopes of maintaining biblical authority and committing to total free inquiry. This story fits into the larger narrative of Protestantism, which, this book argues, has been defined by a deep devotion to the singular authority of the Bible (sola scriptura) and, conversely, a troubling ambivalence as to how such authority should function. How, in other words, can a book serve as a source of authority? This work traces the greater narrative of biblical authority in Protestantism through the story of four main Unitarian figures: William Ellery Channing, Andrews Norton, Theodore Parker, and Frederic Henry Hedge. All four individuals played a central role, at different times, in shaping Unitarianism, and in determining how exactly religious authority functioned in their nascent denomination. Besides these central figures, the book goes both backward, examining the evolution of biblical authority from the late medieval period in Europe to the early nineteenth century in America, and forward, exploring the period of Unitarian experimentation of religious authority in the late nineteenth century. The book also brings the book firmly into the present, exploring how questions about the Bible and religious authority are being answered today by contemporary Unitarian Universalists. Overall, this book aims to bring the American Unitarians firmly back into the historical and historiographical conversation, not as outliers, but as religious people deeply committed to solving the Protestant dilemma of religious authority.

This volume addresses issues of moral pluralism and polarization by drawing attention to the transcendent character of the good. It probes the history of Christian theology and moral philosophy to investigate the value of this idea and then relates it to contemporary moral issues.

Christian Women and Modern China presents a social history of women pioneers in Chinese Protestantism from the 1880s to the 2010s. The author interrupts a hegemonic framework of historical narratives by exploring formal institutions and rules as well as social networks and social norms that shape the lived experiences of women. This book achieves a more nuanced understanding about the interplays of Christianity, gender, power and modern Chinese history. It reintroduces Chinese Christian women pioneers not only to women's history and the history of Chinese Christianity, but also to the history of global Christian mission and the global history of many modern professions, such as medicine, education, literature, music, charity, journalism, and literature.

This work details the theological sources and moral significance of the life and work of the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790). The panel of contributors deepens our understanding of Adam Smith in his religious and theological context and the significance of this understanding for contemporary moral, economic, and political challenges to modern social life. The chapters cover a broad range of disciplinary and historical concerns, from Smith's view of providence and his famous "invisible hand" to the role of self-interest and benevolence in Smith's social and economic thought. A better appreciation for the moral and theological dimensions of Smith's thought provides not only a better understanding of Smith's own context and significance in the Scottish Enlightenment but also promises to assist in meeting the perennial challenges of properly connecting economic realities to moral responsibility. The book is of interest to advanced students and scholars of the history of economic thought, historical and moral theology, intellectual history, political science, and philosophy.

Originally published in 1967, this book is a history of church puritanism as a movement and as a political and ecclesiastical organism; of its membership structure and internal contradictions; of the quest for 'a further reformation'. It tells the fascinating story of the rise of a revolutionary moment and its ultimate destruction.

This book presents the work of leading hermeneutical theorists alongside emerging thinkers, examining the current state of hermeneutics within the Pentecostal tradition. The volume's contributors present constructive ideas about the future of hermeneutics at the intersection of theology of the Spirit, Pentecostal Christianity, and other disciplines. This collection offers cutting-edge scholarship that engages with and pulls from a broad range of fields and points toward the future of Pneumatological hermeneutics. The volume's interdisciplinary essays are broken up into four sections: philosophical hermeneutics, biblical-theological hermeneutics, social and cultural hermeneutics, and hermeneutics in the social and physical sciences.

Drawing extensively on primary sources, this pioneer work in modern religious history explores the training of preachers, the construction of sermons, and the shaping of the preaching event by Irish evangelicalism and the wider evangelicalism of Great Britain and the United States. Dickson examines evangelical preaching, politics, sectarianism, denominations, education, class, social reform, gender, and revival in order to advance the argument that evangelical sermons and preaching went significantly beyond religious discourse in 19th-century Ireland. This book will interest students of Irish history, culture, and belief; popular religion and society; evangelicalism; preaching and communication.

As American soldiers fought overseas in Vietnam, American churchmen debated the legitimacy and impact of the war at home. While the justness of the war was the primary issue, they also argued over conscientious objection, the legitimacy of protests, the weapons of war, and other related topics. Divided into three primary groups mainline, conservative evangelical, and African American and including fourteen denominations, this book uses the churchmen s publications and proceedings to better understand how American religion responded to and was impacted by the Vietnam War. In the various debates, churchmen brought their theological convictions and reading of the Bible to bear on their political perspectives. Convictions about sin, the nature of man, the fate of the world, violence and benevolence had direct impact upon the foreign policy perspectives of these churches. Rather than result in static political positions, these convictions adapted as the nature of the war and the likelihood of American success changed over time. The positions taken by American denominations brought about attitudes of support, opposition, and ambivalence toward the war, but also impacted the vibrancy of many churches. Some groups were rent asunder by the fractious, debilitating debate. Other churches, due to their greater ideological clarity and unanimity, saw the war provide an impetus for growth. Regardless of the individual consequences, the debate over the Vietnam War provides a concrete study of the intersection of religion and politics."

The British Jesus focuses on the Jesus of the religious culture dominant in Britain from the 1850s through the 1950s, the popular Christian culture shared by not only church, kirk, and chapel goers, but also the growing numbers of Britons who rarely or only episodically entered a house of worship. An essay in intellectual as well as cultural history, this book illumines the interplay between and among British New Testament scholarship, institutional Christianity, and the wider Protestant culture. The scholars who mapped and led the uniquely British quest for the historical Jesus in the first half of the twentieth century were active participants in efforts to replace the popular image of "Jesus in a white nightie" with a stronger figure, and so, they hoped, to preserve Britain's Christian identity. They failed. By exploring that failure, and more broadly, by examining the relations and exchanges between popular, artistic, and scholarly portrayals of Jesus, this book highlights the continuity and the conservatism of Britain's popular Christianity through a century of religious and cultural transformation. Exploring depictions of Jesus from over more than one hundred years, this book is a crucial resource for scholars of British Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The British Jesus focuses on the Jesus of the religious culture dominant in Britain from the 1850s through the 1950s, the popular Christian culture shared by not only church, kirk, and chapel goers, but also the growing numbers of Britons who rarely or only episodically entered a house of worship. An essay in intellectual as well as cultural history, this book illumines the interplay between and among British New Testament scholarship, institutional Christianity, and the wider Protestant culture. The scholars who mapped and led the uniquely British quest for the historical Jesus in the first half of the twentieth century were active participants in efforts to replace the popular image of "Jesus in a white nightie" with a stronger figure, and so, they hoped, to preserve Britain's Christian identity. They failed. By exploring that failure, and more broadly, by examining the relations and exchanges between popular, artistic, and scholarly portrayals of Jesus, this book highlights the continuity and the conservatism of Britain's popular Christianity through a century of religious and cultural transformation. Exploring depictions of Jesus from over more than one hundred years, this book is a crucial resource for scholars of British Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Faith Active in Love is a perspective on Michael Welker's theology - a Biblisch-realistische Theologie from a perspective of the Spirit. Van der Westhuizen argues that it is a multisystemic theology that in multiple tensions and triplexes - held together by the resurrection and resonance, the pouring out and structured pluralism, the reign and emergence - in complex ways cultivates a hermeneutic for faith active in love, a hermeneutic for public theology.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of Protestant Christianity in Korea. It outlines the development of Christianity in Korea before Protestantism, considers the introduction of Protestantism in the late nineteenth century and its widening and profound impact, and goes on to discuss the situation up to the present. Throughout the book emphasises the importance of Protestantism for Korean national life, highlights the key role Protestantism has played in Korea's social, political, and cultural development, including in North Korea whose first leader Kim Il Sung was the son of devout Protestant parents, and demonstrates how Protestantism continues to be a vital force for Korean society overall.

The world stands before a landmark date: October 31, 2017, the quincentennial of the Protestant Reformation. Countries, social movements, churches, universities, seminaries, and other institutions shaped by Protestantism face a daunting question: how should the Reformation be commemorated 500 years after the fact? Protestantism has been credited for restoring essential Christian truth, blamed for disastrous church divisions, and invoked as the cause of modern liberalism, capitalism, democracy, individualism, modern science, secularism, and so much else. In this volume, scholars from a variety of disciplines come together to answer the question of commemoration and put some of the Reformation's larger themes and trajectories of influence into historical and theological perspective. Protestantism after 500 Years? examines the historical significance of the Reformation and considers how we might expand and enrich the ongoing conversation about Protestantism's impact. The contributors to this volume conclude that we must remember the Reformation not only because of the enduring, sometimes painful religious divisions that emerged from this era, but also because a historical understanding of the Reformation has been a key factor towards promoting ecumenical progress through communication and mutual understanding.