Observing that intellectual changes within late-seventeenth-century Massachusetts Puritan culture closely paralleled changes within Puritan culture in England, Michael Winship re-examines one of the more nettlesome issues in the intellectual history of early New England. How did the logic Puritanism square itself with the increasingly hostile assumptions of the early Enlightenment? And, faced with a new intellectual world whose parameters were formed to a large extent in opposition to Puritanism, how did Puritans try to maintain credibility? In "Seers of God," Winship's compelling analysis of topics ranging from theology to witchcraft places the problem of intellectual change fully in a transatlantic context.

In Palatines, Liberty, and Property A. G. Roeber explains why so many Germans, when they faced critical choices in 1776, became active supporters of the patriot cause. Employing a variety of German-language sources and and following all the major German migration streams, Roeber explores German conceptions of personal and public property in the context of cultural and religious beliefs, village life, and family concerns. Co-winner of the John H. Dunning Prize from the American Historical Association, Roeber's study of German-American settlements and their ideas about liberty and property provides an unprecedented view of how non-English culture and beliefs made their way from Europe to America.

"The most thoughtful and comprehensive study ever attempted of the German migration to eighteenth-century America and how it affected and was affected by the Revolution. Roeber's research on German law and patterns of landholding has no parallel in English-language scholarship. This is the one book that everyone should read who wishes to understand the scope and significance of the first massive voluntary migration of non-English speaking settlers to British North America." -- John M. Murrin, Princeton University

A "contemplative" ethnographic study of a Benedictine monastery in Vermont known for its folk-inspired music. Far from being a long-silent echo of medieval religion, modern monastery music is instead a resounding, living illustration of the role of music in religious life. Benedictine monks gather for communal prayer upwards of five times per day, every day. Their prayers, called the Divine Office, are almost entirely sung. Benedictines are famous for Gregorian Chant, but the original folk-inspired music of the monks of Weston Priory in Vermont is among the most familiar in post-Vatican II American Catholicism. Using the ethnomusicological methods of fieldwork and taking inspiration from the monks' own way of encountering the world, this book offers a contemplative engagement with music, prayer, and everyday life. The rich narrative evokes the rhythms of learning among Benedictines to show how monastic ways of being, knowing, and musicking resonate with humanistic inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Support for this publication was provided by the Howard Hanson Institute for American Music of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester.

By utilizing the contributions of a variety of scholars - theologians, historians, and biblical scholars - this book makes the complex and sometimes disparate Anabaptist movement more easily accessible. It does this by outlining Anabaptism's early history during the Reformation of the sixteenth century, its varied and distinctive theological convictions, and its ongoing challenges to and influence on contemporary Christianity. T&T Clark Handbook of Anabaptism comprises four sections: 1) Origins, 2) Doctrine, 3) Influences on Anabaptism, and 4) Contemporary Anabaptism and Relationship to Others. The volume concludes with a chapter on how contemporary Anabaptists interact with the wider Church in all its variety. While some of the authorities within the volume will disagree even with one another regarding Anabaptist origins, emphases on doctrine, and influence in the contemporary world, such differences represent the diversity that constitutes the history of this movement.

In 1974 nearly 3,000 evangelicals from 150 nations met at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. Amidst this cosmopolitan setting -and in front of the most important white evangelical leaders of the United States -members of the Latin American Theological Fraternity spoke out against the American Church. Fiery speeches by Ecuadorian Rene Padilla and Peruvian Samuel Escobar revealed a global weariness with what they described as an American style of coldly efficient mission wedded to a myopic, right-leaning politics. Their bold critiques electrified Christians from around the world. The dramatic growth of Christianity around the world in the last century has shifted the balance of power within the faith away from traditional strongholds in Europe and the United States. To be sure, evangelical populists who voted for Donald Trump have resisted certain global pressures, and Western missionaries have carried Christian Americanism abroad. But the line of influence has also run the other way. David R. Swartz demonstrates that evangelicals in the Global South spoke back to American evangelicals on matters of race, imperialism, theology, sexuality, and social justice. From the left, they pushed for racial egalitarianism, ecumenism, and more substantial development efforts. From the right, they advocated for a conservative sexual ethic grounded in postcolonial logic. As Christian immigration to the United States burgeoned in the wake of the Immigration Act of 1965, global evangelicals forced many American Christians to think more critically about their own assumptions. The United States is just one node of a sprawling global network that includes Korea, India, Switzerland, the Philippines, Guatemala, Uganda, and Thailand. Telling stories of resistance, accommodation, and cooperation, Swartz shows that evangelical networks not only go out to, but also come from, the ends of the earth.

2022 Christianity Today Finalist, Theology (Academic) God's Word creates what he commands In Justification by the Word, Jack D. Kilcrease reintroduces Martin Luther's key doctrine. Though a linchpin of the Reformation, Luther's view of justification is often misunderstood. For Luther, justification is an expression of God's creative Word. To understand Luther on justification, one must grasp his doctrine of the Word. The same God who declared "let there be light"--and it was so--also declares "your sins are forgiven." Justification is an objective reality. It is achieved in Christ's resurrection and received through an encounter with the risen Christ in Word and sacrament. Justification turns us outward, away from our own unsteady feelings and limited understanding, to look to Christ. And the church must preach justification, lest we so easily forfeit the joy of the gospel. Justification by the Word inspires readers to reencounter the radical doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Homer in Wittenberg draws on manuscript and printed materials to demonstrate Homer's foundational significance for educational and theological reform during the Reformation in Wittenberg. In the first study of Melanchthon's Homer annotations from three different periods spanning his career, and the first book-length study of his reading of a classical author, William Weaver offers a new perspective on the liberal arts and textual authority in the Renaissance and Reformation. Melanchthon's significance in the teaching of the liberal arts has long been recognized, but Homer's prominent place in his educational reforms is not widely known. Homer was instrumental in Melanchthon's attempt to transform the university curriculum, and his reforms of the liberal arts are clarified by his engagements with Homeric speech, a subject of interest in recent Homer scholarship. Beginning with his Greek grammar published just as he arrived in Wittenberg in 1518, and proceeding through his 1547 work on dialectic, Homer in Wittenberg shows that teaching Homer decisively shaped Melanchthon's redesign of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Melanchthon embarked on reforming the liberal arts with the ultimate objective of reforming theological education. His teaching of Homer illustrates the philosophical principles behind his use of well-known theological terms including sola scriptura, law and gospel, and loci communes. Homer's significance extended even to a practical theology of prayer, and Wittenberg scholia on Homer from the 1550s illustrate how the Homeric poem could be used to exercise faith as well as literary judgment and eloquence.

In the mid-1980s, a radio program with a compelling spiritual message was accidentally received by listeners in Vietnam's remote northern highlands. The Protestant evangelical communication had been created in the Hmong language by the Far East Broadcasting Company specifically for war refugees in Laos. The Vietnamese Hmong related the content to their traditional expectation of salvation by a Hmong messiah-king who would lead them out of subjugation, and they appropriated the evangelical message for themselves. Today, the New Way (Kev Cai Tshiab) has some three hundred thousand followers in Vietnam. Tam T. T. Ngo reveals the complex politics of religion and ethnic relations in contemporary Vietnam and illuminates the dynamic interplay between local and global forces, socialist and postsocialist state building, cold war and post-cold war antagonisms, Hmong transnationalism, and U.S.-led evangelical expansionism.

Denominations. The word itself often sparks strong reactions, causing us to wonder if there are merits to our factions and if it's possible to come together as one.

Showing how denominational affiliation can be natural without being negative, and how evangelical identity can help rather than hinder Christian unity, Why We Belong explains both the personal and doctrinal reasons each of the following contributors fit not only in their church, but also in the Church: Gerald L. Bray (Anglican) Timothy F. George (Baptist) Douglas A. Sweeney (Lutheran) Timothy C. Tennent (Methodist) Byron D. Klaus (Pentecostal) Bryan Chapell (Presbyterian)

Demonstrating that Christians have significant reasons for identifying with a denomination, this book also helps us see and belong to something much larger than our own traditions--the family of God.

This book does not only deal with the history, but also with the effects of the Reformation over the mentality, education and scientifical research among Hungarians during the last five centuries. The spirit of the Reformation has not only been a church-forming factor, but also a force of nation-building and salvation. This volume includes 17 studies of Hungarian Reformed theologians presented at a conference in November 2016. The main goal was to give an overview of the most recent research results in history and theology regarding Reformation and its effects over society and mentality among Hungarians. The contributors come from various Hungarian theological universities from the Carpathian basin, thus the book is an overview of their research topics and results. The City Cluj-Napoca was, became and remained an important center of the Reformation, as significant events took place in its surroundings as well. The Faculty of Reformed Theology of the Babes-Bolyai University and the Protestant Theological Institute has always functioned in an environment, where the challenges of multi-confessionalism and multiethnicity are also present beside interdisciplinarity.

During the sixteenth century, England underwent a religious revolution. This book examines the reverberations of this Protestant Reformation, which continued to be felt until at least the end of the seventeenth century. Brings together twelve essays by Nicholas Tyacke about English Protestantism, which range from the Reformation itself, and the new market-place of ideas opened up, to the establishment of freedom of worship for Protestant nonconformists in 1689. For this collection the author has written a substantial introduction, and updated the essays by incorporating new research. -- .