In Rhetoric of the Protestant Sermon in America: The Pulpit at the Turn of the Millennium, ten scholars analyze notable sermons from the fifty-year span between 1965 and 2015, during which the Protestant sermon has undergone significant change in the United States. Contributors examine how this turbulent time period witnessed a variety of important shifts in the arguments, evidences, and rhetorical strategies employed by contemporary preachers. Because religious practice is inextricably tangled in the culture, politics, and economy of its historical situation, the public expression of a faith is certain to move with the times. In their treatment of race, sex, gender, class, and citizenship, sermons apply ancient texts to current events and controversies, often to revealing effect. This collection, thoughtfully edited by Eric C. Miller and Jonathan J. Edwards, demonstrates how the genre of the Protestant sermon has evolved-or resisted evolution-across the years. Scholars of religion, rhetoric, communication, sociology, and cultural studies will find this book particularly useful.

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher stands in the very first rank of Christian systematic theologians with Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Karl Barth and has been dubbed as the 'Father of Modern Theology'. The beginning of the era of liberal theology that dominated Protestant thought at least until the First World War is commonly dated to the publication of Schleiermacher's On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers in 1799. His influence extends far beyond theology. He was a pioneer in education, the philosophy of language and hermeneutics. There has been a resurgence of interest in Schleiermacher. His way of wrestling with many of the issues of theology in the modern world are still quite relevant. This Guide for the Perplexed brings the results of the recent decades of research to bear on the most controversial and important aspects of Schleiermacher's work for our own time.

Morality after Calvin examines the development of ethical thought in the Reformed tradition immediately following the death of Calvin. The book explores a previously unstudied work of Theodore Beza, the Cato Censorius Christianus (1591). When read in conjunction with the works and correspondence of Beza and his colleagues (Simon Goulart, Lambert Daneau, Peter Martyr Vermigli, among others), the poems of the Cato reveal the theoretical underpinnings of the disciplinary activity during the period. Kirk M. Summers shows how the moral fervor of the latter half of the sixteenth century had its genesis in a well-formulated theology that viewed a Christian's sanctification as a process of restoration to an original order created by God. Morality propels one on the journey of life to the ultimate goal of peace and contentment in which God receives the glory. The principles that constitute this morality, therefore, look back to the very moment of creation, when God structured human relationships, established a certain order in nature, and issued commands. After the Fall, the Mosaic Law and Christ himself, to whom the faithful are united by the Holy Spirit, embody these principles. They include an ethos of listening, sincerity of life, engagement with one's calling, love of neighbor, respect for divinely ordained order, and a desire for the purity of the flock.

In their zeal to tell the true story of sixteenth-century radicalism, some sympathizers of the Anabaptist movement have portrayed the once maligned individuals and groups as innocent, pious people who suffered cruel persecution at the hands of the wicked state-churchmen. Their side of the story is thus often as one-sided as was the story of the enemies of Anabaptism.

This book, written by a Mennonite scholar, seeks to understand the reasons for the clash between Luther and the radicals, a point often neglected when one or the other side is emphasized. The study keeps Luther, however, in a central position, exploring the issues which led to the Reformer's attitude toward the radicals and analyzing the principles that were at stake in his struggle with the dissident groups.

Exacting scholarship and balanced judgement of this biography will help ensure its place as the definitive work of its kind.

The Nonconformists of England and Wales, the Protestants outside the Church of England, were particularly numerous in the Victorian years. These Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, Unitarians, and others helped shape society and made their mark in politics. This book explains the main characteristics of each denomination and examines the circumstances that enabled them to grow. It evaluates the main academic hypothesis about their role and points to signs of their subsequent decline in the twentieth century. Here is a succinct account of an important dimension of the Christian past in Britain.

The Reformation of the Decalogue tells two important but previously untold stories: of how the English Reformation transformed the meaning of the Ten Commandments, and of the ways in which the Ten Commandments helped to shape the English Reformation itself. Adopting a thematic structure, it contributes new insights to the history of the English Reformation, covering topics such as monarchy and law, sin and salvation, and Puritanism and popular religion. It includes, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of surviving Elizabethan and Early Stuart 'commandment boards' in parish churches, and presents a series of ten case studies on the Commandments themselves, exploring their shifting meanings and significance in the hands of Protestant reformers. Willis combines history, theology, art history and musicology, alongside literary and cultural studies, to explore this surprisingly neglected but significant topic in a work that refines our understanding of British history from the 1480s to 1625.

In the late fifteenth century, Burgundy was incorporated in the kingdom of France. This, coupled with the advent of Protestantism in the early sixteenth century, opened up new avenues for participation in public life by ordinary Burgundians and led to considerably greater interaction between the elites and the ordinary people. Mack Holt examines the relationship between the ruling and popular classes from Burgundy's re-incorporation into France in 1477 until the Lanturelu riot in Dijon in 1630, focusing on the local wine industry. Indeed, the vineyard workers were crucial in turning back the tide of Protestantism in the province until 1630 when, following royal attempts to reduce the level of popular participation in public affairs, Louis XIII tried to remove them from the city altogether. More than just a local study, this book shows how the popular classes often worked together with local elites to shape policies that affected them.

On March 20, 1760, a fire broke out in the Cornhill district of Boston, destroying nearly 350 buildings in its wake. One of the ruined shops belonged to the eminent Boston bookseller Daniel Henchman, who had published some of Jonathan Edwards's most important works, including The Life of Brainerd in 1749. Less than one year after the Great Fire of 1760, Henchman died. Edwards's chief printer Samuel Kneeland and literary agent and editor, Thomas Foxcroft, had also passed away by the end of the decade, marking the end of an era. Throughout Edwards's lifetime, and in the years after his death in 1758, most of the first editions of his books had been published in Boston. But with the deaths of Henchman, Kneeland, and Foxcroft, the publications of Edwards's writings shifted to Britain, where a new crop of booksellers, printers, and editors took on the task of issuing posthumous editions and reprints of his books. In Jonathan Edwards and Transatlantic Print Culture, religious historian Jonathan Yeager tells the story of how Edwards's works were published, including the people who were involved in their publication and their motivations. This book explores what the printing, publishing, and editing of Jonathan Edwards's publications can tell us about religious print culture in the eighteenth century, how the way that his books were put together shaped society's understanding of him as an author, and how details such as the formats, costs, quality of paper, length, bindings, and the number of reprints and abridgements of his works affected their reception.

'Religion and the Rise of History' is the rst study to apply the ideal type or model-building methodology of Otto Hintze (1861-1940) to Western historical thought or to what R.G. Collingwood called "The Idea of History," for it contains succinct and useful models for seeing and teaching classical, Christian, and modern professional historiography. It is also the rst work to suggest that, in addition to his well-known paradoxical, simul, and/or "at-the-same-time" way of thinking, Martin Luther also held to a path that was deeply incarnational, dynamic, and/or "in-with-and under." This dual vision strongly in uenced Leibniz, Hamann, and Herder, and was therefore a matter of considerable signi cance for the rise of a distinctly modern form of historical consciousness (commonly called "historicism") in Protestant Germany. Building upon this, Smith's essay suggests a new time period for the formative age of modern German thought, culture, and education: "The Cultural Revolution in Germany," This age began in the early 1760s and culminated in 1810 with the founding of the University of Berlin, the rst fully "modern" and "modernising" university. The university rst became the recognized center for the study of history through the work of Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), who derived his individualising way of thinking mainly from Luther. Smith goes on to detail the rise of history from a calling to a profession, and how the discussion between Troeltsch, Meinecke, and Hintze concerning the nature of modern historical thought was of central importance for the reorientation of Western social-historical thought in the twentieth century. Leonard S. Smith is Emeritus Professor of History at California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, California. "Leonard Smith's book is, in its origins and goals, a deeply pedagogical work. He addresses a central problem in the history of eighteenth-century German and European thought, the emergence of a new, evolutionary view of history called 'historicism'. Enabled by Luther's incarnational theology, historicism received its first formulation, Smith argues, from Leibniz and his successors and achieved its public place in the new University of Berlin (est. 1810). This book is a splendid marriage of classical themes with new and original insights. Everyone interested in the evolution of European historical thought should read it." - Thomas A. Brady Jr., University of California, Berkeley "This book breaks new ground in showing how Martin Luther shaped the philosophical pioneers of a new worldview based upon the study of history. A textbook for minds curious about a philosophy of history." - Eric W. Gritsch, Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary

James Ussher (1581-1656), one of the most important religious scholars and Protestant leaders of the seventeenth century, helped shape the Church of Ireland and solidify its national identity. In Catholicity and the Covenant of Works, Harrison Perkins addresses the development of Christian doctrine in the Reformed tradition, paying particular attention to the ways in which Ussher adopted various ideas from the broad Christian tradition to shape his doctrine of the covenant of works, which he utilized to explain how God related to humanity both before and after the fall into sin. Perkins highlights the ecumenical premises that underscored Reformed doctrine and the major role that Ussher played in codifying this doctrine, while also shedding light on the differing perspectives of the established churches of Ireland and England. Catholicity and the Covenant of Works considers how Ussher developed the doctrine of a covenant between God and Adam that was based on law, and illustrates how he related the covenant of works to the doctrines of predestination, Christology, and salvation.

The Swiss Reformation was a seminal event of the sixteenth century which created a Protestant culture whose influence spread across Europe from Transylvania to Scotland. Offers the first comprehensive study of the Swiss Reformation and argues that the movement must be understood in terms of the historical evolution of the Swiss Confederation, its unique and fluid structures, the legacy of the mercenary trade, the distinctive character of Swiss theology, the powerful influence of Renaissance humanism, and, most decisively, the roles played by the dominant figures, Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger. Marked by astounding creative energy, incendiary preaching, burning political passions, peasant revolts, and breath-taking scholarship, as well as by painful divisions, civil war, executions and dashed hopes, the story of the Swiss Reformation is told with extensive use of primary sources. Explores the narrative of events before turning to consider themes such as the radical opposition, church and community, daily life in the Confederation, cultural achievements and the Swiss place in the wider European Reformation world. -- .

In the late fifteenth century, Burgundy was incorporated in the kingdom of France. This, coupled with the advent of Protestantism in the early sixteenth century, opened up new avenues for participation in public life by ordinary Burgundians and led to considerably greater interaction between the elites and the ordinary people. Mack Holt examines the relationship between the ruling and popular classes from Burgundy's re-incorporation into France in 1477 until the Lanturelu riot in Dijon in 1630, focusing on the local wine industry. Indeed, the vineyard workers were crucial in turning back the tide of Protestantism in the province until 1630 when, following royal attempts to reduce the level of popular participation in public affairs, Louis XIII tried to remove them from the city altogether. More than just a local study, this book shows how the popular classes often worked together with local elites to shape policies that affected them.

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) is often considered the Father of Modern Theology, known for his attempt to reconcile traditional Christian doctrines with philosophical criticisms and scientific discoveries. Despite the influence of his work on significant figures like Karl Barth, he has been largely ignored by contemporary theologians. Focussing on Schleiermacher's doctrine of sin, this book demonstrates how Schleiermacher has not only been misinterpreted, but also underestimated, and deserves a critical re-examination. The book approaches Schleiermacher on sin with respect to three themes: one, its power to transcend an intractable metaethical dilemma at the heart of modern debates over sin; two, its intended compatibility with natural science; and three, to re-evaluating its place, and so Schleiermacher's place, in the history of theology. It solves and dissolves problems arising simultaneously from natural science, confessional theology, ethics, and metaphysics in a single, integrated account using Schleiermacher's understudied thought from his dogmatics The Christian Faith. In contrast to the account sometimes given of modern theology as marked by a break with "Greek metaphysics," Schleiermacher's account is shown to stand in stark contrast by retrieving, not excising, ancient thought in service of an account of sin adequate to natural science. This is a vital rediscovery of a foundational voice in theology. As such, it will greatly appeal to scholars of Modern Theology, theological ethics, and the history of Modern Christianity.

The story of Alpha is of major significance for understanding the place of religious faith in the modern world, but that story has never been told - until now. Since its launch in 1993, the Alpha movement has evolved from 'supper party evangelism' in the Kensington suburbs into a global brand of Christian outreach. Today, over a million people attend Alpha every year, but the history of its rise to popularity has never been documented. What caused such spiritual renewal in an age of scepticism? And what propelled Alpha into a phenomenon that is recognised across the globe? Alpha is far more than an introductory course to Christianity. At the core of its brand identity is a 'repackaging' of the Christian message for contemporary audiences. Innovation and cultural adaptability are built into Alpha's DNA, one of the chief reasons for its longevity and influence. Nimbly utilising the multimedia and digital revolutions, it has contextualised into cultures and languages across the planet. And led by charismatic, savvy individuals, it has attracted people from across the social spectrum, making waves in national media. Andrew Atherstone leaves no stone unturned as he presents this fascinating history. With exclusive access to original archives, Atherstone recounts the miraculous stories of HTB's early years, the first full account of Nicky Gumbel's conversion, and the strategic decisions that launched Alpha onto the global stage of Christian influence. With sharp historical analysis, Andrew Atherstone uncovers the story of Christian resurgence in our contemporary age.

The Preacher King investigates Martin Luther King Jr.'s religious development from a precocious "preacher's kid" in segregated Atlanta to the most influential America preacher and orator of the twentieth century. To give the most accurate and intimate portrait possible, Richard Lischer draws almost exclusively on King's unpublished sermons and speeches, as well as tape recordings, personal interviews, and even police surveillance reports. By returning to the raw sources, Lischer recaptures King's truest preaching voice and, consequently, something of the real King himself. He shows how as the son, grandson, and great-grandson of preachers, King early on absorbed the poetic cadences, traditions, and power of the pulpit, more profoundly influenced by his fellow African-American preachers than by Gandhi and the classical philosophers. Lischer also reveals a later phase of King's development that few of his biographers or critics have addressed: the prophetic rage with which he condemned American religious and political hypocrisy. During the last three years of his life, Lischer shows, King accused his country of genocide, warned of long hot summers in the ghettos, and called for a radical redistribution of wealth. 25 years after its initial publication, The Preacher King remains a critical study that captures the crucial aspect of Martin Luther King Jr.'s identity. Human, complex, and passionate, King was the consummate American preacher who never quit trying to reshape the moral and political character of the nation.

The story of Lutherans in America is one of mutual influence. From the first small groups of Lutherans to arrive in the colonies, to the large immigrations to the rich heartland of a growing nation, Lutherans have influenced, and been influenced by, America. In this lively and engaging new history, Granquist brings to light not only the varied and fascinating institutions that Lutherans founded and sustained but the people that lived within them. The result is a generous, human history that tells a complete story-not only about politics and policies but also the piety and the practical experiences of the Lutheran men and women who lived and worked in the American context. Bringing the story all the way to the present day and complemented with new charts, maps, images, and sidebars, Granquist ably covers the full range of Lutheran expressions, bringing order and clarity to a complex and vibrant tradition.

Fundamentally revising our understanding of the nature and intellectual contours of early English Protestantism, Karl Gunther argues that sixteenth-century English evangelicals were calling for reforms and envisioning godly life in ways that were far more radical than have hitherto been appreciated. Typically such ideas have been seen as later historical developments, associated especially with radical Puritanism, but Gunther's work draws attention to their development in the earliest decades of the English Reformation. Along the way, the book offers new interpretations of central episodes in this period of England's history, such as the 'Troubles at Frankfurt' under Mary and the Elizabethan vestments controversy. By shedding new light on early English Protestantism, the book ultimately casts the later development of Puritanism in a new light, enabling us to re-situate it in a history of radical Protestant thought that reaches back to the beginnings of the English Reformation itself.

In Debating the Sacraments, Amy Nelson Burnett brings together the foundational disputes regarding the baptism and the Lord's Supper that laid the groundwork for the development of two Protestant traditions-Lutheran and Reformed-as well as of dissenting Anabaptist movements. Burnett places these disputes in the context of early print culture, tracing their development in a range of publications and their impact on the wider public. Burnett examines not only the writings of the major reformers, but also the reception of their ideas in the pamphlets of lesser known figures, as well as the role of translators, editors, and printers in exacerbating the conflict among both literate and illiterate audiences. Following the chronological unfolding of the debates, Burnett observes how specific arguments were formed in the crucible of written critique and pierces several myths that have governed our understanding of the sacramental controversies. She traces the influence of Erasmus on Luther's followers outside of Wittenberg and highlights the critical question of authority, particularly in interpreting the Bible. Erasmus and Luther disagreed not only about the relationship between the material world and spiritual reality but also on biblical hermeneutics and scriptural exegesis. Their disagreements underlay the public debates over baptism and the Lord's Supper that broke out in 1525 and divided the evangelical movement. Erasmus's position would be reflected not only in the views of Huldrych Zwingli and others who shared his orientation toward the sacraments but also in the developing theologies of the Anabaptist movement of the 1520s. The neglected period of 1525-1529 emerges as a crucial phase of the early Reformation, when evangelical theologies were still developing, and which paved the way for the codification of theological differences in church ordinances, catechisms, and confessions of subsequent decades.