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Books > Christianity > Christian institutions & organizations > General
A free open access ebook is upon publication. Learn more at
www.luminosoa.org. Flight during times of persecution has a long
and fraught history in early Christianity. In the third century,
bishops who fled were considered cowards or, worse yet, heretics.
On the face, flight meant denial of Christ and thus betrayal of
faith and community. But by the fourth century, the terms of
persecution changed as Christianity became the favored cult of the
Roman Empire. Prominent Christians who fled and survived became
founders and influencers of Christianity over time. Bishops in
Flight examines the various ways these episcopal leaders both
appealed to and altered the discourse of Christian flight to defend
their status as purveyors of Christian truth, even when their
exiles appeared to condemn them. Their stories illuminate how
profoundly Christian authors deployed theological discourse and the
rhetoric of heresy to respond to the phenomenal political
instability of the fourth and fifth centuries.
The Yaysmawurk' is a liturgical collection of brief saints' lives
arranged according to the day on which they were celebrated in the
annual church calendar. The name comes from the first words of most
of the daily entries: Y-aysm awur, that is, "On this day . . ." The
collection was part of the great and varied Armenian liturgical
tradition from the turn of the first millennium. The first
Yaysmawurk' was translated from an existing Greek liturgical
collection (the Synaxarion, "where the lives are all collected").
In fact, it is common knowledge that this Greek collection was the
basis for nearly all such liturgical collections of the lives of
the saints throughout the early Christian world. However, it was
not a mere translation. Rather, it constituted a logical
culmination of a long and steady development in the Armenian Church
of what scholars today like to call the cult of the saints.
Decolonizing Christianity traces the dramatic transformation of
Christianity from its position as the moral foundation of European
imperialism to its role as a radical voice of political and social
change in the era of decolonization. As Christians renegotiated
their place in the emerging Third World, they confronted the
consequences of racism and violence that Christianity had
reinforced in European colonies. This book tells the story of
Christians in Algeria who undertook a mission to 'decolonize the
Church' and ensure the future of Christianity in postcolonial
Algeria. But it also recovers the personal aspects of
decolonization, as many of these Christians were arrested and
tortured by the French for their support of Algerian independence.
The consequences of these actions were immense, as the theological
and social engagement of Christians in Algeria then influenced the
groundbreaking reforms developing within global Christianity in the
1960s.
"I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was
in chains. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become
useful both to you and to me." These words, written by the apostle
Paul to a first-century Christian named Philemon, are tantalizingly
brief. Indeed, Paul's epistle to Philemon is one of the shortest
books in the entire Bible. While it's direct enough in its way, it
certainly leaves plenty to the imagination. A Week in the Life of a
Slave is a vivid imagining of that story. From the pen of an
accomplished New Testament scholar, the narrative follows the slave
Onesimus from his arrival in Ephesus, where the apostle Paul is
imprisoned, and fleshes out the lived context of that time and
place, supplemented by numerous sidebars and historical images.
John Byron's historical fiction is at once a social and theological
critique of slavery in the Roman Empire and a gripping adventure
story, set against the exotic backdrop of first-century Ephesus.
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