Originally published in 1961, Christianity Among the Religions examines whether it is possible to learn from other religions without compromising on personal religious loyalties. The book traces from the thirteenth century the gradual awakening of the West to the spiritual qualities of other religions and the various efforts made to place them in relation to Christianity. It explores the reports sent home by Jesuit missionaries in China, the advance in knowledge in nineteenth-century Europe, and the gradual decline in Western "provincialism". In doing so, the book puts forwards suggestions for the relation between Christianity and other religions and calls for open conversations between representatives of different faiths with the aim of increased unity of spirit. Christianity Among the Religions will appeal to all those with an interest in the history of Christianity and religious studies more generally.

Originally published in 1926, Christianity in the Making is a consideration of the processes of birth, growth and change observable in the first centuries of Christianity. The book draws attention to the key problems and debates that arise in studying the development of Christianity and encourages analysis of early Christian documents. Beginning with an overview of the life and death of Jesus, it reconstructs the main stages of the movement which resulted in Christianity and explores how it transitioned from a purely Jewish community with a narrow theology and apocalyptic outlook into a world-wide organisation. Christianity in the Making is ideal for readers with an interest in the history of Christianity, the history of religion, religious philosophy, and the development of Christian theology.

Originally published in 1986. The Force of the Feminine brings together the work of Christians from a number of denominations in examining different aspects of the task of converting the Church to the 'feminine'. Women have by and large occupied a subordinate position within the Church: men have written the theology; in the majority of denominations only men have always been permitted to be priests or ministers. The book explores how to awaken individual Christians to the need to feminise Church structures and, further, the possible need to rethink the very notion of God. The Force of the Feminine will appeal to those with an interest in religious studies, the history of Christianity, and religion and gender.

Originally published in 1958, The Cathedral is a verse sequence evoking the spirit of an English cathedral and the characters associated with its history. Although Salisbury is at its core, the book does not focus on the portrait of one specific cathedral, but instead includes features from many. It brings to life the figures that it portrays, giving voices to a wide variety of characters from the Peasant's Daughter to The Devil, and the Spire-Builder to the Queen. The Cathedral will appeal to those with an interest in poetry, Christianity, and religious architecture.

Originally published in 1958, Introduction to Christianity considers the nature of Christianity as a life shared in an historical, continuing community. Divided into five parts, the book is a comprehensive interpretation of Christianity as a people created by God's activity in history, with a focus on the proclamation of the Gospel. It highlights and examines the relevance of Christian doctrine to reflections on the meaning of life, and considers the significance of this at a time in which attitudes towards religion are increasingly ambiguous. Introduction to Christianity is ideal for those with an interest in the history of Christianity, Christian theology, and religious philosophy.

Good, solid, contemporary introductions to patristic authors and writings are difficult to find in the English-speaking world, and European volumes are expensive. This volume, which is Siegfried Schatzmann's translation of Lehrbuch der Patrologie, offers English-speaking readers easy access to Hubertus R. Drobner's traditional introduction to early Christian thought. Hubertus R. Drobner brings patristics scholarship up to date in this traditional introduction. His work is sufficiently broad to be a useful summary of early Christian history and the expansive strokes of doctrinal debate and development and provides a clear presentation of early Christian thought. Drobner introduces new materials throughout this updated edition of his handbook. A general map and several timetables add to the clarity of the volume. The Fathers of the Church is valuable in its presentation of contemporary studies and views. Patristics students will benefit from this dependable overview of early Christian texts, and scholars and libraries will appreciate the extensive bibliography, indexes, and other resources.

Print Letters in Seventeenth-Century England investigates how and why letters were printed in the interrelated spheres of political contestation, religious controversy, and news culture-those published as pamphlets, as broadsides, and in newsbooks in the interests of ideological disputes and as political and religious propaganda. The epistolary texts examined in this book, be they fictional, satirical, collected, or authentic, were written for, or framed to have, a specific persuasive purpose, typically an ideological or propagandistic one. This volume offers a unique exploration into the crucial interface of manuscript culture and print culture where tremendous transformations occur, when, for instance, at its most basic level, a handwritten letter composed by a single individual and meant for another individual alone comes, either intentionally or not, into the purview of hundreds or even thousands of people. This essential context, a solitary exchange transmuted via print into an interaction consumed by many, serves to highlight the manner in which letters were exploited as propaganda and operated as vehicles of cultural narrative.

The KJV Paragraph-style Large Print Thinline Bible features the timeless beauty of the trustworthy King James Version Bible. While the traditional design of the King James text starts each verse on its own line, this edition improves the reading experience and comprehension by keeping the writers' thoughts together in paragraph format. And with Thomas Nelson's exclusive KJV Comfort Print (R), you'll enjoy typography designed to be exceptionally easy-to-read and honoring the legacy of the King James Version. In 1611 the King James Bible was published and authorized by the monarch of England and Scotland. Today, more than 400 years since its initial publication, the KJV is considered one of the most influential and beautiful works of the English language and continues to be the favorite translation for millions of Christians worldwide. Features include: Clear and readable 10-point KJV Comfort Print Line-matched double column text Bible book introductions Words of Christ in red Over 22,000 translator notes Over 43,000 cross-referenced passages Concordance One-year Bible Reading Plan The Parables of Jesus Christ chart The Miracles of Jesus Christ chart 8 pages of full-color maps 2 satin ribbons

English Christendom has never been a static entity. Evangelism, politics, conflict and cultural changes have constantly and consistently developed it into myriad forms across the world. However, in recent times that development has seemingly become a general decline. This book utilises the motif of Christendom to illuminate the pedigree of Anglican Christianity, allowing a vital and persistent dynamic in Christianity, namely the relationship between the sacred and the mundane, to be more fundamentally explored. Each chapter seeks to unpack a particular historical moment in which the relations of sacred and mundane are on display. Beginning with the work of Bede, before focusing on the Anglo Norman settlement of England, the Tudor period, and the establishment of the church in the American and Australian colonies, Anglicanism is shown to consistently be a religio-political tradition. This approach opens up a different set of categories for the study of contemporary Anglicanism and its debates about the notion of the church. It also opens up fresh ways of looking at religious conflict in the modern world and within Christianity. This is a fresh exploration of a major facet of Western religious culture. As such, it will be of significant interest to scholars working in Religious History and Anglican Studies, as well as theologians with an interest in Western Ecclesiology.

Despite being widely recognized as John Wesley's key moment of Christian conversion, Aldersgate has continued to mystify regarding its exact meaning and significance to Wesley personally. This book brings clarity to the impact this event had on Wesley over the course of his lifetime by closely examining all of Wesley's writings pertaining to Aldersgate and framing them within the wider context of contemporary conversion narratives. The central aim of this study is to establish Wesley's interpretation of his Aldersgate experience as it developed from its initial impressions on the night of 24 May 1738 to its mature articulation in the 1770s. By paying close attention to the language of his diaries, letters, journals, sermons, tracts and other writings, fresh insights into Wesley's own perspective are revealed. When these insights are brought into wider context of other conversion narratives in the Christian milieu in which Wesley worked and wrote, this book demonstrates that this single event contributed in significant ways to the ethos of the Methodist movement, and many other denominations, even up to the present day. This is a unique study of the conversion of one of history's most influential Christian figures, and the impact that such narratives still have on us today. As such, it will be of great use to scholars of Methodism, theology, religious history and religious studies more generally.

Mapping the Motet in the Post-Tridentine Era provides new dimensions to the discussion of the immense corpus of polyphonic motets produced and performed in the decades following the end of the Council of Trent in 1563. Beyond the genre's rich connections with contemporary spiritual life and religious experience, the motet is understood here as having a multifaceted life in transmission, performance and reception. By analysing the repertoire itself, but also by studying its material life in books and accounts, in physical places and concrete sonic environments, and by investigating the ways in which the motet was listened to and talked about by contemporaries, the eleven chapters in this book redefine the cultural role of the genre. The motet, thanks to its own protean nature, not bound to any given textual, functional or compositional constraint, was able to convey cultural meanings powerfully, give voice to individual and collective identities, cross linguistic and confessional divides, and incarnate a model of learned and highly expressive musical composition. Case studies include considerations of composers (Palestrina, Victoria, Lasso), cities (Seville and Granada, Milan), books (calendrically ordered collections, non-liturgical music books) and special portions of the repertoire (motets pro defunctis, instrumental intabulations).

John Owen was one of the most significant figures in Reformed Orthodox theology during the Seventeenth Century, exerting considerable religious and political influence in the context of the British Civil War and Interregnum. Using Owen's sermons from this period as a window into the mind of a self-proclaimed prophet, this book studies how his apocalyptic interpretation of contemporary events led to him making public calls for radical political and cultural change. Owen believed he was ministering at a unique moment in history, and so the historical context in which he writes must be equally considered alongside the theological lineage that he draws upon. Combining these elements, this book allows for a more nuanced interpretation of Owen's ministry that encompasses his lofty spiritual thought as well as his passionate concerns with more corporeal events. This book represents part of a new historical turn in Owen Studies and will be of significant interest to scholars of theological history as well as Early Modern historians.

Employs the social-psychological study of social rejection, social identity theory, and social memory theory, shedding new light on the topic.

This innovative book aims to create a 'poetics of Church' and a 'religious imaginary' as alternatives to more institutional and conventional ways of thinking and of being 'Church'. Structured as a spiritual and literary journey, the work moves from models of the institutional Catholic Church into more radical and ambiguous textual spaces, which the author creates by bringing together an unorthodox group of thinkers referred to as 'poet-companions': the 16th-century founder of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius of Loyola, the French thinkers Gaston Bachelard and Helene Cixous, the French poet Yves Bonnefoy, and the English playwright Dennis Potter. Inspired especially by the reading and writing practices of Cixous, the author attempts to exemplify Cixous' notion of ecriture feminine-'feminine writing'-that suggests new ways of seeing and relating. The project's uniting of Ignatian spirituality with postmodern thinking and its concern with creating new theological, literary and spiritual spaces for women both coincide and contrast with Pope Francis's pastoral and reformist tendencies, which have neglected to adequately address the marginalisation of women in the Church. As Francis has called for 'a theology of women', of which there are, of course, many to draw from, this volume will be a timely contribution with a unique interdisciplinary approach.

Originally published in 1953, The Birth of Christianity analyses the development of Christian doctrine and the establishment of the Church. The book traces the history of the formation of the Church as a new religious society and considers its development both in the realm of thought as well as on a social level, in both emotional life and moral action. It explores how the Christian faith first found expression in society through a variety of forms that were gradually assimilated into one system of doctrine, and examines both how Christian theology and dogma were formed, and how the Church developed its constitution. The Birth of Christianity will appeal to those with an interest in the history of religion, the history of Christianity, theology, and the philosophy of religion.

First published in 1980, The Christian Mystery presents a new approach to considering the Mysteries of the Faith. The book examines the doctrines of Christianity, analysing them closely and showing how together they constitute an invisible whole. It argues that churches should turn back to the esoteric teachings known by the first Christians and explores how Christianity has developed the primal Tradition of which Jesus was Representative. The Christian Mystery will appeal to those with an interest in theology, the philosophy of religion, and the history of Christianity.

Collected Studies CS1064 This collection of Giles Constable's key articles on medieval monastic and ecclesiastical history provides nothing less than a comprehensive overview of research in the field. The book provides an insight into monastic life in the Middle Ages - from Germany to Normandy and from England to Sicily.

Originally published in 1948, Christianity and Fear explores the nature and history of Christian love in relation to the problem of fear. Based on methods of depth psychology and mental hygiene, the book argues for the necessity of a general concentration of the Christian religion and way of life upon the unity of love through faith and faith through love. It presents the struggle between the teaching of Christian love and the many instances of disputes on dogma that have prompted hatred and fear throughout ecclesiastical history. By using the theory of fear and compulsions, it attempts to explain the directions assumed by these aberrations in Christian history and to highlight love as the essence of the teaching of Jesus. Christianity and Fear will appeal to those with an interest in the history of Christianity, theology, and the psychology of religion.

Producing Christian Culture takes as its thread the 'interpretative genres' within which medieval people engaged with the Bible. Contributors to the volume present specific material as a case study illustrative of a specific genre, whether devotional, homiletical, scholarly, or controversial. The chronological range moves from St Augustine to the use of gospel texts in polemical writing of the first two decades of the 1500s, with focal sections on early medieval Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian theology, the scholastic turn of the High Middle Ages, and the influence of vernacular writing in the later Middle Ages. The tremendous range and vitality of medieval responses to biblical texts are highlighted within the studies.

In the late fourteenth century, the Iberian Peninsula was home to three major religions which coexisted in relative peace. Over the next two centuries, various political and social factors changed the face of Iberia dramatically. This book examines this period of dynamic change in Iberian history through the lens of food and its relationship to religious identity. It also provides a basis for further study of the connection between food and identities of all types. This study explores the role of food as an expression of religious identity made evident in things like fasting, feasting, ingredient choices, preparation methods and commensal relations. It considers the role of food in the formation and redefinition of religious identities throughout this period and its significance in the maintenance of ideological and physical boundaries between faiths. This is an insightful and unique look into inter-religious dynamics. It will therefore be of great interest to scholars of religious studies, early modern European history and food studies.

Prostitute, apostle, evangelist-the conversion of Mary Magdalene from sinner to saint is one of the Christian tradition's most compelling stories, and one of the most controversial. The identity of the woman-or, more likely, women-represented by this iconic figure has been the subject of dispute since the Church's earliest days. Much less appreciated is the critical role the Magdalene played in remaking modern Christianity. In a vivid recreation of the Catholic and Protestant cultures that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, The Magdalene in the Reformation reveals that the Magdalene inspired a devoted following among those eager to find new ways to relate to God and the Church. In popular piety, liturgy, and preaching, as well as in education and the arts, the Magdalene tradition provided both Catholics and Protestants with the flexibility to address the growing need for reform. Margaret Arnold shows that as the medieval separation between clergy and laity weakened, the Magdalene represented a new kind of discipleship for men and women and offered alternative paths for practicing a Christian life. Where many have seen two separate religious groups with conflicting preoccupations, Arnold sees Christians who were often engaged in a common dialogue about vocation, framed by the life of Mary Magdalene. Arnold disproves the idea that Protestants removed saints from their theology and teaching under reform. Rather, devotion to Mary Magdalene laid the foundation within Protestantism for the public ministry of women.

This book examines the potential of conducting studies in comparative hagiology, through parallel literary and historical analyses of spiritual life writings pertaining to distinct religious contexts. In particular, it focuses on a comparative analysis of the early sources on the medieval Christian Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) and the Tibetan Buddhist Milarepa (c. 1052-1135), up to and including the so-called 'standard versions' of their life stories written by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221-1274) and Tsangnyoen Heruka (1452-1507) respectively. The book thus demonstrates how in the social and religious contexts of both 1200s Italy and 1400s Tibet, narratives of the lives, deeds and teachings of two individuals recognized as spiritual champions were seen as the most effective means to promote spiritual, doctrinal and political agendas. Therefore, as well being highly relevant to those studying hagiographical sources, this book will be of interest to scholars working across the fields of religion and the comparative study of religious phenomena, as well as history and literature in the pre-modern period.

When Jesus commissioned his followers, he was not just inaugurating the historical church, he was founding a missionary movement.Originally released by Missional Press and now revised and expanded to include a multi-session discussion guide, Steve Addison's Movements That Change the World draws from biblical, historical and contemporary case studies to isolate the essential elements of a dynamic missionary movement. The church fulfills its mission today to the extent that it honors these essential elements, modelled perfectly in Jesus? missionary enterprise: white-hot faith commitment to the cause contagious relationships rapid mobilization adaptive methods Throughout the ages Jesus' followers have been called to continue his movement in the power of the Holy Spirit. Like many such movements, it changed the world. Unlike most movements, which have their historical moment and then fade away, Christianity is actively, continually changing the world for the better.

This book traces the history of the "Church Crisis", a conflict between the Protestant and Anglo-Catholic (Ritualist) parties within the Church of England between 1898 and 1906. During this period, increasing numbers of Britons embraced Anglo-Catholicism and even converted to Roman Catholicism. Consequent fears that Catholicism was undermining the "Protestant" heritage of the established church led to a moral panic. The Crisis led to a temporary revival of Erastianism as protestant groups sought to stamp out Catholicism within the established church through legislation whilst Anglo-Catholics, who valued ecclesiastical autonomy, opposed any such attempts. The eventual victory of forces in favor of greater ecclesiastical autonomy ended parliamentary attempts to control church practice, sounding the death knell of Erastianism. Despite increased acknowledgment that religious concerns remained deep-seated around the turn of the century, historians have failed to recognize that this period witnessed a high point in Protestant-Catholic antagonism and a shift in the relationship between the established church and Parliament. Parliament's increasing unwillingness to address ecclesiastical concerns in this period was not an example advancing political secularity. Rather, Parliament's increased reluctance to engage with the Church of England illustrates the triumph of an anti-Erastian conception of church-state relations.