All the wonder, terror and delight of Greek mythology springs forth from the pages of this unique and much-needed anthology. Rhonda Hendricks has not only selected from the works of the ancient authors the best -- and often earliest -- versions of these tales; she has also arranged them so as to give a cumulative view of classical mythology beginning with The Creation and The Birth of Zeus. Of particular interest are: The Ages of Mankind, The Birth of Athena, Oedipus the King, Heracles, Theseus, Jason and Medea, The Judgement of Paris, The Trojan Horse, Pygmalion, and Cupid and Psyche. These texts offer a new perspective on classical mythology and, by so doing, cast a new light on this cornerstone of Western culture.

Presenting a fundamental re-thinking of Asian theology, this book focuses on theological indigenization in Asia in light of the postcolonial theory of resistance advanced by Homi K. Bhabha, among others. Two types of anti-colonialist resistance within Asian theologies are identified and interrogated. The first is nationalistic in kind, operating from a theological language that is binaristic and oppositional. The second is illustrated by that which was mounted by the three Chinese Christian thinkers whose indigenous theologies are analysed in this book as case studies. This second kind, postcolonial in its character, is characterized by collaboration rather than antagonistic binarism. In spite of much dissimilarity between these two kinds of resistance, the book argues that they are similarly anti-colonialist, and both can be equally valid in resisting colonial forces. Given that the binarism and antagonism imbedded in the Asian theological movement are historically contingent, and that the sole reliance on this resistance has made the movement self-ensnaring, the book suggests that the Asian theological movement widen its choice of colonial-resistant strategies. Drawing attention to the otherwise subtle politics of the Asian theological indigenization discourse, this book addresses the relationship between postcolonialism and Asia contextual theology, and is of interest to students and scholars of Asian Religion and Philosophy.

During a career spanning sixty years, the Reverend Billy Graham s resonant voice and chiseled profile entered the living rooms of millions of Americans with a message that called for personal transformation through God s grace. How did a lanky farm kid from North Carolina become an evangelist hailed by the media as America s pastor ? Why did listeners young and old pour out their grief and loneliness in letters to a man they knew only through televised Crusades in faraway places like Madison Square Garden? More than a conventional biography, Grant Wacker s interpretive study deepens our understanding of why Billy Graham has mattered so much to so many.

Beginning with tent revivals in the 1940s, Graham transformed his born-again theology into a moral vocabulary capturing the fears and aspirations of average Americans. He possessed an uncanny ability to appropriate trends in the wider culture and engaged boldly with the most significant developments of his time, from communism and nuclear threat to poverty and civil rights. The enduring meaning of his career, in Wacker s analysis, lies at the intersection of Graham s own creative agency and the forces shaping modern America.

Wacker paints a richly textured portrait: a self-deprecating servant of God and self-promoting media mogul, a simple family man and confidant of presidents, a plainspoken preacher and the Protestant pope. America s Pastor "reveals how this Southern fundamentalist grew, fitfully, into a capacious figure at the center of spiritual life for millions of Christians around the world."

The church needs to do a better job of speaking theologically to single Christians. Challenging prevailing evangelical assumptions about "the problem" of singleness, this book explains why the church needs single people and offers a contemporary theology of singleness relevant to all members of the church. Drawing on the examples of three important figures from the history of Christianity, the book helps today's church form a vision of life in the kingdom of God that is as theologically significant for single people as it is for those who are married.

"The Handbook of Religions in Ancient Europe" surveys the major religious currents of Europe before Christianity - the first continental religion with hegemonic ambition - wiped out most local religions. The evidence - whether archaeological or written - is notoriously difficult to interpret, and the variety of religions documented by the sources and the range of languages used are bewildering. The "Handbook" brings together leading authorities on pre-Christian religious history to provide a state-of-the-art survey. The first section of the book covers the Prehistoric period, from the Paleolithic to the Bronze Age. The second section covers the period since writing systems began. Ranging across the Mediterranean and Northern, Celtic and Slavic Europe, the essays assess the archaeological and textual evidence. Dispersed archaeological remains and biased outside sources constitute our main sources of information, so the complex task of interpreting these traces is explained for each case. The "Handbook" also aims to highlight the plurality of religion in ancient Europe: the many ways in which it is expressed, notably in discourse, action, organization, and material culture; how it is produced and maintained by different people with different interests; how communities always connect with or disassociate from adjunct communities and how their beliefs and rituals are shaped by these relationships. The "Handbook" will be invaluable to anyone interested in ancient History and also to scholars and students of Religion, Anthropology, Archaeology, and Classical Studies.

This book extends scholarly debate beyond the analysis of pure historical debates and concerns to focus on the associations between Acts and the diverse contemporaneous texts, writers, and broader cultural phenomena in the second-century world of Christians, Romans, Greeks, and Jews.

The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade brings together a rich and diverse range of medieval sources to examine key aspects of the growth of heresy and dissent in southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the Church's response to that threat through the subsequent authorisation of the Albigensian crusade. Aimed at students and scholars alike, the documents it discusses - papal letters, troubadour songs, contemporary chronicles in Latin and the vernacular, and inquisitorial documents - reflect a deeper perception of medieval heresy and the social, political and religious implications of crusading than has hitherto been possible. The reader is introduced to themes which are crucial to our understanding of the medieval world: ideologies of crusading and holy war, the complex nature of Catharism, the Church's implementation of diverse strategies to counter heresy, the growth of papal inquisition, southern French counter-strategies of resistance and rebellion, and the uses of Latin and the vernacular to express regional and cultural identity. This timely and highly original collection not only brings together previously unexplored and in some cases unedited material, but provides a nuanced and multi-layered view of the religious, social and political dimensions of one of the most infamous conflicts of the High Middle Ages. This book is a valuable resource for all students, teachers and researchers of medieval history and the crusades.

This book offers a systematic, chronological analysis of the role played by the human senses in experiencing pilgrimage and sacred places, past and present. It thus addresses two major gaps in the existing literature, by providing a broad historical narrative against which patterns of continuity and change can be more meaningfully discussed, and focusing on the central, but curiously neglected, area of the core dynamics of pilgrim experience. Bringing together the still-developing fields of Pilgrimage Studies and Sensory Studies in a historically framed conversation, this interdisciplinary study traces the dynamics of pilgrimage and engagement with holy places from the beginnings of the Judaeo-Christian tradition to the resurgence of interest evident in twenty-first century England. Perspectives from a wide range of disciplines, from history to neuroscience, are used to examine themes including sacred sites in the Bible and Early Church; pilgrimage and holy places in early and later medieval England; the impact of the English Reformation; revival of pilgrimage and sacred places during the nineteenth and twentieth Centuries; and the emergence of modern place-centred, popular 'spirituality'. Addressing the resurgence of pilgrimage and its persistent link to the attachment of meaning to place, this book will be a key reference for scholars of Pilgrimage Studies, History of Religion, Religious Studies, Sensory Studies, Medieval Studies, and Early Modern Studies.

Nicholson, one of the UK's leading historians of the medieval military orders...has a flair for clear and uncluttered explanations enlivened with telling detail and quotation. And her account is comprehensive. An attractive volume. HISTORY This short study of the history of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, also known as the Knights Hospitaller, is intended as an introduction to the Order for academics working in other fields, as well as the interested general reader. Beginning with a consideration of the origins of the Order as a hospice for pilgrims in Jerusalem in the eleventh century, it traces the Hospitaller's development into a military order during the first part of the twelfth century, and its military activities on the frontiers of Christendom in the eastern Mediterranean, Spain and eastern Europe during the middle ages and into early modern period: its role in crusades and in wars against non-Christians on land and at sea, as well as its role in building and maintaining fortresses. It also considers the Order's activities away from the frontiers of Christendom: its economic activities and its relations with patrons and rulers throughout Europe, as well as its hospitaller work and its religious life. The focus of the study is on the medieval period down to the loss of Rhodes in 1522, but the final chapters of the book consider the Order'shistory on Malta from the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century, and from the loss of Malta in 1798 to the present day. HELEN NICHOLSON is Senior Lecturer in History, Cardiff University.

In The Blood of Martyrs Joyce E. Salisbury chronicles the many spectacles of violent martyrdom that took place during the first three centuries of the Christian era, describing the role of martyrdom in the development of the early Church, as well as its continuing influence on many of today's ideas. Salisbury shows through the engaging stories of the martyrs introduced in each chapter, how their legacy continues to shape contemporary ideas. Discussing modern martyrdom the book elicits deep lessons for the present from the ancient past and outlining the possibility of a religious future without violence. In The Blood of Martyrs, Salisbury brings to life this tumultuous time in late antiquity and sheds invaluable light on religious violence, modern martyrs, and self-sacrifice.

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.

This book explores the political dimension of Pope Francis' theology from a variety of perspectives and makes a unique contribution to the ongoing historiography of his pontificate. It defines the concept of political theology when applied to Pope Francis' discourse and reflects on the portrayal of him as the voice of Latin America, a great reformer and a revolutionary. The chapters offer a thorough investigation of core texts and key moments in Pope Francis' papacy (2013-), focusing in particular on their relation to canon theory, liberation theology, the rise of populism, and gender issues. As well as documenting some of the continuities between the ideas of Pope Francis and his predecessor Benedict XVI, the author asks what the Argentinian pontiff has brought from Latin America and considers the Latin American dimension to what has become known as the 'Francis effect'. Overall, the book demonstrates how the Pope's words and actions constitute a powerful political theology disseminated from a unique religious and institutional position. It will be of interest to scholars of theology, religion, and politics, particularly those with a focus on world Catholicism, political theology, and church history.

First published in 1979, The Second Coming is an experiment in the writing of popular history - a contribution to the history of the people who have no history and an exploration of some of the ideas, beliefs and ways of thinking of ordinary men and women in the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. Millenarianism is a conceptual tool with which to explore some aspects of popular thought and culture. It is also seen as an ideology of social change and as a continuing tradition, traced from the end of the seventeenth century to the 1790s, and is shown to be embedded in folk culture. Abundant in rich and lively descriptions of such colourful characters as Richard Brothers, Joanna Southcott, John Wroe, Zion Ward and Sir William Courtenay, as well as studies of the Shakers, early Mormons and Millerites, the result is a window into the world of ordinary people in the Age of Romanticism.

In these stormy times, voices from all fronts call for change. But what kind of revolution brings true freedom to both society and the human soul? Cultural observer Os Guinness explores the nature of revolutionary faith, contrasting between secular revolutions such as the French Revolution and the faith-led revolution of ancient Israel. He argues that the story of Exodus is the highest, richest, and deepest vision for freedom in human history. It serves as the master story of human freedom and provides the greatest sustained critique of the abuse of power. His contrast between "Paris" and "Sinai" offers a framework for discerning between two kinds of revolution and their different views of human nature, equality, and liberty. Drawing on the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, Guinness develops Exodus as the Magna Carta of humanity, with a constructive vision of a morally responsible society of independent free people who are covenanted to each other and to justice, peace, stability, and the common good of the community. This is the model from the past that charts our path to the future. "There are two revolutionary faiths bidding to take the world forward," Guinness writes. "There is no choice facing America and the West that is more urgent and consequential than the choice between Sinai and Paris. Will the coming generation return to faith in God and to humility, or continue to trust in the all sufficiency of Enlightenment reason, punditry, and technocracy? Will its politics be led by principles or by power?" While Guinness cannot predict our ultimate fate, he warns that we must recognize the crisis of our time and debate the issues openly. As individuals and as a people, we must choose between the revolutions, between faith in God and faith in Reason alone, between freedom and despotism, and between life and death.

"Conceptually well organized, stylistically clear, intellectually thoughtful, and pedagogically useful."

- Thomas Head, Speculum

"For its humane and learned approach to its enormous canvas, as well as for the cogency with which it penetrates at speed to the essentials of a vanished historical epoch, this History of the Church in the Middle Ages deserves a very wide audience indeed."

- Barrie Dobson, English Historical Review

"To have written a scholarly and very readable history of the Western Church over a millennium is a remarkable tour de force, for which Donald Logan is to be warmly congratulated."

- C.H Lawrence, The Tablet

"A feat of historical synthesis, most confident in its telling of the coming of Christianity. Books like Logan's are needed more than ever before."

- Miri Rubin, TLS

In this fascinating survey, F. Donald Logan introduces the reader to the Christian church, from the conversion of the Celtic and Germanic peoples to the discovery of the New World. He reveals how the church unified the people of Western Europe as they worshipped with the same ceremonies and used Latin as the language of civilized communication. From remote, rural parish to magnificent urban cathedral, A History of the Church in the Middle Ages explores the role of the church as a central element in determining a thousand years of history.

This new edition brings the book right up to date with recent scholarship, and includes an expanded introduction exploring the interaction of other faiths - particularly Judaism and Islam - with the Christian church.

Originally published in 1970, this book represents a unique study of beliefs and ritual practices in a pagan religion, and of the processes by which a transformation to Christianity took place. Christianity came to the major islands of Polynesia nearly two centuries ago, and within a couple of generations, the traditional pagan religion had disappeared. Only a few remote islands such as Tikopia preserved their ancient cults. Over eighty years ago, the author first observed and took part in these pagan rites, and on later visits he studied the change from paganism to Christian faith. Unique in its rich documentation, this book presents a systematic account of the traditional beliefs in gods and spirits and of the way in which these were fused with the social and political structure. The causes and dramatic results of the conversion to Christianity are then described, ending with an examination of the religious situation at the time of the book's original publication. The book is both a contribution to anthropology and a case study in religious history. It completes the major series of studies of Tikopia society for which the author is famous. It gives the first full account of a Polynesian religious system in a state of change.

This volume examines the Melkite church from the Arab invasion of Syria in 634 until 969. The Melkite Patriarchates were established in Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria and, following the Arab campaigns in Syria and Egypt, they all came under the new Muslim state. Over the next decades the Melkite church underwent a process of gradual marginalization, moving from the privileged position of the state confession to becoming one of the religious minorities of the Caliphate. This transition took place in the context of theological and political interactions with the Byzantine Empire, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Papacy and, over time, with the reborn Roman Empire in the West. Exploring the various processes within the Melkite church this volume also examines Caliphate-Byzantine interactions, the cultural and religious influences of Constantinople, the synthesis of Greek, Arab and Syriac elements, the process of Arabization of communities, and Melkite relations with distant Rome.

Our current image of the Christian population of al-Andalus after AD711 reflects the way history has been written. The Christians almost disappeared from the historical record as the historians of the conquering Muslims concentrated on the glories of the Ummayads.This book reconsiders, through their own words, the fate of the Christians of al-Andalus. The texts discusses two chronicles in Latin on the fate of Hispania, the problematic accounts of Christian martyrs in Cordoba, a Muslim historian's account of how his Christian ancestors survived the conquest and other texts reflecting the acculturation of Christians into Islamic society.

Mini-set C:Philosophy & Religion re-issues 4 volumes originally published between 1924 and 1973 and examines the ancient religions of Persia as well as Christianity in Persia. For institutional purchases for e-book sets please contact [email protected] (customers in the UK, Europe and Rest of World)