"Shakerism teaches God's immanence through the common life shared in Christ's mystical body." Like many religious seekers throughout the ages, they honor the revelation of God but cannot be bound up in an unchanging set of dogmas or creeds. Freeing themselves from domination by the state religion, Mother Ann Lee and her first followers in mid-18th-century England labored to encounter the godhead directly. They were blessed by spiritual gifts that showed them a way to live the heavenly life on Earth. The result of their efforts was the fashioning of a celibate communal life called the Christlife, wherein a person, after confessing all sin, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, can travel the path of regeneration into ever- increasing holiness. Pacifism, equality of the sexes, and withdrawal from the world are some of the ways the faith was put into practice. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Shakers contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on Shaker communities, industries, individual families, and important people. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Shakers.

On January 20, 1994 the worshippers at the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church began to feel the Holy Spirit move them. They began to laugh uncontrollably, collapse to the floor, stagger as if drunk. But what was truly startling in this occurrence-now commonly known as the Toronto Blessing-is that these manifestations keep appearing at the Toronto church and have sparked a worldwide charismatic revival. Visitors from around the world have come and started revivals in their home churches upon return. In Main Street Mystics, Margaret Poloma explains what is happening with this contemporary charismatic revival without explaining it away. From her unique position as both a scholar and a pilgrim, Poloma offers an intimate account of the movement while always attempting to understand it through the lenses of social science. She looks at Pentecostalism as a form of mysticism, but a mysticism that engages Pentecostals and charismatics in the everyday world. With its broad overview and up-close portraits, Main Street Mystics is essential for anyone wanting to understand the ever renewing movement of Pentecostalism.

With the Christian church in the west in decline, some churches are undergoing difficult transitions as they seek to become relevant, to both themselves and their surrounding cultures. Evangelicalism and the Emerging Church details an ethnographic study of a Vineyard congregation making sense of their Vineyard roots and their growing relationship with the self-proclaimed "emerging church" network. Through a rich account of congregational life and tensions, universal issues are raised such as relating to religious parentage, creating safe places for spirituality, Christian growth and maturity, communication with contemporary culture, and the challenges of identity reconstruction. This book is the first to conduct an academic study of a Vineyard congregation in the United Kingdom.

This book examines the evangelical Christian worship focusing primarily in the island-state of Grenada. The study is based upon the author's detailed study of Pentecostal communities in that island-state as well as her own background in Barbados. The study traces the development of Pentecostal religious communities from Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Wesleyan Methodist movement.

How does university turn students into who they become? Why are student evangelicals such a significant and controversial force at so many universities? In many countries, university has become the main Rite of Passage between the child and adult worlds. University can be enjoyable and fascinating but also life-changing and traumatic. And at the exact time when a student's identity is the most challenged and uncertain, student evangelical groups are highly organised on many university campuses to offer students a powerful identity so that the world makes sense once again. For some, these groups will protect them from the university's assault on their faith. For others, they will challenge and even change who they are. Meeting Jesus at University explores universities in six countries. Drawing upon detailed fieldwork, it examines the largest student evangelical group at each university in order to understand in depth the relationship between the student evangelical group and the university which it aims to convert. Meeting Jesus at University offers an original contribution to the discussion of Rites of Passage, examining what is experienced at university and how university breaks down and remoulds young people. It explores why student evangelicals are so active, particularly at Britain and America's most prestigious and identity-challenging institutions meaning that students at these places are the most likely to find themselves meeting Jesus at university.

This book brings the theme of prayer into anthropological discussion. Across diverse significant ethnographic case studies, five anthropologists attend to prayers and how they are performed and seen to intervene in the social world. The studies include Pentecostals in Zambia, Charismatic Christians in Ghana, Protestants in Scotland, Eastern Orthodox Christians in Romania, and Catholics in Syria. Across these ethnographic cases, the book argues that focusing on the social life of prayer offers a significant way to engage with matters close to people. Prayers are a way to map affect and the affective relationships people hold in what they are oriented towards and care about. Taking its cue from Marcel Mauss, the book invites us to go beyond the individual and see how prayers always point to a broader social landscape of obligation and affective investment. Focusing on the social life of prayers, the book posits, accordingly entices a particular form of situated comparison of diverse Christian traditions that pushes the scholarly conversation on Christianity to consider central questions of agency, responsibility and subjectivity. Taking up prayer as the object of study, this book offers novel anthropological perspectives on Christian life and practice. The chapters in this book were originally published a special issue of Religion.

Wealth, Health, and Hope in African Christian Religion offers a portrait of how contending narratives of modernity in both church and society play out in Africa today through the agency of African Christian religion. It explores the identity and features of African Christian religion and the cultural forces driving the momentum of Christian expansion in Africa, as well as how these factors are shaping a new African social imagination, especially in providing answers to the most challenging questions about poverty, wealth, health, human, and cosmic flourishing. It offers the academy a good road map for interpreting African Christian religious beliefs and practices today and into the future.

Published in 1905: This book discusses Evangelism and Christianity.

When approaching the most public disagreement over predestination in the eighteenth century, the 'Free Grace' controversy between John Wesley and George Whitefield, the tendency can be to simply review the event as a row over the same old issues. This assumption pervades much of the scholarly literature that deals with early Methodism. Moreover, much of that same literature addresses the dispute from John Wesley's vantage point, often harbouring a bias towards his Evangelical Arminianism. Yet the question must be asked: was there more to the 'Free Grace' controversy than a simple rehashing of old arguments? This book answers this complex question by setting out the definitive account of the 'Free Grace' controversy in first decade of the Evangelical Revival (1739-49). Centred around the key players in the fracas, John Wesley and George Whitefield, it is a close analysis of the way in which the doctrine of predestination was instrumental in differentiating the early Methodist societies from one another. It recounts the controversy through the lens of doctrinal analysis and from two distinct perspectives: the propositional content of a given doctrine and how that doctrine exerts formative pressure upon the assenting individual(s). What emerges from this study is a clearer picture of the formative years of early Methodism and the vital role that doctrinal pronouncement played in giving a shape to early Methodist identity. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of Methodism, Evangelicalism, Theology and Church History.

'Secularization' has been hotly debated since it was first subjected to critical attention in the mid-sixties by David Martin, before he sketched a 'General Theory' in 1969. 'On Secularization' presents David Martin's reassessment of the key issues: with particular regard to the special situation of religion in Western Europe, and questions in the global context including Pentecostalism in Latin America and Africa. Concluding with examinations of Pluralism, Christian Language, and Christianity and Politics, this book offers students and other readers of social theory and sociology of religion an invaluable reappraisal of Christianity and Secularization. It represents the most comprehensive sociology of contemporary Christianity, set in historical depth.

The purpose of this book is to provide valuable anthropological data on the identity construction of a rapidly growing Chinese Christian population in the United States. As more and more Chinese of different generations and varying cultural backgrounds practice evangelical Christianity, the meaning of Chinese American will change accordingly. The book provides significant linguistic data for a nascent but important area of anthropological research. The scope of the book encompasses Asian American homiletics, discourse analysis and prosody, types of sermons and roles of men and women in a diverse, multilingual church. Parallels between Confucianism and Christianity and the role of "gradual evangelism" in identity construction are discussed. These elements are contextualized within current sociocultural and economic spheres and address the implications of the "model minority" and Asian patriarchy. The book provides original linguistic data of sermons in Mandarin, Cantonese and English. The book posits that the Chinese of the Boston church have developed an ethno-Christian identity and this identity demonstrated through ethnically marked prosodic cues, unites the congregation in the ethnic church. This position challenges some current approaches to identity construction and the role of religion in immigrant communities.

Step-by-step retreat designs, accompanying meditation exercises, and leader s guidelines based on the bestseller Listening Hearts, are presented in this unique resource. Songs, from the Listening Hearts Songbook, specially-planned Eucharists, Scripture readings, meaningful projects, and meditation options are arranged to result in a Spirit-filled community bonding. Retreat Designs and Meditation Exercises can be used with other Listening Hearts series books: Listening Hearts, Grounded in God (Revised Edition), and the Manual for Discussion Leaders. "

How do urbanization and development intersect with religious dynamics to shape contemporary African cityscapes? To answer this timely question, contributors from across Europe, North America and Africa are brought together to explore mega-cities including Lagos, Cape Town, Dar es Salaam and Kinshasa as powerful venues for the creation and implementation of religious models of urbanization and development. This book interrogates how religious socio-spatial models and strategies engage with challenges of infrastructural development, urban social cohesion, inequalities and inclusion. Chapters explore how faith-based practices of urban and infrastructural development link moral subjectivities with individual and wider aspirations for modernization, change, deliverance and prosperity. The volume brings together ethnographically rich and theoretically grounded case studies of religious urbanization across the African continent. It advances discussions of the ambivalent role of urban religion in development and documents the complex, multifaceted socio-cultural and political dynamics associated with religious urbanization in Africa.

In this gripping biography, journalist Markus Baum presents Eberhard Arnold's life (1883-1935) as a challenge to all of us to reconsider our response to Jesus' command to "leave everything and follow me".

Baum's account recreates a colorful slice of history, a time when thousands of young men and women across Weimar Germany rejected bourgeois mores and struck out on a different path. Arnold, an aspiring young writer and speaker, was a driving force behind this "Youth Movement". But he went further, leaving the limelight, a comfortable lifestyle, and a promising career, to live the answers he had found. He started a community based on Christ's teachings and example. Arnold was able to unite a motley assortment of workers, aristocrats, and students from diverse political and religious persuasions under a shared vision of Christ's kingdom as a living reality.

Against the Wind explores the forces that shaped Arnold's life -- the early Church, the Anabaptists, the Salvation Army, Charles Finney's Evangelical revival in America -- and his influence on other spiritual leaders of his day -- Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and Martin Buber among them. It recounts his lonely stand against the rise of Nazism, and presents his continuing legacy, the Bruderhof community movement, which carries on his commitment to integrate faith and social action so needed today.

Most of all, Against the Wind gives flesh, blood, and personality to a man whose role in history has been obscured. Arnold abhorred private property and institutional religion, hated hypocrisy and embraced absolutes. Even during his lifetime he was dubbed a "modern St. Francis". But he also struggled to find his convictions and put theminto action. He chose to walk resolutely against the prevailing winds, but not without difficulty and disappointment.

A major treatment of the early history of the Evangelical Movement in 18th century England, showing how Anglican evangelicalism was quite distinct from the Methodist revival under Wesley and Whitefield. A great contribution to the study of evangelicalism and the relationship between Anglicanism and Nonconformity.

What does it cost to follow Jesus? For these men and women, the answer was clear. They were ready to give witness to Christ in the face of intense persecution, even if it cost them their lives. From the stoning of Stephen to Nigerian Christians persecuted by Boko Haram today, these stories from around the world and through the ages will inspire greater faithfulness to the way of Jesus, reminding us what costly discipleship looks like in any age. Since the birth of Christianity, the church has commemorated those who suffered for their faith in Christ. In the Anabaptist tradition especially, stories of the boldness and steadfastness of early Christian and Reformation-era martyrs have been handed down from one generation to the next through books such as Thieleman van Braght's Martyrs Mirror (1660). Yet the stories of more recent Christian witnesses are often unknown. Bearing Witness tells the stories of early Christian martyrs Stephen, Polycarp, Justin, Agathonica, Papylus, Carpus, Perpetua, Tharacus, Probus, Andronicus, and Marcellus, followed by radical reformers Jan Hus, Michael and Margaretha Sattler, Weynken Claes, William Tyndale, Jakob and Katharina Hutter, Anna Janz, Dirk Willems. But the bulk of the book focuses on little-known modern witness including Veronika Loehans, Jacob Hochstetler, Gnadenhutten, Joseph and Michael Hofer, Emanuel Swartzendruber, Regina Rosenberg, Eberhard and Emmy Arnold, Johann Kornelius Martens, Ahn Ei Sook, Jakob Rempel, Clarence Jordan, Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand, Tulio Pedraza, Stanimir Katanic, Samuel Kakesa, Kasai Kapata, Meserete Kristos Church, Sarah Corson, Alexander Men, Jose Chuquin, Norman Tattersall, Katherine Wu, and Ekklesiyar Yan'uwa a Nigeria. This book is part of the Bearing Witness Stories Project, a collaborative story-gathering project involving Anabaptist believers from many different traditions.

It is summer, 1940. As Hitler's armies turn mainland Europe into a mass graveyard, his feared Luftwaffe rain bombs on England. Meanwhile, amid the green hills of the Cotswolds, a nest of "enemy aliens" has been discovered: the Bruderhof, a Christian community made up of German, Dutch, and Swiss refugees, and growing numbers of English pacifists. Having fled Nazi Germany to escape persecution, the Bruderhof had at first been welcomed in England. Now, at the height of the Battle of Britain, it is feared. Curfews and travel restrictions are imposed; nasty newspaper articles appear, and local patriots initiate a boycott. Determined to remain together as a witness for peace in a war-torn world, the little group of 300 - half of them babies and young children - looks for a new home. No country in Europe or North America will take them. And so they set off across the submarine-infested Atlantic for the jungles of Paraguay... In this gripping tale of faith tested by adversity, Emmy Barth lets us hear directly from the mothers, fathers, and children involved through their letters and diaries. Especially eloquent are the voices of the women as they faced both adventure and tragedy.

In this fresh approach to Christian spirituality, John Driver shows that the spirituality of the disciples and the early Christian church included every dimension of life. Grounded in the example of Jesus himself, this holistic approach to spirituality finds expression in the visible witness of the Christian community, and in the daily lives of faithful Christians who seek to embody Christ's presence in the world in service to others. This approach to Christian spirituality was recovered in a remarkable way by the radical reformers of the sixteenth century - the Anabaptists - and it continues to find expression among a wide variety of Christian groups around the world today. Life Together in the Spirit will inspire, challenge, and encourage you to experience the presence of the Spirit in all of its dimensions. This edition, revised and expanded with responses and reflections from church leaders and scholars around the world, is the seventh publication in the "Global Anabaptist-Mennonite Shelf of Literature," an initiative of Mennonite World Conference. Contributors include Mvwala C. Katshinga (Democratic Republic of Congo), Christina Asheervadam (India), Rafael Zaracho (Paraguay), Hermann Woelke (Uruguay), Paulus Pan (Taiwan), Patricia Uruena (Colombia), and Nellie Mlotshwa (Zimbabwe).

After careful research and extensive interiviews, the authors have prepared this compelling and controversial portrait of the Mormon's organizational structure and economic empire-and the men who control both. Index.

This case study examines the history of the Netherlandic Mennonite community living in and around Hamburg after the Thirty Years War. Based on detailed archival research, it expands the scope of Radical Reformation studies to include the confessional age (c. 1550-1750). During this period Mennonites had to conform politically while trying to preserve many of the nonconformist ideals of their forebears, such as the refusal to baptize children, bear arms and swear solemn oaths. The research presented in Obedient Heretics will, therefore, be of interest to scholars of minority communities in addition to those concerned with the Reformation's legacy, confessionalization and confessional identity.

This is the first major study of the enigmatic religious society. By examining the Jehovah's Witnesses' dramatic recent expansion, Andrew Holden reveals the dependency of their quasi-totalitarian movement on the physical and cultural resources which have brought about the privatisation of religion, the erosion of community and the separation of 'fact' from faith.

This is the first major study of the enigmatic religious society. By examining the Jehovah's Witnesses' dramatic recent expansion, Andrew Holden reveals the dependency of their quasi-totalitarian movement on the physical and cultural resources which have brought about the privatisation of religion, the erosion of community and the separation of 'fact' from faith.

'The limits of radicalism are those which end not in chaos but in the breaking of fresh ground.' Howard E. Root Previously unpublished--and only recently rediscovered by Dr Christopher R. Brewer in an uncatalogued box in the archives of Lambeth Palace Library--Canon Howard E. Root's 1972 Bampton Lectures, 'The Limits of Radicalism', have to do with nothing less than 'what theology is', a topic no less relevant today than it was in 1972. Against the radical reductionism of his time, Root defended the integrity of theology and 'theological truth'. Advocating a 'backward-looking' radicalism, he thought that tradition should display 'recognisable continuity', and yet at the same time--against reductionistic tendencies--that it might be enriched and enlarged via a wide variety of 'additive imagery' including, though not limited to, poetry and pop art, music and even television. We must 'begin where we are', said Root, for we cannot, in the manner of Leonard Hodgson, 'think ourselves into the minds and feelings of men 2000 years ago.' In this volume, which begins with a substantial, mostly biographical introduction, Dr Brewer argues that Root--a backward-looking radical who defended metaphysics and natural theology, and insisted that theologians look to the arts as theological resources--anticipates the work of David Brown and others concerned with tradition and imagination, relevance and truth. A fascinating glimpse into the recent history of British Christianity, Root's lectures, as well as the related appendices, are essential reading for theologians interested in the dynamics of a developing tradition and the theme of openness, as well as those with a particular interest in 1960s Cambridge radicalism and the British reception of the Second Vatican Council.