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Books > Christianity > Protestantism & Protestant Churches > Other Protestant & Nonconformist Churches
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God's Plan
(Hardcover)
Joan Parris
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R698
R579
Discovery Miles 5 790
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God's Plan
(Paperback)
Joan Parris
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R427
R354
Discovery Miles 3 540
Save R73 (17%)
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Bright Lights in the Desert explores the history of how members of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Las Vegas have
improved the regions' neighborhoods, inspired educational
institutions, brought integrity to the marketplace, and provided
wholesome entertainment and cultural refinement. The LDS influence
has helped shape the metropolitan city because of its members'
focus on family values and community service. Woods discusses how,
through their beliefs and work ethics, they have impacted the
growth of the area from the time of their first efforts to
establish a mission in 1855 through the present day. Bright Lights
in the Desert reveals Las Vegas as more than just a tourist
destination and shows the LDS community's commitment to making it a
place of deep religious faith and devotion to family.
Why, when traditionally organized religious groups are seeing
declining membership and participation, are networks of independent
churches growing so explosively? Drawing on in-depth interviews
with leaders and participants, The Rise of Network Christianity
explains the social forces behind the fastest growing form of
Christianity in the U.S., which Brad Christerson and Richard Flory
have labeled "Independent Network Christianity" (INC). This form of
Christianity emphasizes aggressive engagement with the
supernatural, including healing, direct prophecies from God,
engaging in "spiritual warfare" against demonic spirits, and social
transformation. Christerson and Flory argue that large-scale social
changes since the 1970s, including globalization and the digital
revolution have given competitive advantages to religious groups
organized by networks rather than traditionally organized
congregations and denominations. Network forms of church governance
allow for experimentation with controversial supernatural
practices, innovative finances and marketing, and a highly
participatory, unorthodox, and experiential faith, which is
attractive in today's unstable religious marketplace. Christerson
and Flory argue that as more religious groups imitate this type of
governance, religious belief and practice will become more
experimental, more oriented around practice than belief, more
shaped by the individual religious "consumer" and that authority
will become more highly concentrated in the hands of individuals
rather than institutions.
In early Pennsylvania, translation served as a utopian tool
creating harmony across linguistic, religious, and ethnic
differences. Patrick Erben challenges the long-standing historical
myth--first promulgated by Benjamin Franklin--that language
diversity posed a threat to communal coherence. He deftly traces
the pansophist and Neoplatonist philosophies of European reformers
that informed the radical English and German Protestants who
founded the ""holy experiment."" Their belief in hidden yet
persistent links between human language and the word of God
impelled their vision of a common spiritual idiom. Translation
became the search for underlying correspondences between diverse
human expressions of the divine and served as a model for
reconciliation and inclusiveness. Drawing on German and English
archival sources, Erben examines iconic translations that
engendered community in colonial Pennsylvania, including William
Penn's translingual promotional literature, Francis Daniel
Pastorius's multilingual poetics, Ephrata's ""angelic"" singing and
transcendent calligraphy, the Moravians' polyglot missions, and the
common language of suffering for peace among Quakers, Pietists, and
Mennonites. By revealing a mystical quest for unity, Erben presents
a compelling counternarrative to monolingualism and Enlightenment
empiricism in eighteenth-century America.
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