Little known historical background and compelling humor combine to make this an unusual look at the role the Ten Commandments should play in the life of today's Christian. Reflection questions make it perfect for study groups and classes.

"Sometimes the storm rises and the winds blow, hurricanes and earthquakes come to shake the very foundations which we stand, but certainly we must remain confident in our walk of faith."

In this world of dangers, seen and unseen, there is a need and demand for virtue in the lives of women everywhere. In the innovative guide "Keys to Becoming a Virtuous Woman," Dr. Latrina W. Jenkins gives you strategies and concepts on how to become a woman of high moral fortitude.

By focusing on the spiritual concept of virtue, Jenkins delivers a powerful case for finding and achieving virtuousness in our society today. She explores seven keys to obtaining moral integrity that each woman should strive to incorporate into their lives. These include being holy, trustworthy, strong, and secure.

Don't let the dictates of society steer you from your course. With God's help, you can find virtue in every aspect of your life!

Little known historical background and compelling humor combine to make this an unusual look at the role the Ten Commandments should play in the life of today's Christian. Reflection questions make it perfect for study groups and classes.

The Call to Care: Charity in Ancient Christianity asks and answers pointed questions about charity, using ancient Christian literature immediately after the New Testament until the early 4th century. How important is charity to the Christian faith? What are the limits to Christian charity? Should poor Christians be treated differently than poor unbelievers? How should wealthy Christians view themselves, and how should they be viewed by others? These questions were popular in the ancient world, and the ancient Christian church voiced a unified answer to each. In the end, the reader will find those answers to be just as relevant today as they were centuries ago.

A thought-provoking collection of essays on Buddhist ethics by some of the leading thinkers in the field. The reader is provided with engaging explorations of central issues in Buddhist ethics, insightful analyses of the ways Buddhist ethical principles are being applied today in both Asian and Western countries, and groundbreaking proposals about how Buddhist perspectives might inform debates on some of the core ethical issues of the modern world, including consumerism, globalization, environmental problems, war, ethnic conflict, and inter-religious tensions. The leading figure in identifying the field of Buddhist ethics and articulating some of its core issues is Professor Damien Keown of the University of London. This book brings together a group of eminent scholars who have all been influenced by Keown's work, and who are also friends and close colleagues. The result is a wonderful volume for those who are struggling with practical issues of ethical concern. This will be a valuable resource in the study of ethics for years to come.

The Sacred Santa is an inquiry into the religious dimension of postmodern culture, seriously considering the widespread perception that contemporary culture witnesses a profound struggle between two antithetical systems -- a collision of two worlds, both religious, yet each with vivid visions of the sacred that differ radically with regard to what the sacred is and what it means to human life and social endeavor.

Description: What is the moral criterion for those who hold power positions and authority in governments, corporations, and institutions? Ahn answers this question by presenting the concept of the positional imperative. The positional imperative is an executive moral norm for those who hold power positions in political and economic organizations. By critically integrating the Neo-Kantian reconstructionism of Jurgen Habermas with the Neo-Augustinian reconstructionism of Reinhold Niebuhr, through the method of ""co-reconstruction,"" Ahn identifies the positional imperative as an executive moral norm embedded in all power positions: ""Act in such a way not only to abide by laws, but also to come by the approvals of those affected by your positional actions."" By uncovering this executive moral norm, Ahn argues that a position holder is not just a professional working for the system, but a moral executive who is willing to take the responsibility of his or her positional actions. Endorsements: ""How should Christians and non-Christians live moral lives in the tightly defined roles characteristic of modern corporate and bureaucratic societies? This is a seldom-asked question in our age that celebrates spontaneity and flexibility. But this fine book both asks this difficult question and answers it with the resources of Christian ethics and political philosophy. It is an important study that creatively investigates new territory in social ethics."" --Don Browning Alexander Campbell Emeritus Professor of Religious Ethics and the Social Sciences, University of Chicago ""In this compelling book, Ilsup Ahn addresses a burning contemporary issue: are there moral criteria for those in corporate, governmental, or institutional positions of power? Engaging the philosopher Jurgen Habermas and the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Ahn identifies a 'positional imperative.' In light of this norm, power holders are moral executives who bear responsibility for their actions. In our time when moral responsibility has been denied or ignored in financial institutions and governments, Ahn makes a singular contribution to thought. I highly commended this work for anyone interested in current political and moral questions."" --William Schweiker Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics University of Chicago About the Contributor(s): Ilsup Ahn is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at North Park University, where he teaches philosophical, religious, and social ethics.

For centuries women, youth and the poor have been seen as objects of Christian ministry, but rarely as those who do ministry themselves. This is so much the case that in some quarters today ministry and mission are bad words, reeking of older and paternalistic models of Christian "service." In this challenging book, Cheryl Sanders demonstrates how mission can be updated. Far from being regressive or irrelevant in a multicultural, nonpatriarchal world, Christian mission can come alive when it is not just ministry to but ministry by marginalized groups seeking justice. Ministry at the Margins is an important Christian ethicist's rousing call to "find grace to articulate a theology of inclusion and to establish inclusive practices and multicultural perspectives that harmonize with the gospel we preach and honor the Christ we proclaim." Essential reading for pastors, church leaders, students, urban missionaries and campus ministers.

Description: From its very beginning, Christian faith has been engaged with religious violence. The first Christians were persecuted by their co-religionists and then by imperial Rome. Jesus taught them, in such circumstances, not to retaliate, but to be peacemakers, to love their enemies, and to pray for their persecutors. Jesus's response to religious violence of the first century was often ignored, but it was never forgotten. Even during those centuries when the church herself persecuted Christian heretics, Jews, and Muslims, some Christians still struggled to bear witness to the peace mandate of their Lord. In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas wrote a theology to help his Dominican brothers persuade Cathar Christians to return to their Catholic faith peacefully. Ramon Lull, a Christian student of Arabic and the Qur'an, sought to help his fellow Christians recognize the elements of belief they shared in common with the Muslims in their midst. In the fifteenth century, Nicholas of Cusa, a Church Cardinal and theologian, expanded Lull's project to include the newly discovered religions of Asia. In the seventeenth century, Lord Herbert, an English diplomat and lay Christian, began to identify the political union of church and government as a causal factor in the religious warfare of post-Reformation Christendom. One and a half centuries later, Thomas Jefferson, a lay theologian of considerable political stature, won a political struggle in the American colonies to disestablish religion first in his home colony of Virginia and then in the new nation he helped to found. All five of these theologians reclaimed the peace mandate of Jesus in their response to the religious violence of their own eras. All of which points us to some intriguing Christian responses to religious violence in our own century as recounted in the epilogue. Endorsements: ""Peacemaking and Religious Violence brings careful scholarship and a refreshing clarity of expression to a burning contemporary concern: the way that religions either foster violence or defuse it. In a series of marvelously lucid historical vignettes, Johnson illuminates crucial moments in Christianity's response to religious difference. He demonstrates that there is more to this story than is commonly assumed. Alongside the all-too-real exclusivist claims and crusading zeal, he lifts up a series of thinkers in different periods who sketched an alternative history, a path not taken by the majority church, but one urgently in need of appropriation today. Peacemaking and Religious Violence is an extraordinary work: mature, balanced, original. Its unpretentious clarity will commend it to general readers. Its ability to throw striking new light on major gures and topics in Christian theology and history will impress academics. Anyone interested in questions of religious pluralism and social con ict will be enriched and instructed by this study."" --S. Mark Heim Samuel Abbot Professor of Christian Theology, Andover Newton Theological School ""Roger Johnson utilizes in this volume his formidable historical and theological knowledge to appraise two contemporary tides in our culture: a growing Christian peace witness and a growing public concern about religious violence . . . This welcome study enriches our awareness of historical figures some of whom are less well-known and it connects them all in instructive ways. It brings the Constantinian and the contemporary eras into comparative focus, something too rarely done. This is a deeply illuminating and carefully researched text that deserves to be widely read and taken to heart."" --Gene Outka Dwight Professor of Philosophy and Christian Ethics, Yale University ""Sad to say, the peace ethic of Jesus long ago became a minor (some said heretical) part of Christian witness. Yet it has persisted. Today, when we are faced with growing inter-religious violence, Roger Johnson does us a huge service by shining the light of his research on fi

Do we meet Jesus in a church or in a soup kitchen? In a Bible camp or in a housing project?

Such distinctions are false, says Arthur Paul Boers. We cannot experience God in heaven without loving the needy on earth. Nor can we truly love the needy on earth if not empowered by God in heaven.

This is the first republication of Volume 3 of a rare three volume set of books favoring polygamy. In 1781, when this book was first published, the Reverend Martin Madan was the most famous clergyman in all the world. His Chapel at the Lock Hospital was renowned for its Sunday night concerts and his hymnal was full of majestic songs of worship. He was the most prolific living composer of sacred music and had long been the standard bearer for the Evangelicals. Madan's pen had always been free of mercenary interests since he'd been blessed with a great inheritance and yet this rich man had spent the last thirty-five years of his life ministering to the least beloved of society, the disease ridden prostitutes of the Lock Hospital. The front cover features a portrait of Lock Hospital as it appeared in the 18th century. It was built with funds raised by Martin Madan. Madan was godfather to the famed hymn writer, Charles Wesley and was himself the most prolific hymn composer of his day. This is Volume 3 - In Print Again for the First Time in over 228 years.

Stephen Long opens his erudite discussion of theology and ethics with the insistence that moral critique must emerge from a particular location, rather than from the fluid values of any "neutral" observer. Long sets out to put theology and ethics-as well as the church-in proper relation to one another. Ethics must be based in theology, not the other way around. Our "finite participation in the infinite make possible participation in a goodness beyond us." That goodness comes to us in the flesh of Jesus Christ, and the church is indispensable in drawing all people toward God's goodness. The church, a social ethic in itself, gives purpose and order to other social institutions, including family, government, and the market. "'The goodness of God'--such a simple phrase, such a profound (and maybe even distruptive) concept if we dare explore its implications. Not only does Steve Long lead us skilfully and smoothly through potentially difficult matters of theology and philosophy, he also brings home how our lives might be different if we really took the goodness of God to heart. "From matters of violence and economics to sexuality and family, Long takes his readers through a thicket of competing ideas, and leads them out the other side into greater clarity of vision, unity of purpose, and passion for God's good kingdom. Seminaries and Sunday schools alike will benefit from this scholarly but accessible volume." --Michael Budde, DePaul University D. Stephen Long is assistant professor of theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and codirector of the Center for Ethics and Values. He is the author of Divine Economy, a volume in Routledge's Radical Orthodoxy series.