In Theology from Listening: Finding the Core of Liberal Quaker Theological Thought, Rhiannon Grant explores the changes and continuities in liberal Quaker theology over the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in multiple English-speaking Quaker communities around the world. The work involves a close analysis of material produced by Quaker meetings through formal, corporate methods; of material produced by individuals and small groups within Quaker communities; and of writing by individuals and small groups working primarily within academic or ecumenical theological settings. It concludes that although liberal Quaker theology is diverse and flexible, it also possesses a core coherence and can meaningfully be discussed as a single tradition. At the centre of liberal Quaker theology is the belief that direct, unmediated contact with the Divine is possible and results in useful guidance.

This book attempts to understand Calvin in his sixteenth-century context, with attention to continuities and discontinuities between his thought and that of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. Richard Muller is particularly interested in the interplay between theological and philosophical themes common to Calvin and the medieval doctors, and developments in the rhetoric and argument associated with humanism.

John Calvin revolutionized Christianity. Without him, there would not have been apologetics, evangelism, or even the protestant reformation It's easy to say you think he's a pretty important guy, but it's hard to know why without a clear understanding of things like total depravity, sovereign grace, and predestination--concepts that are quite complex to fully grasp. This book breaks down Calvinism into language we can all understand: plain and simple English If you are curious about Calvinism, but don't want a bias view from someone either for the church or against the church, then this is the book for you. This unbiased book explains Calvinism in a way that's easy to understand: in plain and simple English

This unique book aims to provide the first extended account of the intellectual history of aesthetic discourse among British and American evangelicals from the awakening of a modern aesthetic consciousness in the eighteenth century to the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early twentieth century. Drawing on an extensive but largely forgotten body of periodical source materials, it seeks to map the evangelical aesthetic tradition's intellectual terrain, to highlight its connections to other philosophical discourses, and to assess some of its theological implications. In doing so, it challenges the still prevalent stereotype of evangelicalism as aesthetically 'impoverished' and devoid of serious reflection on the arts, offering instead a narrative sensitive to the historical complexities of evangelical approaches to aesthetic theory and criticism.

"This colection brings together two generations of scholarship on many important topics in African-American religious history. . . . A useful and judiciously chosen compilation that should serve well in the classroom."
-- "Religious Studies Review"

"It serves as a smorgasbord of the study of black spirituality."
-- "Black Issues Book Review"

Down by the Riverside provides an expansive introduction to the development of African American religion and theology. Spanning the time of slavery up to the present, the volume moves beyond Protestant Christianity to address a broad diversity of African American religion from Conjure, Orisa, and Black Judaism to Islam, African American Catholicism, and humanism.

This accessible historical overview begins with African religious heritages and traces the transition to various forms of Christianity, as well as the maintenance of African and Islamic traditions in antebellum America. Preeminent contributors include Charles Long, Gayraud Wilmore, Albert Raboteau, Manning Marable, M. Shawn Copeland, Vincent Harding, Mary Sawyer, Toinette Eugene, Anthony Pinn, and C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya. They consider the varieties of religious expression emerging from migration from the rural South to urban areas, African American women's participation in Christian missions, Black religious nationalism, and the development of Black Theology from its nineteenth-century precursors to its formulation by James Cone and later articulations by black feminist and womanist theologians. They also draw on case studies to provide a profile of the Black Christian church today.

This thematic history of the unfolding of religious life in AfricanAmerica provides a window onto a rich array of African American people, practices, and theological positions.

Puritanism has a reputation for being emotionally dry, but seventeenth-century Puritans did not only have rich and complex emotional lives, they also found meaning in and drew spiritual strength from emotion. From theology to lived experience and from joy to affliction, this volume surveys the wealth and depth of the Puritans' passions.

The period 1928-1942 saw some of the greatest political and social upheavals in modern British history. Lang, as Archbishop of Canterbury, led the Church of England through this tumultuous period and was a pivotal influence in political and religious decision-making. In this book, Robert Beaken provides a new perspective on Lang, including his considerable relationship with the royal family. Beaken also shows how Lang proved to be a sensitive leader during wartime, opposing any demonisation of the enemy and showing compassion to conscientious objectors. Despite his central role at a time of flux, there has been little written on Lang since the original biography published in 1949, and history has not been kind to this intellectually gifted but emotionally complex man. Although Lang has often been seen as a fairly unsuccessful archbishop who was resistant to change, Beaken shows that he was, in fact, an effective leader of the Anglican community at a time when the Church of England was internally divided over issues surrounding the Revised Prayer Book and its position in an ever-changing world. Lang's reputation is therefore ripe for reassessment. Drawing on previously unseen material and first-hand interviews, Beaken tells the story of a fascinating and complex man, who was, he argues, Britain's first 'modern' Archbishop of Canterbury.

Here, sociologist Ralph Pyle investigates the extent to which a male-dominated, Ivy League educated Protestant establishment in the United States since World War II has given way to an elite whose diversity is more representative of the general population. While there is evidence that major changes have diminished the social, political, and economic prerogatives of the traditional Protestant establishment, the author finds that those in command positions of the most influential institutions bear a strong resemblance to their predecessors who directed affairs in an earlier era. Even if the current expansion of influence among previously disempowered groups continues at its present rate, the disproportionate power of white Protestant Ivy Leaguers will persist for several decades to come.

Rodes examines the legal materials (cases, statutes, canons, and measures) used in the English experience of updating the medieval synthesis of church and state.

A compelling new interpretation of early Mormonism, Samuel Brown's In Heaven as It Is On Earth views this religion through the lens of founder Joseph Smith's profound preoccupation with the specter of death.
Revisiting historical documents and scripture from this novel perspective, Brown offers new insight into the origin and meaning of some of Mormonism's earliest beliefs and practices. The world of early Mormonism was besieged by death--infant mortality, violence, and disease were rampant. A prolonged battle with typhoid fever, punctuated by painful surgeries including a threatened leg amputation, and the sudden loss of his beloved brother Alvin cast a long shadow over Smith's own life. Smith embraced and was deeply influenced by the culture of "holy dying"--with its emphasis on deathbed salvation, melodramatic bereavement, and belief in the Providential nature of untimely death--that sought to cope with the widespread mortality of the period. Seen in this light, Smith's treasure quest, search for Native origins, distinctive approach to scripture, and belief in a post-mortal community all acquire new meaning, as do early Mormonism's Masonic-sounding temple rites and novel family system. Taken together, the varied themes of early Mormonism can be interpreted as a campaign to extinguish death forever. By focusing on Mormon conceptions of death, Brown recasts the story of first-generation Mormonism, showing a religious movement and its founder at once vibrant and fragile, intrepid and unsettled, human and otherworldly.
A lively narrative history, In Heaven As It Is on Earth illuminates not only the foundational beliefs of early Mormonism but also the larger issues of family and death in American religious history.

In autumn 1525, Luther wrote The Bondage of the Will as a response to humanist and theologian Erasmus of Rotterdam's On Free Will. Luther's treatise is important on four accounts: First, Luther wanted to show his own humanist education. Second, against Erasmus, who had maintained that the question of free will could not be decided just on the basis of the Bible, Luther stressed the clarity imbedded in Scripture. Third, Luther stressed that his denial of the free will pertained to the issue of salvation, while in other areas of life not relevant for this fundamental existential matter, free will could be acknowledged. Finally, he introduces the distinction of the revealed and the hidden God to make clear that a Christian must focus on God as shown in Jesus Christ rather than speculating about God's potency in general. Luther's argument on the matter of the bound and free will poses a challenge and an invitation for constructive contemporary theology. This volume is excerpted from The Annotated Luther series, Volume 2. Each volume in the series contains annotations, illustrations, and notes to help shed light on Luther's context and to interpret his writings for today.

'How do such people, with brilliant members and dull ones, fare when they pass from being a dominant minority to being a powerless one?' So asked the Kilkenny man-of-letters Hubert Butler (1900-1991) when considering the fate of Southern Protestants after Irish Independence. As both a product and critic of this culture, Butler posed the question repeatedly, refusing to accept as inevitable the marginalization of his community within the newly established state. Inspired by the example of the Revivalist generation, he challenged his compatriots to approach modern Irish identity in terms complementary rather than exclusivist. In the process of doing so, he produced a corpus of literary essays European in stature, informed by extensive travel, deep reading, and an active engagement with the political and social upheavals of his age. His insistence on the necessity of Protestant participation in Irish life, coupled with his challenges to received Catholic opinion, made him a contentious figure on both sides of the sectarian divide. This study addresses not only Butler's remarkable personal career, but also some of the larger themes to which he consistently drew attention: the need to balance Irish cosmopolitanism with local relationships; to address the compromises of the Second World War and the hypocrisies of the Cold War; to promote a society in which constructive dissent might not just be tolerated but valued. As a result, by the end of his life, Butler came to be recognised as a forerunner of the more tolerant and expansive Ireland of today.

This is the first full-length detailed survey and critique of modern Jerome scholarship, covering the crucial period 1880-2014. At one level, the author ably argues that, despite Jerome's faults, his work holds many important insights into the Early Church's formation of Christian identity and Christian orthodoxy. On another level, by examining aspects of Jerome's writing through the lens of modern scholarship, the study also illumines the changing directions and perspectives of Jerome studies. As such, it is a valuable and unique account of the scholarly representation of Jerome's oeuvre. Christopher Knight's work will continue to have a respected place amongst Jerome studies for years to come. Content 1. Introduction 2. Jerome and Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church 3. Early Modern Jerome Scholarship: 1880-1965 4. Later Modern Jerome Scholarship: 1966-2012 5. Present Jerome Scholarship: 2013-2015 6. The Future of Jerome Studies 7. Conclusion

In the 1970s, mainly in response to Roe v. Wade, evangelicals and conservative Catholics put aside their longstanding historical prejudices and theological differences and joined forces to form a potent political movement that swept across the country-or so conventional wisdom would have us think. In this provocative book, Neil J. Young argues that most of this widely accepted story of the creation of the Religious Right is not true. We Gather Together examines evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons (who are usually ignored in the story) in the early days of the religious right and paints a much different picture. Tracing the interactions among these three groups from the 1950s to the present day, Young shows that the emergence of the Religious Right was not a brilliant political strategy of compromise and coalition-building hatched on the eve of a history-altering election. Rather, it was the latest iteration of a much-longer religious debate that had been going on for decades in reaction to the building of a mainline Protestant consensus. This "restructuring" of interfaith relations took place alongside American political developments of the time, and evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons found common cause and pursued similar ends in debates about abortion, school prayer, the Equal Rights Amendment, and tax exemptions for religious schools. They did so together at times but more often separately, and it is the latter part that historians have all but ignored. While these social and political issues were the objects of their displeasure, they weren't its source; far from setting aside their divisions to create a unified movement, cracks in the alliance shaped the movement from the very beginning. This provocative book will reshape our understanding of the most important religious and political movement of the last 30 years.

A Newsman Remembered is not just the story of the life of Ralph Burdette Jordan (RBJ - or "Jock") - who was a remarkable newspaperman/motion picture publicist/war correspondent. It is also a glimpse into an era of American social and political history that is now, unfortunately, largely forgotten if not discarded. The compelling personalities with whom he engaged- Aimee Semple McPherson, William Randolph Hearst, Louis B. Mayer, General Douglas MacArthur - are but fading memories which this book briefly restores. The first half of the 20th century began as an era of optimism that encompassed a belief that working hard - along with seizing the "main chance" - would produce social, professional and financial success. Ralph Jordan certainly exuded that optimism in everything that he encountered in his short life. Along with his contemporaries, moving into the great (largely ill-defined) middle class was his overarching goal. Within this goal, family life was an important ingredient for him - marriage in his day was still a partnership with clearly defined marital roles and expectations. Ralph and Mary's marriage reflected that domestic configuration. Religious faith - if not always observed to the letter - also formed an important part of their family life. It could not be otherwise for them and those other largely third-generation descendants of Mormon pioneers (and their non-Mormon contemporaries) with whom they associated. These so-called Mormon second- and third-generation diasporans were willing - even eager - to leave behind them the remoteness of what was then described as "Zion," to seek more promising futures elsewhere, retaining as best they could their unique heritage. Thus, Ralph Jordan's story is indeed a "life and times" story worth telling