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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Christianity > Protestantism & Protestant Churches
"This book is important. . . . Read with anticipation and an open
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Previous studies of revival have tended to approach these
remarkable moments in history from either a strictly local or a
sweeping national perspective. In so doing they have dealt with
either the detailed circumstances of a particular situation or the
broader course of events. These approaches, however, have given the
incorrect impression that religious awakening are uniform
movements. As a result revivals have been misunderstood as
homogeneous campaigns. This is the first study of the 1859 revival
from a regional level in a comprehensive manner. It examines this
movement, arguably the most significant and far-reaching awakening
in modern times, as it appeared in the city of Aberdeen, the rural
hinterland of north-east Scotland, and among the fishing villages
and towns that stretch along the Moray Firth. It reveals how, far
from being unvarying, the 1859 revival was richly diverse. It
uncovers the important influence that local contexts brought to
bear upon the timing and manifestation of this awakening. Above
all, it has established the heterogeneous nature of simultaneous
revival movements that appeared in the same vicinity.
Gospel-Centered Theology for Today Evangelical Theology, Second
Edition helps today's readers understand and practice the doctrines
of the Christian faith by presenting a gospel-centered theology
that is accessible, rigorous, and balanced. According author
Michael Bird the gospel is the fulcrum of Christian doctrine; the
gospel is where God meets us and where we introduce the world to
God. And as such, an authentically evangelical theology is the
working out of the gospel in the various doctrines of Christian
theology. The text helps readers learn the essentials of Christian
theology through several key features, including: A "What to Take
Home" section at end of every part that gives readers a run-down on
all the important things they need to know. Tables, sidebars, and
questions for discussion to help reinforce key ideas and concepts A
"Comic Belief" section, since reading theology can often be dry and
cerebral, so that readers enjoy their learning experience through
some theological humor added for good measure. Now in its second
edition, Evangelical Theology has proven itself in classrooms
around the world as a resource that helps readers not only
understand the vital doctrines of Christian theology but one that
shows them how the gospel should shape how they think, pray,
preach, teach, and minister in the world.
Exploring the work of William Blake within the context of Methodism
- the largest 'dissenting' religious group during his lifetime -
this book contributes to ongoing critical debates surrounding
Blake's religious affinities by suggesting that, contrary to
previous thinking, Blake held sympathies with certain aspects of
Methodism.
It is a truism that religion has to do with social cohesion, but
the precise nature of this link has eluded scholars and scientists.
Drawing on new research in religiously motivated prosociality,
evolution of cooperation, and system theory, this book describes
how fluctuations in individuals' strategic environment give impetus
to a self-organizatory process where ritual behavior works to
alleviate uncertainties in social commitment. It also traces the
dynamic roles played by emotions, social norms, and socioeconomic
context. While exploring the social functions of ritual and
revivalist behavior, the book seeks to avoid the fallacies that
result from disregarding their explicit religious character. To
illustrate these processes, a case study of Christian revivals in
early 19th-century Finland is included. The thesis of the book is
relevant to theories of the evolution of religion and the role of
religion in organizing human societies.
While television today is taken for granted, Americans in the 1950s
faced the challenge of negotiating the new medium's place in the
home and in American culture in general. Protestant leaders--both
mainstream and evangelical--began to think carefully about what
television meant for their communities and its potential impact on
their work. Using the American Protestant experience of the
introduction of television, Rosenthal illustrates the importance of
the interplay between a new medium and its users in an engaging
book suitable for general readers and students alike.
Narrowing in from the broader context of the north Atlantic,
through northern Europe, to Britain, northeast Scotland, and
finally the fishing village of Gamrie, this anthropology of
Protestantism examines millennialist faith and economic crisis.
Through his ethnographic study of the fishermen and their religious
beliefs, Webster speaks to larger debates about religious
radicalism, materiality, economy, language, and the symbolic. These
debates (occurring within the ostensibly secular context of
contemporary Scotland) also call into question assumptions about
the decline of religion in modern industrial societies. By
chronicling how these individuals experience life as "enchanted,"
this book explores the global processes of religious conversion,
economic crisis, and political struggle.
This guide serves as a valuable introduction to the documentary
heritage and tradition of the third largest group of protestants in
the southern United States. A companion to Harold Prince's A
Presbyterian Bibliography (1983), it locates and describes the
unpublished papers of PCUS ministers. It also documents the larger
southern tradition by including selected materials from the
antebellum period and from other Presbyterian denominations. The
result is a listing of resources for the study of the PCUS as well
as southern Presbyterianism. It aims to promote and encourage
research in Presbyterian history; to make files, diaries, sermons,
minutes, letters more intelligible; and finally, to emphasize the
continuing relevance of these materials in contemporary church
life. Robert Benedetto's forty-eight-page introduction includes a
survey of nine subject areas: theology, education, church and
society, international missions, national missions, women, racial
ethnic ministries, ecumenical relations, and worship and music.
Each area highlights major research and provides a concise
orientation to the life and mission of the denomination. Each
survey is followed by a brief listing of manuscript materials. The
Guide itself includes manuscript collections from the Department of
History (Montreat) and other repositories. This thorough volume
concludes with a bibliography of PCUS reference works and a
complete name and subject index.
In The Reformation of Feeling, Susan Karant-Nunn looks beyond and
beneath the formal doctrinal and moral demands of the Reformation
in Germany to examine the emotional tenor of the programs that the
emerging creeds-revised Catholicism, Lutheranism, and
Calvinism/Reformed theology-developed for their members. As
revealed by the surviving sermons from this period, preaching
clergy of each faith both explicitly and implicitly provided their
listeners with distinct models of a mood to be cultivated. To
encourage their parishioners to make an emotional investment in
their faith, all three drew upon rhetorical elements that were
already present in late medieval Catholicism and elevated them into
confessional touchstones.
Looking at archival materials containing direct references to
feeling, Karant-Nunn focuses on treatments of death and sermons on
the Passion. She amplifies these sources with considerations of the
decorative, liturgical, musical, and disciplinary changes that
ecclesiastical leaders introduced during the period from the late
fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. Within individual
sermons, Karant-Nunn also examines topical elements-including Jews
at the crucifixion, the Virgin Mary's voluminous weeping below the
Cross, and struggles against competing denominations-that were
intended to arouse particular kinds of sentiment. Finally, she
discusses surviving testimony from the laity in order to assess at
least some Christians' reception of these lessons on proper
devotional feeling.
This book is exceptional in its presentation of a cultural rather
than theological or behavioral study of the broader movement to
remake Christianity. As Karant-Nunn conclusively demonstrates, in
the eyes of the Reformation's formative personalities strict
adherence to doctrine and upright demeanor did not constitute an
adequate piety. The truly devout had to engage their hearts in
their faith.
Specialist historians have long known the usefulness of this 1869
book, now more easily available for anyone interested in the
history of London, its buildings, and its religious and social
world, in an enhanced edition. William Beck was a Quaker architect,
and Frederick Ball grew up in the rambling old Devonshire House
building, centre of British Quakerism at the time. Their survey of
London Quaker history was part of a mid-19th century awakening of
Friends to the significance of their own past. This facsimile
reprint contains a new introduction, by Simon Dixon PhD, author of
the thesis "Quaker Communities in London 1667-c1714," and Quaker
writer and editor Peter Daniels. Where possible, illustrations have
been inserted of the buildings described in the book, and there is
a comprehensive new index.
Although this work takes proper notice of its origins in John
Wesley's 18th-century movement in England, it assumes that in
America the people called Methodists developed in distinctive
fashion. The volume examines this American version, its
organization, leadership, and form of training and incorporating
new members. The authors treat Methodism as defined by conferences
bound together by a commitment to episcopal leadership and animated
by various forms of lay piety. Offering a fresh perspective based
on sound, modern scholarship, this study will be of interest to
scholars, students, and anyone interested in church history.
American Methodists early organized into conferences that defined
Methodist space and time and served as the locus of power. At the
same time, they created a strong episcopal form of church
government, subject to the body of preachers in conference, but
free to lead and direct the organization as a whole. This mission
was clear, well understood, and suited to the ethos of a growing
America--"to spread scriptural holiness in the land and to create a
desire to flee from the wrath to come." By the middle of the 19th
century, Methodists in America had grown from an insignificant sect
to America's largest Protestant group. Essential to that growth
were structures and processes of lay involvement, particularly
class meetings and Sunday schools.
The first of three theological volumes, this volume is devoted
tofour of John Wesley's foundational treatises on soteriology.
These treatises include, first, Wesley s extract from the Homilies
of the Church of England, which he published to convince his fellow
Anglican clergy that the evangelical emphasis on believers
experiencing a conscious assurance of God s pardoning love was
consistent with this standard of Anglican doctrine. Next comes
Wesley s extract of Richard Baxter s Aphorisms of Justification,
aimed more at those who shared his evangelical emphasis, invoking
this honored moderate Puritan to challenge antinomian conceptions
of the doctrine of justification by faith. This is followed by
Wesley s abridgement of the Shorter Catechism issued by the
Westminster Assembly in his Christian Library, where he affirms
broad areas of agreement with this standard of Reformed doctrine
while quietly removing items with which he disagreed. The fourth
item is Wesley s extended response to the Dissenter John Taylor on
the doctrine of original sin, which highlights differences within
the broad Arminian camp, with Wesley resisting a drift toward
naively optimistic views of human nature that he discerned in
Taylor. "
This book reveals the huge sales and propagandist potential of
Anglican parish magazines, while demonstrating the Anglican
Church's misunderstanding of the real issues at its heart, and its
collective collapse of confidence as it contemplated social change.
Despite being widely recognized as John Wesley's key moment of
Christian conversion, Aldersgate has continued to mystify regarding
its exact meaning and significance to Wesley personally. This book
brings clarity to the impact this event had on Wesley over the
course of his lifetime by closely examining all of Wesley's
writings pertaining to Aldersgate and framing them within the wider
context of contemporary conversion narratives. The central aim of
this study is to establish Wesley's interpretation of his
Aldersgate experience as it developed from its initial impressions
on the night of 24 May 1738 to its mature articulation in the
1770s. By paying close attention to the language of his diaries,
letters, journals, sermons, tracts and other writings, fresh
insights into Wesley's own perspective are revealed. When these
insights are brought into wider context of other conversion
narratives in the Christian milieu in which Wesley worked and
wrote, this book demonstrates that this single event contributed in
significant ways to the ethos of the Methodist movement, and many
other denominations, even up to the present day. This is a unique
study of the conversion of one of history's most influential
Christian figures, and the impact that such narratives still have
on us today. As such, it will be of great use to scholars of
Methodism, theology, religious history and religious studies more
generally.
N. T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God is widely heralded as
one of the most significant and brilliantly argued works in the
current "third quest" of the historical Jesus. In this second
volume of his multivolume investigation entitled Christian Origins
and the Question of God, Wright uncovers a Jesus that most
historians and believers have never met. Rooted and engaged in the
soil of Israel's history, its first-century plight and its
prophetic hope, Wright's portrait of Jesus has set new terms of
discourse and debate. Through Wright's lens, familiar sayings and
actions of Jesus have fresh meaning. But in the midst of all that
is new, Wright also offers a profile of Jesus that bears striking
lines of continuity with the Jesus of Christian belief and worship.
This resemblance has captured the attention of confessing Christian
biblical scholars and theologians. Wright's work thus far is of
such consequence that it seemed timely and strategic to publish a
scholarly engagement with his reconstruction of the historical
Jesus. Like all works in progress, Wright's proposal is still under
construction. But its cornerstone has been laid, the foundation has
been formed, the pillars and walls are going up, and even if we
cannot yet see how the ceiling, roof and parapets will look, there
is quite enough to engage the minds of colleagues, critics and
other curious onlookers. For the purposes of this book (and in
keeping with IVP's own evangelical identity), editor Carey Newman
invited scholars who are committed to Christian belief as it has
been classically defined to engage Wright's Jesus and the Victory
of God. Newman sets the stage with an introduction, and Craig
Blomberg offers a critical and appreciative overview of Jesus and
the Victory of God. Various facets of Wright's proposal are then
investigated by contributors: Paul Eddy on Jesus as prophet,
Messiah and embodiment of Yahweh Klyne Snodgrass on the parables
Craig Evans on Israel under continuing exile Darrell Bock on the
trial and death of Jesus Dale Allison on apocalyptic language
Richard Hays on ethics Alister McGrath on the implications for
evangelical theology Stephen Evans on methodological naturalism in
historical biblical scholarship Luke Timothy Johnson on Wright's
historiography To these essayists Wright extends his "grateful
dialogue." He gives this spirited and illuminating reply to his
interlocuters: "The high compliment of having a whole book devoted
to the discussion of one's work is finely balanced by the probing,
intelligent questions and by the occasional thud of a blunt
instrument on the back of one's head. . . . Only once did I look up
my lawyer's telephone number." After Wright takes his turn, his
good friend and frequent partner in debate Marcus Borg offers his
"appreciative disagreement." Newman then concludes the dialogue
with his own reflections on moving from Wright's reconstruction of
the historical Jesus to the church's Christ. A book assessing a
scholar's work is usually an end-of-career event. But in this case
interested readers can look forward with eager anticipation to
Wright's next volume in Christian Origins and the Question of
God--this one on the resurrection of Jesus.
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