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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Christianity > Protestantism & Protestant Churches
Exploring the response of evangelicals to the collapse of 'Greater
Christian Britain' in Australia in the long 1960s, this book
provides a new religious perspective to the end of empire and a
fresh national perspective to the end of Christendom. In the
turbulent 1960s, two foundations of the Western world rapidly and
unexpectedly collapsed. 'Christendom', marked by the dominance of
discursive Christianity in public culture, and 'Greater Britain',
the powerful sentimental and strategic union of Britain and its
settler societies, disappeared from the collective mental map with
startling speed. To illuminate these contemporaneous global shifts,
this book takes as a case study the response of Australian
evangelical Christian leaders to the cultural and religious crises
encountered between 1959 and 1979. Far from being a narrow national
study, this book places its case studies in the context of the
latest North American and European scholarship on secularisation,
imperialism and evangelicalism. Drawing on a wide range of archival
sources, it examines critical figures such as Billy Graham, Fred
Nile and Hans Mol, as well as issues of empire, counter-cultural
movements and racial and national identity. This study will be of
particular interest to any scholar of Evangelicalism in the
twentieth century. It will also be a useful resource for academics
looking into the wider impacts of the decline of Christianity and
the British Empire in Western civilisation.
Every year an estimated 600,000 U.S. Latinos convert from
Catholicism to Protestantism. Today, 12.5 million Latinos
self-identify as Protestant--a population larger than all U.S. Jews
and Muslims combined. Spearheading this spiritual transformation is
the Pentecostal movement and Assemblies of God, which is the
destination for one out of four converts. In a deeply researched
social and cultural history, Gaston Espinosa uncovers the roots of
this remarkable turn and the Latino AG's growing leadership
nationwide. Latino Pentecostals in America traces the Latino AG
back to the Azusa Street Revivals in Los Angeles and Apostolic
Faith Revivals in Houston from 1906 to 1909. Espinosa describes the
uphill struggles for indigenous leadership, racial equality, women
in the ministry, social and political activism, and immigration
reform. His analysis of their independent political views and
voting patterns from 1996 to 2012 challenges the stereotypes that
they are all apolitical, right-wing, or politically marginal. Their
outspoken commitment to an active faith has led a new generation of
leaders to blend righteousness and justice, by which they mean the
reconciling message of Billy Graham and the social transformation
of Martin Luther King Jr. Latino AG leaders and their 2,400
churches across the nation represent a new and growing force in
denominational, Evangelical, and presidential politics. This
eye-opening study explains why this group of working-class Latinos
once called "the Silent Pentecostals" is silent no more. By giving
voice to their untold story, Espinosa enriches our understanding of
the diversity of Latino religion, Evangelicalism, and American
culture.
Child Protection in the Church investigates whether, amidst
publicised promises of change from church institutions and the
introduction of "safe church" policies and procedures, reform is
actually occurring within Christian churches towards safeguarding,
using a case study of the Anglican Diocese of Tasmania, Australia.
Through the use of interviews and document analysis, the book
provides an insight into the attitudes and practices of "ordinary
clergypersons" towards child sexual abuse and safeguarding to
understand how safe ministry is understood and executed in everyday
life in the Church, and to what extent it aligns with policy
requirements and criminological best practice. It adopts
organisational culture theory, the perspective used to explain how
clerical culture enabled and concealed child sexual abuse in the
Church to the present, in order to understand how clerical
attitudes (cognition) and practice (conduct) today is being shaped
by some of the same negative cultures. Underlying these cultures is
misunderstandings of abuse causation, which are shown here to
negatively shape clerical practice and, at times, compromise policy
and procedural requirements. Providing an insight into the lived
reality of safeguarding within churches, and highlighting the
ongoing complexities of safe ministry, the book is a useful
companion to students, academics, and practitioners of child
protection and organisational studies, alongside clergy, church
leaders, and those training for the ministry.
W.R. Ward was one of the most influential historians of modern
religion to be found at work in Britain during the twentieth
century. Across fifty years his writings provoked a major
reconsideration by historians of the significance of religion in
society and its importance in the contexts of political, cultural
and intellectual life. Ward was, above all, an international
scholar who did much to repudiate any settled understanding that
religious history existed in merely national categories. In
particular, he showed how much British and American religion owed
to the insights of Continental European thought and experience.
This book presents many of Ward's most important articles and gives
a picture of the character, and extraordinary breadth, of his work.
Embracing studies of John Wesley and the development of Methodism
at large, the ambitions of Evangelicals in an age of international
mission, the place of mysticism in evolution of Protestantism and
the relations of churches and secular powers in the twentieth
century, Andrew Chandler concludes that it was in such scholarship
that Ward 'quietly recast the picture that we have of the past and
drew our attention towards a far greater, more difficult and more
interesting, landscape.'
Christianity and the Alt-Right: Exploring the Relationship looks
back at the 2016 presidential election and the support President
Trump enjoyed among white Evangelicals. This cutting-edge volume
offers insights into the role of race and racism in shaping both
the Trump candidacy and presidency and the ways in which
xenophobia, racism, and religion intersect within the Alt-Right and
Evangelical cultures in the age of Trump. This book aims to examine
the specific role that Christianity plays within the Alt-Right
itself. Of special concern is the development of what is called
"pro-white Christianity" and an ethic of religious tolerance
between members of the Alt-Right who are Pagan or atheist and those
who are Christian, whilst also exploring the reaction from
Christian communities to the phenomenon of the Alt-Right. Looking
at the larger relationship between American Christians, especially
white Evangelicals, and the Alt-Right as well as the current
American political context, the place of Christianity within the
Alt-Right itself, and responses from Christian communities to the
Alt-Right, this is a must-read for those interested in religion in
America, religion and politics, evangelicalism, and religion and
race.
This book critically examines contemporary Pentecostalism in South
Africa and its influence on some of the countries that surround it.
Pentecostalism plays a significant role in the religious life of
this region and so evaluating its impact is key to understanding
how religion functions in Twenty-First Century Africa. Beginning
with an overview of the roots of Pentecostalism in Southern Africa,
the book moves on to identify a current "fourth" wave of this form
of Christianity. It sets out the factors that have given rise to
this movement and then offers the first academic evaluation of its
theology and practice. Positive aspects as well as extreme or
negative practices are all identified in order to give a balanced
and nuanced assessment of this religious group and allow the reader
to gain valuable insight into how it interacts with wider African
society. This book is cutting-edge look at an emerging form of one
of the fastest-growing religions in the world. It will, therefore,
be of great use to scholars working in Pentecostalism, Theology,
Religious Studies and African Religion as well as African Studies
more generally.
While many established forms of Christianity have seen significant
decline in recent decades, Pentecostals are currently one of the
fastest growing religious groups across the world. This book
examines the roots, inception, and expansion of Pentecostalism
among Italian Americans to demonstrate how Pentecostalism moves so
freely through widely varying cultures. The book begins with a
survey of the origins and early shaping forces of Italian American
Pentecostalism. It charts its birth among immigrants in Chicago as
well as the initial expansion fuelled by the convergence of
folk-Catholic, Reformed evangelical, and Holiness sources. The book
goes on to explain how internal and external pressures demanded
structure, leading to the founding of the Christian Church of North
America in 1927. Paralleling this development was the emergence of
the Italian District of the Assemblies of God, the Assemblee di Dio
in Italia (Assemblies of God in Italy), the Canadian Assemblies of
God, and formidable denominations in Brazil and Argentina. In the
closing chapters, based on analysis of key theological loci and in
lieu of contemporary developments, the future prospects of the
movement are laid out and assessed. This book provides a purview
into the religious lives of an underexamined, but culturally
significant group in America. As such, it will be of great interest
to scholars of Pentecostalism, Religious Studies and Religious
History, as well as Migrations Studies and Cultural Studies in
America
The book investigates facets of global Protestantism through
Anglican, Quaker, Episcopalian, Moravian, Lutheran Pietist, and
Pentecostal missions to enslaved and indigenous peoples and
political reform endeavours in a global purview that spans the
1730s to the 1930s. The book uses key examples to trace both the
local and the global impacts of this multi-denominational Christian
movement. The essays in this volume explore three of the critical
ways in which Protestant communities were established and became
part of a worldwide network: the founding of far-flung missions in
which Western missionaries worked alongside enslaved and indigenous
converts; the interface between Protestant outreach and political
reform endeavours such as abolitionism; and the establishment of a
global epistolary through print communication networks.
Demonstrating how Protestantism came to be both global and
ecumenical, this book will be a key resource for scholars of
religious history, religion and politics, and missiology as well as
those interested in issues of postcolonialism and imperialism.
The important questions in ecumenical dialogue centre upon issues
of authority and order. This book uses the development of ministry
in the early Methodist Church to explore the origins of the
Methodist Order and identify the nature of authority exercised by
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church. Showing Methodism
as having been founded upon Episcopalian principles, but in a
manner reinterpreted by its founder, Adrian Burdon charts the
journey made by John Wesley and his people towards the ordination
of preachers, which became such a major issue amongst the first
Methodist Societies. Implications for understanding the nature and
practice of authority and order in modern Methodism are explored,
with particular reference to the covenant for unity between English
Methodists and the Church of England.
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.
It has long been accepted that when Samuel Taylor Coleridge
rejected the Unitarianism of his youth and returned to the Church
of England, he did so while accepting a general Christian
orthodoxy. Christopher Corbin clarifies Coleridge's religious
identity and argues that while Coleridge's Christian orthodoxy may
have been sui generis, it was closely aligned with moderate
Anglican Evangelicalism. Approaching religious identity as a kind
of culture that includes distinct forms of language and networks of
affiliation in addition to beliefs and practices, this book looks
for the distinguishable movements present in Coleridge's Britain to
more precisely locate his religious identity than can be done by
appeals to traditional denominational divisions. Coleridge's search
for unity led him to desire and synthesize the "warmth" of heart
religion (symbolized as Methodism) with the "light" of rationalism
(symbolized as Socinianism), and the evangelicalism in the Church
of England, being the most chastened of the movement, offered a
fitting place from which this union of warmth and light could
emerge. His religious identity not only included many of the
defining Anglican Evangelical beliefs, such as an emphasis on
original sin and the New Birth, but he also shared common polemical
opponents, appropriated evangelical literary genres, developed a
spirituality centered on the common evangelical emphases of prayer
and introspection, and joined Evangelicals in rejecting baptismal
regeneration. When placed in a chronological context, Coleridge's
form of Christian orthodoxy developed in conversation with Anglican
Evangelicals; moreover, this relationship with Anglican
Evangelicalism likely helped facilitate his return to the Church of
England. Corbin not only demonstrates the similarities between
Coleridge's relationship to a form of evangelicalism with which
most people have little familiarity, but also offers greater
insight into the complexities and tensions of religious identity in
late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain as a whole.
In The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn, Stuart M. Blumin and
Glenn C. Altschuler tell the story of nineteenth-century Brooklyn's
domination by upper- and middle-class Protestants with roots in
Puritan New England. This lively history describes the unraveling
of the control they wielded as more ethnically diverse groups moved
into the "City of Churches" during the twentieth century. Before it
became a prime American example of urban ethnic diversity, Brooklyn
was a lovely and salubrious "town across the river" from Manhattan,
celebrated for its churches and upright suburban living. But
challenges to this way of life issued from the sheer growth of the
city, from new secular institutions-department stores, theaters,
professional baseball-and from the licit and illicit attractions of
Coney Island, all of which were at odds with post-Puritan piety and
behavior. Despite these developments, the Yankee-Protestant
hegemony largely held until the massive influx of Southern and
Eastern European immigrants in the twentieth century. As The Rise
and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn demonstrates, in their churches,
synagogues, and other communal institutions, and on their
neighborhood streets, the new Brooklynites established the ethnic
mosaic that laid the groundwork for the theory of cultural
pluralism, giving it a central place within the American Creed.
This volume makes a significant contribution to the 'history of
ecclesiastical histories', with a fresh analysis of historians of
evangelicalism from the eighteenth century to the present. It
explores the ways in which their scholarly methods and theological
agendas shaped their writings. Each chapter presents a case study
in evangelical historiography. Some of the historians and
biographers examined here were ministers and missionaries, while
others were university scholars. They are drawn from Anglican,
Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Fundamentalist
and Pentecostal denominations. Their histories cover not only
transatlantic evangelicalism, but also the spread of the movement
across China, Africa, and indeed the whole globe. Some wrote for a
popular Christian readership, emphasising edification and
evangelical hagiography; others have produced weighty monographs
for the academy. These case studies shed light on the way the
discipline has developed, and also the heated controversies over
whether one approach to evangelical history is more legitimate than
the rest. As a result, this book will be of considerable interest
to historians of religion.
Although the sacramental Rite of Reconciliation is included in many
Anglican prayer books, nothing has been written expressly Anglicans
since the 1980s that focuses on the pastoral skills required for
this ministry. This book combines and passes on the teaching,
coaching, skill development, and accumulated pastoral wisdom that
has not been widely accessible or well integrated into clergy
training. Realistic transcripts and "verbatims" of sample
confessions and counseling sessions involving a wide range of
people makes this a unique ministry resource for most seminaries
and theological colleges, plus clergy in general-including Lutheran
pastors who use the rite of "Individual Confession and Absolution"
in the Lutheran Book of Worship."
A complete transcription of the Lambeth Library MS 1126. Lambeth
Library MS 1126 was compiled, probably in late 1663, on behalf of
Gilbert Sheldon, the new archbishop of Canterbury, as a conspectus
of the parishes of Canterbury diocese and the archiepiscopal
peculiars. A number of entries contain illuminating comments on the
religious complexion of the parish, relating to both its incumbents
and leading laity, of a type not found elsewhere for the 1660s. Its
value for historians is twofold: first, the light it throws on the
restoration of the episcopalian Church of England in the early
1660s. Notwithstanding the Act of Uniformity enforced at St
Bartholomew's Day 1662, it is abundantly clear from this Catalogue
that the Church of England remained divided and unsettled in the
parishes, at least in Canterbury diocese. Second, the Catalogue is
of interest for the administrative processes it records, as an
incoming archbishop, necessarily non-resident, sought to become
acquainted with the clergy and prominent laity in the parishes,
information which was then updated over the next twenty years. In
this respect, the Catalogue adumbrates the more routine and fuller
collection of information about the parishes in the
eighteenth-century church. A few of the comments in the Catalogue
have already been referred to by historians, but this complete
transcription has allowed in-depth analysis and concludes that
Canterbury diocese must have experienced many more ejections of
clergy than has previously been recognized, pointing to a need for
more detailed examination of events in other dioceses.
The aesthetics of everyday life, as reflected in art museums and
galleries throughout the western world, is the result of a profound
shift in aesthetic perception that occurred during the Renaissance
and Reformation. In this book, William A. Dyrness examines
intellectual developments in late Medieval Europe, which turned
attention away from a narrow range liturgical art and practices and
towards a celebration of God's presence in creation and in history.
Though threatened by the human tendency to self-assertion, he shows
how a new focus on God's creative and recreative action in the
world gave time and history a new seriousness, and engendered a
broad spectrum of aesthetic potential. Focusing in particular on
the writings of Luther and Calvin, Dyrness demonstrates how the
reformers' conceptual and theological frameworks pertaining to the
role of the arts influenced the rise of realistic theater, lyric
poetry, landscape painting, and architecture in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
This book brings together Methodist scholars and reflective
practitioners from around the world to consider how emerging
practices of mission and evangelism shape contemporary theologies
of mission. Engaging contemporary issues including migration,
nationalism, climate change, postcolonial contexts, and the growth
of the Methodist church in the Global South, this book examines
multiple forms of mission, including evangelism, education, health,
and ministries of compassion. A global group of contributors
discusses mission as no longer primarily a Western activity but an
enterprise of the entire church throughout the world. This volume
will be of interest to researchers studying missiology, evangelism,
global Christianity, and Methodism and to students of Methodism and
mission.
Founded in 1421, the Collegiate Church of Manchester, which became
a cathedral in 1847, is of outstanding historical and architectural
importance. But until now it has not been the subject of a
comprehensive study. Appearing on the 600th anniversary of the
Cathedral's inception by Henry V, this book explores the building's
past and its place at the heart of the world's first industrial
city, touching on everything from architecture and music to
misericords and stained glass. Written by a team of renowned
experts and beautifully illustrated with more than 100 photographs,
this history of the 'Collegiate Church' is at the same time a
history of the English church in miniature. -- .
Dynamic New Teaching from Bestselling Author Ed Silvoso It's no
secret that the church today has lost its influence in culture. But
why? With the technology, affluence, and knowledge we have today,
why are we less effective than the first-century church--which
didn't have social media, fancy buildings, professional pastors, or
even religious freedom? What are we missing? In these vital,
eye-opening pages, bestselling author Ed Silvoso digs into
Scripture, unearthing Jesus' true design for his church--his
Ekklesia. He shows how the early church was a radical,
countercultural force of people who transformed the hostile, pagan
places in which they lived. Here Dr. Silvoso shows how we, in the
midst of social, economic, political, and moral chaos, can once
again become the revolutionary, transformational, life-giving
Ekklesia Jesus called us to be.
The cathedrals of England and Wales are remarkable buildings. From
the centuries leading up to the Norman Conquest to the tumults of
the Reformation to the devastating wars of the 20th century, they
carry traces of our nations' darkest moments and most brilliant
endeavours. This beautifully illustrated new volume tells the
stories behind 50 remarkable artefacts - one for each cathedral -
that have been preserved by the cathedrals of the Church of England
and the Church in Wales. Featuring the Magna Carta of Salisbury
Cathedral as well as the oldest book of English literature in the
world, an Anglo-Saxon portable sundial, and Pre-Raphaelite glass,
painting and embroidery, these local and national treasures are a
vital part of our heritage, testifying to the powerful and enduring
links between cathedrals and the wider communities of which they
are part.
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