This is a collection of essays from some of the most important contemporary theologians engaging critically with Colin Gunton's work. In "The Theology of Colin E. Gunton", a number of contemporary theologians from across the world critically engage with the work of this influential British theologian. Gunton's handling of the gospel of Jesus Christ is celebrated, key doctrines critically examined, and his contribution to the ongoing theological task carefully evaluated. Contributors address key issues at the centre of Gunton's understanding of the Christian gospel, thereby enabling readers to appreciate how Gunton's fundamental analysis of the relation between God, creation and Jesus Christ impacts the church's ongoing task of faithful theological enquiry. In this volume of essays, contributors explore Gunton's constructive thinking on a range of doctrinal topics, as well as critically analyze Gunton's theological method and use of the Christian tradition. As such, this collection of essays provides the Christian theological community with its first wide-ranging and carefully argued examination into the influential work of Colin E. Gunton.

This reference offers a concise, well-written overview of Lutheranism's history, from The Book of Concord to the present. Grtisch explores the sect, examining the basic struggle among Lutherans who consider themselves heirs to a reform movement and Lutherans who see themselves as members of a denomination. Numerous photos and illustrations accompany the text.

Hans W. Frei (1922-1988) was one of the most influential American theologians of his generation. Early in his career he drew attention to the importance of biblical narratives; he helped make Karl Barth once again a creative voice in contemporary theology; and he served as a model of what his colleague, George Lindbeck, has called "postliberal theology." This volume collects ten of Frei's lectures and essays, many of them never before published. Addressing audiences of theologians, biblical scholars, and literary critics, Frei explores the implications of his work for hermeneutics and Christology, and discusses Barth, Schleiermacher, and his own teacher, H. Richard Niebuhr. William Placher has provided an introduction to Frei's life and work, and the volume ends with an essay by George Hunsinger on Frei's significance for theology today. This collection provides an unrivaled introduction to Frei's work.

In this book, author Alan Tulchin breaks apart the process of mass conversion in the sixteenth century to explain why the Reformation occurred, using Nimes, the most Protestant town in France, as a case study. Protestantism was overwhelmingly successful in Nimes, since most people converted, but the process culminated in two bloody massacres of Nimes's remaining Catholics. Beginning in 1559, Nimes underwent a revolutionary period comparable to 1789 in its intensity. Townspeople flocked to hear Protestant preachers, and then took over Catholic churches, destroyed statues and stained glass, and zealously took part in the Wars of Religion, which convulsed France beginning in 1562. As the Protestant movement grew, it had to adapt to changing circumstances. Nimes's first Protestants were attracted to Calvin's Eucharistic theology; later converts believed that the Church needed to be cleansed of its excesses to encourage moral reform of the Crown; and in the end, many converted due to peer pressure or under duress. Thus rather than argue that one factor - whether religious, economic, or political - explains the Reformation, That Men Will Praise the Lord emphasizes that the Protestant movement was the result of compromises forged among its members. The result is a new theory of the Reformation, which explains how previous theories, thought to be incompatible, in fact fit together. In order to prove his thesis, Tulchin constructed a database of all surviving wills and marriage contracts for the period. He also consulted church, court, city council, and tax records. The book thus marries quantitative techniques from the social sciences and anthropology to cultural history in a dramatic analytic narrative.

Revivals are outbursts of religious enthusiasm in which there are numerous conversions. In this book the phenomenon of revival is set in its broad historical and historiographical context. David Bebbington provides detailed case-studies of awakenings that took place between 1841 and 1880 in Britain, North America and Australia, showing that the distinctive features of particular revivals were the result less of national differences than of denominational variations. These revivals occurred in many places across the globe, but revealed the shared characteristics of evangelical Protestantism. Bebbington explores the preconditions of revival, giving attention to the cultural setting of each episode as well as the form of piety displayed by the participants. No single cause can be assigned to the awakenings, but one of the chief factors behind them was occupational structure and striking instances of death were often a precipitant. Ideas were far more involved in these events than historians have normally supposed, so that the case-studies demonstrate some of the main patterns in religious thought at a popular level during the Victorian period. Laymen and women played a disproportionate part in their promotion and converts were usually drawn in large numbers from the young. There was a trend over time away from traditional spontaneity towards more organised methods sometimes entailing interdenominational co-operation.

In life he was larger than life. He made an immediate and memorable impact on those he met and with whom he worked. He was incredibly industrious in all his teaching, speaking, lecturing, composing, and above all in his writing. In the time others would take to think through the possibility of authoring a book, Erik would have gone to his longsuffering and slightly dyslexic typewriter and completed the manuscript. Gathering with his family at Westminster Abbey for his memorial service, the idea of a random collection of essays or a series of personal anecdotes was discarded by the editors. To appropriately honor this substantial life, something more systematic was required. Thus the idea for this volume was born. Each of the contributors, who has benefited in some way from his friendship, teaching and writing, has examined an area or a subject in which Erik Rowley has made his mark. Significantly, it has taken seventeen authors to cover some of the ground where his footprints are still fresh and the clarity of his voice still rings.

A Choice Outstanding Academic Book

"Smith has written a richly detailed, valuable study that clearly deserves a place on the shelves of scholars of southern politics and of religion and politics."
"--American Political Science Review"

""A fascinating and well-documented study of the transformation of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) into the single largest religious force in modern American politics.""
"--Southeastern Political Review"

By championing the ideals of independence, evangelism, and conservism, the Southern Baptist Covention (SBC) has grown into the largest Protestant denomination in the country. The Convention's mass democratic form of church government, its influential anual meetings, and its sheer size have made it a barometer for Southern political and cultural shift. Its most recent shift has been starboard-toward fundementalism and Republicanism.

While the Convention once ofered a happy home to Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, and church-state separationists, in the past two decades the SBC has become an uncomfortable institution for Democrats, progressive theologians, and other moderate voices. Current SBC member-heroes include Senators Trent Lott and Jesse Helms. Despite this seeming marginalization, Southern Baptist politicians have grown from political obscurity to occupying the four highest positions in the constitutional order of succesion to the presidency. President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Senate President pro-tempore Strom Thurmond, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich are all Southern Baptists.

In its emerging Republicanism, the SBC has taken on characteristics of its more active fellow travelers in the Christian Right, forgingalliances with former enemies (African Americans amd Roman Catholics), playing presidential politics, establishing a Washington lobbying presence, working the political grassroots, and declaring war on Walt Disney. Each of these missions has been accomplished with calculating political precision.

The Rise of Baptist Republicanism traces the Republicanization of the SBC's Republicanism in the context of the rise of the Fundamentalist Right and the emergence of a Republican majority in the South. Describing the SBC's political roots, Oran P. Smith contrasts Baptist Republicans with the rest of the Christian Right while revealing the theological, cultural, and historical factors which have made Southern Baptists receptive to Republican/Fundamentalist Right influences. The book is a must read for anyone wishing to understand the intersection of religion and politics in America today.

The author argues that Baptist theologian James William McClendon Jr's articulation of the 'baptist' vision entails an account of the real presence of Christ's body and blood that is internally faithful to that vision. Furthermore, such an account of real presence suggests that the 'baptist' vision is itself a contribution of Baptists to ecumenical Christianity. The argument is set in the context of some contemporary Baptist engagement with ecumenical Christianity, particularly historic Catholic Christianity. COMMENDATION "Aaron James shows how an ecumenically minded Baptist theologian can take up this theme with creativity, grace, and an inspiring desire to lift up our hearts toward the wondrous "sacrament of unity" and "sacrament of charity". He powerfully reminds us why this may well be the most important conversation that Christians can have today." - Matthew Levering, University of Dayton, Ohio, USA

Recent decades have witnessed much scholarly reassessment of late-sixteenth through eighteenth-century Reformed theology. It was common to view the theology of this period--typically labelled 'orthodoxy'--as sterile, speculative, and rationalistic, and to represent it as significantly discontinuous with the more humanistic, practical, and biblical thought of the early reformers. Recent scholars have taken a more balanced approach, examining orthodoxy on its own terms and subsequently highlighting points of continuity between orthodoxy and both Reformation and pre-Reformation theologies, in terms of form as well as content. Until now Scottish theology and theologians have figured relatively minimally in works reassessing orthodoxy, and thus many of the older stereotypes concerning post-Reformation Reformed theology in a Scottish context persist. This collection of essays aims to redress that failure by purposely examining post-Reformation Scottish theology/theologians through a lens provided by the gains made in recent scholarly evaluations of Reformed orthodoxy, and by highlighting, in that process, the significant contribution which Scottish divines of the orthodox era made to Reformed theology as an international intellectual phenomenon.

The high church movement within the Episcopal Church was antithetical to both the intellectual and social worlds of antebellum America, for it challenged the underlying assumptions of evangelicalism and held itself aloof from reform impulses. This book by Robert Bruce Mullin-the first to study the high church movement from the context of nineteenth-century American culture-discusses how the spiritual descendents of those who harassed the Pilgrims out of England defined themselves in an America that was "the land of the Pilgrims' pride." Mullin discusses the problems that faced the Episcopal Church after the American Revolution, analyzes the intellectual currents in Anglicanism of this period, and sketches the backgrounds of the chief individuals involved with the high church revival-in particular, John Henry Hobart, later bishop of New York. He shows how Hobart's theological and social-alternative synthesis, which called for a radical division between church and state, provoked controversy with evangelical Protestants on issues as diverse as theology, revivalism, temperance, and slavery. Tracing the history of the Episcopal Church from the early nineteenth century, when it was seen as an ark of refuge by critics of the "excesses" of evangelicalism, to 1870, when the antebellum high church synthesis had largely collapsed, Mullin explains its success and subsequent decline. Mullin's examination of the high church movement not only sheds light on the reasons for the flourishing of this alternative social and intellectual vision but also helps to account for the general crisis that confronted all American religious communities at the end of the century. In addition, his reconstruction of the tension between high church Episcopalians and evangelical Protestants provides a new historical perspective from which to view the larger debate over the nature and direction of the antebellum nation.

A Quest for Security is the first book-length biography of Samuel Parris, the man who led the 1692 struggle against the scourge of witchcraft. While an examination of Samuel Parris's actions reveals his crucial part in the witchcraft crisis, this biography also serves as a reminder of the concern of early Americans to sustain economic independence for their families. Fully documented with endnotes and featuring a complete bibliography of primary and secondary works, this volume fills a noticeable gap in the literature on Salem witchcraft. The first chapter looks at Samuel Parris's early years. Born in London in 1653, Parris moved with his family to Barbados in the 1660s where both his uncle and father had prospered as sugar planters. Next, the book examines his stay in Boston where he met with modest success as a merchant and started a family. The book then recounts the eight years Parris spent in Salem Village as that divided community's pastor. Beginning with his "call to the clergy," the book examines his life as a Puritan pastor, and then covers the conflict in his congregation. In the first year of his ministry, a faction had developed that sought to oust Parris by refusing to pay him. Next the book covers Parris's actions in the spring of 1692 which changed a seemingly ordinary case of a handful of accusations into a full-scale witchhunt. Convinced that an organized witch cult threatened his congregation, Parris sought to root out all conspirators. His leadership in the effort led to an ever increasing escalation of accusations. When the episode finally ended, family members of some of the twenty executed "witches" conducted a campaign that ultimately resulted in Parris's removalfrom the pulpit. The final chapter looks at Parris's last years, in which he moved from one small Massachusetts community to another. Parris died in obscurity in 1720. But he achieved his most important goal--that of providing material security for his children.