Encounter the multifaceted life of one of the most influential and creative pastors of the past half century with unforgettable stories of his lifelong devotion to his craft and love of language, the influences and experiences that shaped his unquenchable faith, the inspiration for his decision to translate The Message, and his success and struggles as a pastor, husband, and father. Author Winn Collier was given exclusive access to Eugene and his materials for the production of this landmark work. Drawing from his friendship and expansive view of Peterson's life, Collier offers an intimate look into a rare, remarkable life that is at once artful, sacred, and earthy. For Eugene, the gifts of life were inexhaustible: the glint of fading light over the lake, a kiss from Jan, a good joke, a bowl of butter pecan ice cream. As you enter into his story, you'll find yourself doing the same - noticing how the most ordinary things shimmer with a new and unexpected beauty. Content Benefits: Warm, fascinating, and uniquely inspirational, this authoritative and comprehensive story of Eugene Peterson will help you discover the man behind The Message. * Authorized biography of Eugene Peterson * Draws on exclusive access to private correspondence and hours of exclusive interviews with Eugene * Reveals Eugene's rich theology, love of language and pastoral insights * Photo insert included * Perfect reading for anyone who loves The Message * Ideal for anyone who loves biographies

Two powerful and interrelated transnational cultural expressions mark our epoch. They are Charismatic spirituality and the global city. This book offers a fresh and challenging articulation of the character of the charismatic renewal of Christianity in the framework of global cities, the socio-economic situation of poor urban residents, and urban space, resulting in a vision for the future city as a religious, ethical, and political space. The book studies the social, economic, and ethical implications of the charismatic renewal on urban living and urban design aimed at promoting human flourishing. From multidisciplinary perspectives Nimi Wariboko investiages the nature and impact of interreligious dialogues and encounters between charismatic Christianity and other religions in global cities.

To many people, the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion has the aura of an institution that is dislocated and adrift. Buffeted by tempestuous and stormy debates on sexuality, gender, authority and power - to say nothing of priorities in mission and ministry, and the leadership and management of the church - a once confident Anglicanism appears to be anxious and vulnerable. The Future Shape of Anglicanism offers a constructive and critical engagement with the currents and contours that have brought the church to this point. It assesses and evaluates the forces now shaping the church and challenges them culturally, critically, and theologically. The Future Shape of Anglicanism engages with the church of the present that is simultaneously dissenting and loyal, as well as critical and constructive. For all who are engaged in ecclesiological investigations, and for those who study the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion, this book offers new maps and charts for the present and future. It is an essential companion and guide to some of the movements and forces that are currently shaping the church.

Drawing from research conducted in Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda, Christianity, Islam, and Liberal Democracy offers a deeper understanding on how Christian and Islamic faith communities affect the political attitudes of those who belong to them and, in turn, prospects for liberal democracy. While many analysts have thought that religious diversity in developing countries is most often an obstacle to liberal democracy that creates political instability, the book concludes just the opposite. Robert A. Dowd draws on narrative accounts, in-depth interviews, and large-scale surveys to show that Christian and Islamic religious communities are more likely to support liberal democracy in religiously diverse and integrated settings than in religiously homogeneous or segregated settings. Religious diversity, in other words, is good for liberal democracy. In religiously diverse environments, religious leaders tend to be more encouraging of civic engagement, democracy, and religious liberty. The evidence, Dowd argues, should prompt policymakers interested in cultivating religiously-inspired support for liberal democracy to aid in the formation of religiously diverse neighborhoods, cities, and political organizations.

This title presents theology of biblical interpretation, treating both topics in light of their relationship to the triune God and the economy of redemption. "Trinity, Revelation, and Reading (TRR)" is a theological introduction to the Bible and biblical interpretation. The overarching thesis is that neither the Bible nor biblical hermeneutics can be understood or practiced properly apart from an appreciation of their relationship to the triune God and his gracious economy of redemption. Scott Swain treats the role of the Word in the saving economy of the triune God, the role and status of Scripture as the Word of God, the nature of biblical reading as a covenantal enterprise, as well as a host of other related topics. These topics are addressed by way of a constructive appropriation, or ressourcement, of many of the themes of patristic theology and early Protestant divinity (esp. Reformed Orthodoxy), while building upon the work of important contemporary theologians as well (e.g., Karl Barth, John Webster, Kevin Vanhoozer). The ultimate goal of this study is that readers will appreciate better the ways in which biblical interpretation is an aspect of their covenantal engagement with the triune God.

Pilgrimage into Pentecost explores the life and legacy of Howard M. Ervin, Th.D., chronicling Ervin's pilgrimage from his beginnings as Baptist pastor to his global influence as a Pentecostal leader. His exegetical theology led him to advocate a distinctively Lukan theology of the Holy Spirit, and he became for a while the leading scholarly apologist for the classical Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism. Ervin's scholarship spurred fruitful theological debate on the contemporary work of the Holy Spirit, especially with New Testament scholar James D.G. Dunn, while his extensive ecumenical pastoral ministry demonstrated the Spirit's work of unifying the body of Christ. Pilgrimage into Pentecost not only pays well-deserved tribute to a pioneer of Pentecostal scholarship but also offers his devout scholarship and distinguished forty-year teaching career at Oral Roberts University (ORU) as an example for others.

This bibliography will facilitate research in the history of American Presbyterianism in particular and American history in general. Among the major areas covered are: autobiographies and biographies; Presbyterian denominations; states; institutions of learning, including academies, colleges, universities, and theological seminaries; institutionalized forms of church work, i.e., home and foreign missions, publications, Christian education; urban work; polity; and ecumenism. There are also considerable references to minorities. A thorough topical index to the entries gives easy access to all of these areas of study.

aAn exceptional book in that it tells the story of the failure of a faith-based movement rather than its success. In a richly textured narrative, the authors describe the limitations of religious charisma when it confronts the harsh reality of a business-minded board that requires accountability. This book is fascinating reading for anyone who wants to understand the interplay between spirit and flesh, vision and economic reality.a
--Donald E. Miller, Executive Director, Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern California

What does it mean to live out the theology presented in the Great Commandment to alove God above all and to love your neighbor as yourselfa? In Blood and Fire, Poloma and Hood explore how understandings of godly love function to empower believers. Though godly love may begin as a perceived relationship between God and a person, it is made manifest as social behavior among people.

Blood and Fire offers a deep ethnographic portrait of a charismatic church and its faith-based ministry, illuminating how religiously motivated social service makes use of beliefs about the nature of Godas love. It traces the triumphs and travails associated with living a set of rigorous religious ideals, providing a richly textured analysis of a faith community affiliated with the aemerging churcha movement in Pentecostalism, one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic religious movements of our day.

Based on more than four years of interviews and surveys with people from all levels of the organization, from the leader to core and marginal members to the poor and addicts they are seeking to serve, Blood and Fire sheds light on the differing worldviews andreligious perceptions between those who "served in" as well as those who were "served by" this ministry.

Blood and Fire argues that godly love -- the relationship between perceived divine love and human response -- is at the heart of the vision of emerging churches, and that it is essential to understand this dynamic if one is to understand the ongoing reinvention of American Protestantism in the twenty-first century.

The German town of Emden was, in the sixteenth century, the most important haven for exiled Dutch Protestants. In this book, based on unrivalled knowledge of the contemporary archives, Andrew Pettegree explores the role of Emden as a refuge, a training centre and, above all, as the major source of Dutch Protestant propaganda. He also provides a unique and invaluable reconstruction of the output of Emden's famous printing presses. The emergence of an independent state in the Netherlands was accompanied by a transformation in the status of Protestantism from a persecuted sect to the dominant religious force in the new Dutch republic. Dr Pettegree shows how the exile churches, the nurseries of Dutch Calvinism, provided military and financial support for the armies of William of Orange and models of church organization for the new state. Emden and the Dutch Revolt is a major scholarly contribution to our understanding of the origins of the Dutch Republic and the place of Calvinism in the European Reformation.

This is a study of the social construction and the impression management of the public forms of worship of Catholicism and Anglicanism. Interest centres on the dilemmas of the liturgical actors in handling a transaction riddled with ambiguities and potential misunderstandings. Simmel, Berger and Goffman are used in an original manner to understand these rites which pose as much of a problem for sociology as for their practitioners.;These rites are treated as forms of play and hermeneutics is linked to a negative theology to understand their performative basis. The study is an effort to link sociology to theology in a way that serves to focus on an issue of social praxis.

Joseph Smith, founding prophet and martyr of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, personally wrote, dictated, or commissioned thousands of documents. Among these are several highly significant sources that scholars have used over and over again in their attempts to reconstruct the founding era of Mormonism, usually by focusing solely on content, without a deep appreciation for how and why a document was produced. This book offers case studies of the sources most often used by historians of the early Mormon experience. Each chapter takes a particular document as its primary subject, considering the production of a document as an historical event in itself, with its own background, purpose, circumstances, and consequences. The documents are examined not merely as sources of information but as artifacts that reflect aspects of the general culture and particular circumstances in which they were created. This book will help historians working in the founding era of Mormonism gain a more solid grounding in the period's documentary record by supplying important information on major primary sources.

Tractarians and Evangelicals, the extremists of the nineteenth-century church, have successfully imposed their propaganda on posterity. Every text assumes that these militants saved the Church of England from the slough of complacency and corruption that their most powerful enemies - 'high and dry' dignitaries - had created.
This book rehabilitates the bishops and deans who are commonly supposed to have lavished preferment on unworthy friends and relations. It shows how members of the Hackney Phalanx, the high-church equivalent of the Clapham Sect, used their patronage to co-opt the able and energetic sons of rising business and professional families: ordinands with the talent and ambition to make a substantial contribution to the church from families that might have otherwise been lost to dissent. A single clerical connection, of nine related clergymen revolving round a mid nineteenth-century Dean of Canterbury, William Rowe Lyall (1788-1857), illuminates a number of central features of church and society: patronage; the co-option of new men; and the attraction of the church as a professional career.
This exceptionally readable book contains vivid pen-portraits of Dean Lyall and his clients, rigorous economic analysis of the financial returns of a clerical career.