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Books > Christianity > Protestantism & Protestant Churches
Evangelicals are increasingly turning their attention toward issues
such as the environment, international human rights, economic
development, racial reconciliation, and urban renewal. This marks
an expansion of the social agenda advanced by the Religious Right
over the past few decades. For outsiders to evangelical culture,
this trend complicates simplistic stereotypes. For insiders, it
brings contention over what "true" evangelicalism means today. The
New Evangelical Social Engagement brings together an impressive
interdisciplinary team of scholars to map this new religious
terrain and spell out its significance. The volume's introduction
describes the broad outlines of this "new evangelicalism." The
editors identify its key elements, trace its historical lineage,
account for the recent changes taking place within evangelicalism,
and highlight the implications of these changes for politics, civic
engagement, and American religion. Part One of the book discusses
important groups and trends: emerging evangelicals, the New
Monastics, an emphasis on social justice, Catholic influences,
gender dynamics and the desire to rehabilitate the evangelical
identity, and evangelical attitudes toward the new social agenda.
Part Two focuses on specific issues: the environment, racial
reconciliation, abortion, international human rights, and global
poverty. Part Three contains reflections on the new evangelical
social engagement by three leading scholars in the fields of
American religious history, sociology of religion, and Christian
ethics.
The Jesus People movement of the late 1960s and 1970s was an
important force in the lives of millions of American Baby Boomers.
This unique combination of the hippie counterculture and
evangelical Christianity first appeared amid 1967's famed "Summer
of Love" in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district and grew like
wildfire in Southern California and in cities like Seattle,
Atlanta, and Milwaukee. In 1971 the growing movement found its way
into the national spotlight, attracting a great deal of
contemporary media and scholarly attention. In the wake of
publicity, the movement gained momentum and attracted a huge new
following among evangelical church youth who enthusiastically
adopted the Jesus People persona as their own. In the process, the
movement spread across the country - particularly into the Great
Lakes region - and coffeehouses, "Jesus Music" singers, and "One
Way" bumper stickers soon blanketed the land. Within a few years,
however, the movement faded and disappeared and was largely
forgotten by everyone but those who had filled its ranks. God's
Forever Family is the first major attempt to re-examine the Jesus
People phenomenon in over thirty years. It reveals that it was one
of the most important American religious movements of the second
half of the 20th-century. Not only did the Jesus movement produce
such burgeoning new evangelical groups as Calvary Chapel and the
Vineyard movement, but the Jesus People paved the way for the huge
Contemporary Christian Music industry and the rise of "Praise
Music" in the nation's churches. More significantly, perhaps, it
revolutionized evangelicals' relationship with youth and popular
culture-important factors in the evangelical subculture's emerging
engagement with the larger American culture from the late 1970s
forward. God's Forever Family makes the case that the Jesus People
movement not only helped create a resurgent evangelicalism but -
alongside the hippie counterculture and the student movement - must
be considered one of the major formative powers that shaped
American youth in the late 1960s and 1970s.
The growth of Christianity in the global South is one of the most
important religious stories of the last decade. In no branch of
Christianity has that growth been more rapid than Pentecostalism.
There are over 100 million Pentecostals in Africa, and Pentecostal
practices infuse Catholic, Anglican, and Independent churches. In
the traditional Catholic stronghold of Latin America,
Pentecostalism now vies with Catholicism for the soul of the
continent. And the largest Pentecostsal church in the world, with
over 800,000 members, is in Seoul. In To the Ends of the Earth,
Allan Anderson offers a historical and theological examination of
the growth of global Pentecostalism. Examining such issues as
revivalism, healing, gender, worship, and globalization, Anderson
seeks to show how the growth of global Pentecostalism is changing
the face of Christianity as a whole.
Charles Hodge (1797-1878) was one of nineteenth-century America's
leading theologians, owing in part to a lengthy teaching career,
voluminous writings, and a faculty post at one of the nation's most
influential schools, Princeton Theological Seminary. Surprisingly,
the only biography of this towering figure was written by his son,
just two years after his death. Paul Gutjahr's book, therefore, is
the first modern critical biography of a man some have called the
Pope of Presbyterianism...Hodge's legacy is especially important to
American Presbyterians. His brand of theological conservatism
became vital in the 1920s, as Princeton Seminary saw itself, and
its denomination, split. The conservative wing held unswervingly to
the Old School tradition championed by Hodge, and ultimately
founded the breakaway Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The views that
Hodge developed, refined, and propagated helped shape many of the
central traditions of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American
evangelicalism. Hodge helped establish a profound reliance on the
Bible among evangelicals, and he became one of the nation's most
vocal proponents of biblical inerrancy. Gutjahr's study reveals the
exceptional depth, breadth, and longevity of Hodge's theological
influence and illuminates the varied and complex nature of
conservative American Protestantism.
Divine healing is the essential marker of the global phenomenon of
Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. But although we know that
healing is central in these movements, we know surprisingly little
about how divine healing beliefs and practices reflect the
interplay of local and global patterns of cultural development. The
essays in this collection seek to discover what is the same and
what is different about such beliefs and practices in diverse
contexts, trace formal and informal lines of cultural influence
across geographic and national boundaries, and ask how healing both
reflects and contributes to larger processes of globalization. The
collection will not only flesh out a picture of how and why
spiritual healing is practiced in diverse cultural contexts and how
healing practices reflect and shape the transnational spread of
Christianity; it will also provide insight into the nature of
globalization. The authors will attend to a wide range of issues,
including the theological rationales for divine healing; the
symbolic objects and ritual enactments employed; the cultural
controversies surrounding these practices; the relationship between
Christian healing and local or indigenous healing traditions;
whether an emphasis on financial prosperity is always present; and
the extent to which Pentecostal and charismatic churches are
networked and the role of healing in such networks. All the essays
are new to this volume.
Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) is widely recognized as America's
greatest religious mind. A torrent of books, articles, and
dissertations on Edwards have been released since 1949, the year
that Perry Miller published the intellectual biography that
launched the modern explosion of Edwards studies. This collection
offers an introduction to Edwards's life and thought, pitched at
the level of the educated general reader. Each chapter serves as a
general introduction to one of Edwards's major topics, including
revival, the Bible, beauty, literature, philosophy, typology, and
even world religions. Each is written by a leading expert on
Edwards's work. The book will serve as an ideal first encounter
with the thought of "America's theologian."
Official badge / pin of the Women's Manyano organisation pack of 25
The astonishing growth of Christianity in the global South over the
course of the twentieth century has sparked an equally rapid growth
in studies of ''World Christianity, '' which have dismantled the
notion that Christianity is a Western religion. What, then, are we
to make of the waves of Western missionaries who have, for
centuries, been evangelizing in the global South? Were they merely,
as many have argued, agents of imperialism out to impose Western
values? In An Unpredictable Gospel, Jay Case examines the efforts
of American evangelical missionaries in light of this new
scholarship. He argues that if they were agents of imperialism,
they were poor ones. Western missionaries had a dismal record of
converting non-Westerners to Christianity. The ministries that were
most successful were those that empowered the local population and
adapted to local cultures. In fact, influence often flowed the
other way, with missionaries serving as conduits for ideas that
shaped American evangelicalism. Case traces these currents and
sheds new light on the relationship between Western and non-Western
Christianities.
Ranging from the medieval period to the present day, this is a
brief history of church music as it has developed through the
English tradition. Described as "a quick journey", it provides a
broad historical survey rather than an in-depth study of the
subject, and also predicts likely future trends.
In the English-speaking world Ernst Kasemann's name is associated
primarily with the renewed quest for the historical Jesus which he
helped to initiate in the mid-1950s. In addition he is well known
for his passionate theological commitment, and for the highly
polemical character and sheer difficulty of his writing. There is
less appreciation of the breadth of Kasemann's interests, the
system of his thought, and the key role of his understanding of
Pauline theology within the whole. This study, the first of any
length to be written in English, seeks to redress this imbalance.
Dr Way traces Kasemann's views from his doctoral dissertation to
his magnum opus, the Commentary on Romans. From its context in
German Protestant theology, Kasemann's Pauline interpretation is
systematically analysed and emphasis is given to the major
theological themes which identify the continuing significance of
his interpretation to biblical scholars and the Church. Certain
unpublished lectures and letters are referred to in tracing
Kasemann's views, and the influence of this most provocative of
Rudolf Bultmann's students on contemporary New Testament
scholarship is assessed.
Volume 50 of the American Edition of Luther's Works is the third
and final volume of letters in this series; it presents 89 letters
written by Luther in the period from January 1532, to February 14,
1546, a date four days prior to Luther's death.
In the years since 1945, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints has grown rapidly in terms of both numbers and public
prominence. Mormonism is no longer merely a home-grown American
religion, confined to the Intermountain West; instead, it has
captured the attention of political pundits, Broadway audiences,
and prospective converts around the world. While most scholarship
on Mormonism concerns its colorful but now well-known early
history, the essays in this collection assess recent developments,
such as the LDS Church's international growth and acculturation;
its intersection with conservative politics in recent decades; its
stances on same-sex marriage and the role of women; and its ongoing
struggle to interpret its own tumultuous history. The scholars draw
on a wide variety of Mormon voices as well as those of outsiders,
from Latter-day Saints in Hyderabad, India, to "Mormon Mommy
blogs," to evangelical "countercult" ministries. Out of Obscurity
brings the story of Mormonism since the Second World War into sharp
relief, explaining the ways in which a church very much rooted in
its nineteenth-century prophetic and pioneering past achieved
unprecedented influence in the realms of American politics and
international business.
This is a biography of Hensley Henson, one of the most
controversial religious figures in England during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book examines
Henson's education at Oxford University and describes the
highlights of his career as pastor of Ilford and Barking Church, as
canon of Westminster Abbey, and as bishop of Hereford and Durham.
It explores his involvement in political issues and his
controversial views on such issues as divorce, the Italian invasion
of Abyssinia, and the anti-Semitic policies of Nazi Germany.
Although La Monte Young is one of the most important composers of
the late twentieth century, he is also one of the most elusive.
Generally recognized as the patriarch of the minimalist
movement-Brian Eno once called him "the daddy of us all"-he
nonetheless remains an enigma within the music world. Early in his
career Young eschewed almost completely the conventional musical
institutions of publishers, record labels, and venues, in order to
create compositions completely unfettered by commercial concerns.
At the same time, however, he exercised profound influence on such
varied figures as Terry Riley, Cornelius Cardew, Andy Warhol, Yoko
Ono, David Lang, Velvet Underground, and entire branches of
electronica and drone music. For half a century he and his partner
and collaborator, Marian Zazeela, have worked in near-seclusion in
their Tribeca loft, creating works that explore the furthest
extremes of conceptual audacity, technical sophistication,
acoustical complexity, and overt spirituality. Because Young gives
interviews only rarely, and almost never grants access to his
extensive archives, his importance as a composer has heretofore not
been matched by a commensurate amount of scholarly scrutiny. Draw A
Straight Line and Follow It: The Music and Mysticism of La Monte
Young stands as the first monograph to examine Young's life and
work in detail. The book is a culmination of a decade of research,
during which the author gained rare access to the composer and his
archives. Though loosely structured upon the chronology of the
composer's career, the book takes a multi-disciplinary approach
that combines biography, musicology, ethnomusicology, and music
analysis, and illuminates such seemingly disparate aspects of
Young's work as integral serialism and indeterminacy, Mormon
esoterica and Vedic mysticism, and psychedelia and psychoacoustics.
The book is a long-awaited, in-depth look at one of America's most
fascinating musical figures.
If man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceeds from the mouth of God, then Johann Starck has provided a
bread basket for the Church with his Prayer-Book. This book of
daily prayers, hymns, poetry, and devotions presents in every
syllable the Bread that has come down from heaven. Written as daily
nourishment in the Word of God, this book also lends itself to
meditation and prayer during many of life's peculiar situations.
Professor Dau describes Starck well when he writes, "Starck loved
nothing sensational, nothing that was for mere display in matters
of religion. Christian life, to him, was real and earnest, to be
conducted in a sober mind. He was always bent on its practical
applications to every pursuit and action, and on enlisting really
the whole of a person in the service of the Master." When
Christians nourish their souls daily with meditation upon the Word
of God and the Sacraments, faith is strengthened. The Bread of Life
fills hearts and minds, and Christ finds expression in the world
through Christian life and speech. A contemporary pastor said it
best when he said "Starck gives Christians a daily helping of
meditation in God's Word, and leads them to satisfaction in their
vocational tasks."
Latter-day Saints have a paradoxical relationship to the past; even
as they invest their own history with sacred meaning, celebrating
the restoration of ancient truths and the fulfillment of biblical
prophecies, they repudiate the eighteen centuries of Christianity
preceding the founding of their church as apostate distortions of
the truth. Since the early days of Mormonism, Latter-day Saints
(LDS) have used the paradigm of apostasy and restoration in their
narratives about the origin of their church. This has generated a
powerful and enduring binary of categorization that has profoundly
impacted Mormon self-perception and relations with others. Standing
Apart explores how the idea of apostasy has functioned as a
category to mark, define, and set apart "the other" in Mormon
historical consciousness and in the construction of Mormon
narrative identity. The volume's fifteen contributors trace the
development of LDS narratives of apostasy within the context of
both Mormon history and American Protestant historiography. They
suggest ways in which these narratives might be reformulated to
engage with the past, as well as offering new models for interfaith
relations. This volume provides a novel approach for understanding
and resolving some of the challenges the LDS church faces in the
twenty-first century.
Pastor of Angelus Temple and the Dream Center, founder Matthew
Barnett leads participants on a six-week learning experience to
understand how simple it is to make a lasting impact on their
world. It is not as daunting as we might think. World-changers
start with a heart open to the leading of the Holy Spirit and a
willingness to do as he asks. Ideal for small groups, Bible
studies, and church classes, this kit includes a copy of the book
One Small Step, a DVD with an in-depth video for each session, and
a participant's guide to help members hear the Holy Spirit's voice
and obey his nudges. Also included are small step activities to
participate in, throughout the study and beyond. Boldly embrace the
life-changing adventure of becoming the hands and feet of Jesus to
the people right outside your front door. You will soon discover
that "random acts of kindness" are not so random after all.
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