Nineteenth-century evangelicals have often been dismissed as antiintellectual and philistine. This book draws on periodicals, memoirs and letters to discover how far this was true of British evangelicals between 1790 and 1833. It examines their leisure pursuits along with their enjoyment of art, music, literature, and study, and concludes that they shared the thought and taste of their contemporaries to a far greater extent than is always acknowledged. What is more, their theology encouraged such activities. Evangelicals regarded recreations which engaged the mind, or which could be pursued within the safety of the home, as more concordant with spirituality than 'sensual' or 'worldly' pleasures. Nevertheless, their faith did militate against culture and learning. Some evangelicals dismissed all nonreligious pursuits as 'vanity', since their deep rooted otherworldliness made them suspicious of anything which did not contribute to eternal well-being. A new generation adopted a more rigid attitude to the Bible, which made them unwilling to examine new ideas.In the last resort, even the most cultured evangelicals were unable to reconcile their delight in the arts with their world-denying theology.

The first two archbishops of Canterbury after the Norman Conquest, Lanfranc and Anselm, were towering figures in the medieval church and the sixth archbishop, the martyred Thomas Becket, is perhaps the most famous figure ever to hold the office. In between these giants of the ecclesiastical world came three less noteworthy men: Ralph d'Escures, William of Corbeil, and Theobald of Bec. Jean Truax's volume in the Ashgate Archbishops of Canterbury Series uniquely examines the pontificates of these three minor archbishops. Presenting their biographies, careers, thought and works as a unified period, Truax highlights crucial developments in the English church during the period of the pontificates of these three archbishops, from the death of Anselm to Becket. The resurgent power of the papacy, a changed relationship between church and state and the expansion of archiepiscopal scope and power ensured that in 1162 Becket faced a very different world from the one that Anselm had left in 1109. Selected correspondence, newly translated chronicle accounts and the text and a discussion of the Canterbury forgeries complete the volume.

A collection of essays that aim to consider broad questions of the role of religion in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain by studying a single geographical area. Coalbrookdale in the parish of Madeley, Shropshire is seen as the "birthplace of the industrial revolution" while remaining one of the last examples of a Methodist parish in England. These works engage with a variety of areas of study: Methodism's roots and growth in relation to the Church of England, religion and gender in eighteenth century Britain, and religion and the emergence of an industrial society, and do so from a variety of different approaches: historical, theological, economic and sociological. The result is not only a through examination of a single parish but a consideration of its relation to larger themes in eighteenth-century Britain and the impact of English Methodism on nineteenth-century American Methodism.

The first two archbishops of Canterbury after the Norman Conquest, Lanfranc and Anselm, were towering figures in the medieval church and the sixth archbishop, the martyred Thomas Becket, is perhaps the most famous figure ever to hold the office. In between these giants of the ecclesiastical world came three less noteworthy men: Ralph d'Escures, William of Corbeil, and Theobald of Bec. Jean Truax's volume in the Ashgate Archbishops of Canterbury Series uniquely examines the pontificates of these three minor archbishops. Presenting their biographies, careers, thought and works as a unified period, Truax highlights crucial developments in the English church during the period of the pontificates of these three archbishops, from the death of Anselm to Becket. The resurgent power of the papacy, a changed relationship between church and state and the expansion of archiepiscopal scope and power ensured that in 1162 Becket faced a very different world from the one that Anselm had left in 1109. Selected correspondence, newly translated chronicle accounts and the text and a discussion of the Canterbury forgeries complete the volume.

This collection of essays from established scholars and rising stars offers fresh perspectives in eschatology for the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. The fresh readings of eschatology in this volume are valuable because they demonstrate that Pentecostals no longer need to look to others to interpret their theology for them but can stand as scholars and thinkers in their own right.

This book highlights the life and writings of an itinerant preacher in John Wesley's Methodist Connexion, Thomas Wride (1733-1807). Detailed studies of such rank and file preachers are rare, as Methodist history has largely been written by and about its leadership. However, Wride's ministry shows us that the development of this worldwide movement was more complicated and uncertain than many accounts suggest. Wride's attitude was distinctive. He was no respecter of persons, freely criticising almost everyone he came across, and in doing so exposing debates and tensions within both Methodism and wider society. However, being so combative also led him into conflict with the very movement he sought to promote. Wride is an authentic, self-educated, and non-elite voice that illuminates important features of Eighteenth-Century life well beyond his religious activities. He sheds light on his contemporaries' attitudes to issues such as the role of women, attitudes towards and the practice of medicine, and the experience and interpretation of dreams and supernatural occurrences. This is a detailed insight into the everyday reality of being an Eighteenth-Century Methodist minister. As such, this text will be of interest to academics working in Methodist Studies and Religious History, as well as Eighteenth-Century History more generally.

Christian churches and groups within Anglo-American contexts have increasingly used popular music as a way to connect with young people. This book investigates the relationships between evangelical Christianity and popular music, focusing particularly on electronic dance music in the last twenty years. Author Stella Lau illustrates how electronic dance music is legitimized in evangelical activities by Christians discourses, and how the discourses challenge the divide between the secular and the sacred in the Western culture.

Unlike other existing books on the relationships between music cultures and religion, which predominantly discuss the cultural implications of such phenomenon, Popular Music in Evangelical Youth Culture examines the notion of spirituality in contemporary popular electronic dance music. Lau s emphasis on the sonic qualities of electronic dance music opens the door for future research about the relationships between aural properties of electronic dance music and religious discourses. With three case studies conducted in the cultural hubs of electronic dance music Bristol, Ibiza and New York the monograph can also be used as a guidebook for ethnographic research in popular music.

Until recently the impact of the Lutheran Reformation has been largely regarded in political and socio-economic terms, yet for most people it was not the abstract theological debates that had the greatest impact upon their lives, but what they saw in their parish churches every Sunday. This collection of essays provides a coherent and interdisciplinary investigation of the impact that the Lutheran Reformation had on the appearance, architecture and arrangement of early modern churches. Drawing upon recent research being undertaken by leading art historians and historians on Lutheran places of worship, the volume emphasises often surprising levels of continuity, reflecting the survival of Catholic fixtures, fittings and altarpieces, and exploring how these could be remodelled in order to conform with the tenets of Lutheran belief. The volume not only addresses Lutheran art but also the way in which the architecture of their churches reflected the importance of preaching and the administration of the sacraments. Furthermore the collection is committed to extending these discussions beyond a purely German context, and to look at churches not only within the Holy Roman Empire, but also in Scandinavia, the Baltic States as well as towns dominated by Saxon communities in areas such as in Hungary and Transylvania. By focusing on ecclesiastical 'material culture' the collection helps to place the art and architecture of Lutheran places of worship into the historical, political and theological context of early modern Europe.

Sydney Anglicans, always ultra-conservative in terms of liturgy, theology and personal morality, have increasingly modelled themselves on sixteenth century English Puritanism. Over the past few decades, they have added radical congregationalism to the mix. They have altered church services, challenged church order, and relentlessly opposed all attempts to ordain women as priests, let alone bishops. Muriel Porter unpacks how Australia's largest and, until recently, richest diocese developed its ideological fervour, and explores the impact it is having both in Australia and the Anglican Communion.

John Wesley has arguably influenced more English-speaking Christians than any other Protestant interpreter. One reason for this wide influence is that Wesley often spoke about the "heart" and its "affections"-that realm of life where all humans experience their deepest satisfactions, as well as some of their deepest conundrums. However, one of the problems of interpreting and appropriating Wesley is that we have been blinded to Wesley's actual views about "heart religion" by contemporary stereotypes about "affections" or "emotions." Because of this, it is rare that either Wesley's friends or his critics appreciate his sophisticated understanding of affective reality. To make clear what Wesley meant when he emphasized the renewal of the heart, Gregory S. Clapper summarizes some recent paradigm-changing accounts of the nature of "emotion" produced by contemporary philosophers and theologians, and then applies them to Wesley's conception of the heart and its affections. These accounts of emotion throw new light on Wesley's vision of Christianity as a renewal of the heart and make it possible to reclaim the language of the heart, not as a pandering or manipulative rhetoric, but as the framework for a comprehensive theological vision of Christian life and thought. The book closes with several practical applications that make clear the power of Wesley's vision to transform lives today.

The Nonconformists of England and Wales, the Protestants outside the Church of England, were particularly numerous in the Victorian years. These Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, Unitarians, and others helped shape society and made their mark in politics. This book explains the main characteristics of each denomination and examines the circumstances that enabled them to grow. It evaluates the main academic hypothesis about their role and points to signs of their subsequent decline in the twentieth century. Here is a succinct account of an important dimension of the Christian past in Britain.

Kierkegaard has always enjoyed a rich reception in the fields of theology and religious studies. This reception might seem obvious given that he is one of the most important Christian writers of the nineteenth century, but Kierkegaard was by no means a straightforward theologian in any traditional sense. He had no enduring interest in some of the main fields of theology such as church history or biblical studies, and he was strikingly silent on many key Christian dogmas. Moreover, he harbored a degree of animosity towards the university theologians and churchmen of his own day. Despite this, he has been a source of inspiration for numerous religious writers from different denominations and traditions. Tome I is dedicated to the reception of Kierkegaard among German Protestant theologians and religious thinkers. The writings of some of these figures turned out to be instrumental for Kierkegaard's breakthrough internationally shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. Leading figures of the movement of 'dialectical theology' such as Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann spawned a steadily growing awareness of and interest in Kierkegaard's thought among generations of German theology students. Emanuel Hirsch was greatly influenced by Kierkegaard and proved instrumental in disseminating his thought by producing the first complete German edition of Kierkegaard's published works. Both Barth and Hirsch established unique ways of reading and appropriating Kierkegaard, which to a certain degree determined the direction and course of Kierkegaard studies right up to our own times.

Focusing on the impact of continental religious warfare on the society, politics and culture of English, Scottish and Irish Protestantism, this study is concerned with the way in which British identity developed in the early Stuart period.

The work of John Howard Yoder has become increasingly influential in recent years. Moreover, it is gaining influence in some surprising places. No longer restricted to the world of theological ethicists and Mennonites, Yoder has been discovered as a refreshing voice by scholars working in many other fields. For thirty-five years, Yoder was known primarily as an articulate defender of Christian pacifism against a theological ethics guild dominated by the Troeltschian assumptions reflected in the work of Walter Rauschenbusch and Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr. But in the last decade, there has been a clearly identifiable shift in direction. A new generation of scholars has begun reading Yoder alongside figures most often associated with post-structuralism, neo-Nietzscheanism, and post-colonialism, resulting in original and productive new readings of his work. At the same time, scholars from outside of theology and ethics departments, indeed outside of Christianity itself, like Romand Coles and Daniel Boyarin, have discovered in Yoder a significant conversation partner for their own work. This volume collects some of the best of those essays in hope of encouraging more such work from readers of Yoder and in hopes of attracting others to his important work.

Anglicans around the world have responded to the gospel in many different cultural contexts. This has produced different customs and different ways of thinking about church issues. In the process of enculturation, Anglicans have found themselves encountering social and political realities as malign forces against which they have had to struggle. As a consequence, the personal and local dynamic in Anglicanism has created not just diversity of custom and mental habits, but it has done so at points that have been vital to the way Anglicans have been committed to the gospel. Conflict and the Practice of Christian Faith looks at the process by which local traditions developed in Christianity and how these traditions have related to other sub-traditions of the universal church. It assesses some specifics of the Anglican experience and argues for a significant re-casting of some prominent elements of that tradition, at the same time clarifying some of the distinctive elements in the Anglican tradition. This leads to a more nuanced appreciation of the force of the social and political framework within which Anglicans have had to work out their salvation and of the different forms of secular society and different understandings of plurality and diversity. It also entails showing how the imperial route to catholicity took no firm root in Anglicanism. Going global has been a significant experiment in Anglican ecclesiology that is by no means over yet. The terms of that experiment lie at the heart of the current Anglican debates. The book will be of interest to Christians generally who belong to faith traditions spread across different cultures. It is also a case study of the issues of global reach and local tradition.

'Tales of Unusual Deliverance Experiences' as told by Frank Hammond and Frank Marzullo. Almost 40 Deliverance Testimonies! The two Franks became life-long friends and fellow deliverance ministers after they first met and ministered together in 1975. They have since traveled together with their wives to various cities in the US, Mexico, England and Columbia. Over the years they have shared with one another the humorous, strange, exciting, and bizarre things experienced in their Ministries of Healing and Deliverance. Learn about the extraordinary from two extraordinary men!

Sydney Anglicans, always ultra-conservative in terms of liturgy, theology and personal morality, have increasingly modelled themselves on sixteenth century English Puritanism. Over the past few decades, they have added radical congregationalism to the mix. They have altered church services, challenged church order, and relentlessly opposed all attempts to ordain women as priests, let alone bishops. Muriel Porter unpacks how Australia's largest and, until recently, richest diocese developed its ideological fervour, and explores the impact it is having both in Australia and the Anglican Communion.

Scholars have historically associated John Wesley's educational endeavours with the boarding school he established at Kingswood, near Bristol, in 1746. However, his educational endeavours extended well beyond that single institution, even to non-Methodist educational programmes. This book sets out Wesley's thinking and practice concerning child-rearing and education, particularly in relation to gender and class, in its broader eighteenth-century social and cultural context. Drawing on writings from Churchmen, Dissenters, economists, philosophers and reformers as well as educationalists, this study demonstrates that the political, religious and ideological backdrop to Wesley's work was neither static nor consistent. It also highlights Wesley's eighteenth-century fellow Evangelicals including Lady Huntingdon, John Fletcher, Hannah More and Robert Raikes to demonstrate whether Wesley's thinking and practice around schooling was in any way unique. This study sheds light on how Wesley's attitudes to education were influencing and influenced by the society in which he lived and worked. As such, it will be of great interest to academics with an interest in Methodism, education and eighteenth-century attitudes towards gender and class.

'The limits of radicalism are those which end not in chaos but in the breaking of fresh ground.' Howard E. Root Previously unpublished--and only recently rediscovered by Dr Christopher R. Brewer in an uncatalogued box in the archives of Lambeth Palace Library--Canon Howard E. Root's 1972 Bampton Lectures, 'The Limits of Radicalism', have to do with nothing less than 'what theology is', a topic no less relevant today than it was in 1972. Against the radical reductionism of his time, Root defended the integrity of theology and 'theological truth'. Advocating a 'backward-looking' radicalism, he thought that tradition should display 'recognisable continuity', and yet at the same time--against reductionistic tendencies--that it might be enriched and enlarged via a wide variety of 'additive imagery' including, though not limited to, poetry and pop art, music and even television. We must 'begin where we are', said Root, for we cannot, in the manner of Leonard Hodgson, 'think ourselves into the minds and feelings of men 2000 years ago.' In this volume, which begins with a substantial, mostly biographical introduction, Dr Brewer argues that Root--a backward-looking radical who defended metaphysics and natural theology, and insisted that theologians look to the arts as theological resources--anticipates the work of David Brown and others concerned with tradition and imagination, relevance and truth. A fascinating glimpse into the recent history of British Christianity, Root's lectures, as well as the related appendices, are essential reading for theologians interested in the dynamics of a developing tradition and the theme of openness, as well as those with a particular interest in 1960s Cambridge radicalism and the British reception of the Second Vatican Council.

This book explores Mormon theology in new ways from a scholarly non-Mormon perspective. Bringing Jesus and Satan into relationship with Joseph Smith the founding prophet, Douglas Davies shows how the Mormon 'Plan of Salvation' can be equated with mainstream Christianity's doctrine of the Trinity as a driving force of the faith. Exploring how Jesus has been understood by Mormons, his many Mormon identities are described in this book: he is the Jehovah of the Bible, our Elder Brother and Father, probably also a husband, he visited the dead and is also the antagonist of Satan-Lucifer. This book offers a way into the Mormon 'problem of evil' understood as apostasy, from pre-mortal times to today. Three images reveal the wider problem of evil in Mormonism: Jesus' pre-mortal encounter with Lucifer in a heavenly council deciding on the Plan of Salvation, Jesus Christ's great suffering - engagement with evil in Gethsemane, and Joseph Smith's First Vision of the divine when he was almost destroyed by an evil force. Douglas Davies, well-known for his previous accounts of Mormon life and thought, shows how renewed Mormon interest in theological questions of belief can be understood against the background of Mormon church-organization and its growing presence on the world-stage of Christianity.

With notes that expound on ideas or share insights, and key concepts before each chapter, this book is a useful tool for students of all ages. Quickly and easily gain a better grasp on the stories, timelines, and relationships within "the keystone of our religion" with this book that's perfect for the whole family.

This book offers a bold reading of Protestant tradition from a rhetorical and literary perspective. Arguing that Protestant thought is based in a rhetorical performance of authority. Hobson draws on a wide range of modern and postmodern thought to defend this account of rhetorical authority from various charges of authoritarianism. With close readings of Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard and Barth, this book develops a new 'rhetorical theology of the Word' and also a new critique of secular modernity, with particular reference to modern literature and the thought of Nietzsche. Confronting the related issues of rhetoric and authority, Hobson provides a provocative account of modern theology which offers new perspectives on theology's relationship to literature and postmodern thought.