With Christian revivals (including Evangelicals in the White House), Islamic radicalism and the revitalisation of traditional religions it is clear that the world is not heading towards a community of secular states. Nowhere are religious thought and political practice more closely intertwined than in Africa. African migrants in Europe and America who send home money to build churches and mosques, African politicians who consult diviners, guerrilla fighters who believe that amulets can protect them from bullets, and ordinary people who seek ritual healing: all of these are applying religious ideas to everyday problems of existence, at every level of society. Far from falling off the map of the world, Africa is today a leading centre of Christianity and a growing field of Islamic activism, while African traditional religions are gaining converts in the West.
One cannot understand the politics of the present without taking religious thought seriously. Stories about witches, miracles, or people returning from the dead incite political action. In Africa religious belief has a huge impact on politics, from the top of society to the bottom. Religious ideas show what people actually think about the world and how to deal with it. Ellis and Ter Haar maintain that the specific content of religious thought has to be mastered if we are to grasp the political significance of religion in Africa today, but their book also informs our understanding of the relationship between religion and political practice in general.

@lt;DIV@gt;This unique book surveys within the various literary genres the parallels between the Bible and the literature of the ancient Near East. Each section begins with a survey of the available ancient literature, continues with a discussion of the literature, and concludes with a discussion of cases of alleged borrowing. The genres covered are - cosmology - laws - historical literature - wisdom literature - apocalyptic literature - personal archives and epics - covenants and treaties - hymns, prayers, and incantations - prophetic literature@lt;/div@gt;

Synopsis: Creating Women's Theology engages women's questions: Can women from different religious traditions engage one theological approach? Can one philosophical approach support feminist religious thought? What kind of belief follows women's criticism of traditional Christianity? Creating Women's Theology offers a portrait of how some women have found room for faith and feminism. For the last twenty-five years, women religion scholars have synthesized process philosophy with their feminist sensibilities and faith commitments to highlight the value of experience, the importance of freedom, and the interdependence of humanity, God, and all creation. Cutting across cultural and religious traditions, process relational feminist thought represents a theology that women have created. This volume offers an introduction to process and feminist theologies before presenting selections from canonical works in the field with study questions. This volume includes voices from Christianity, Judaism, goddess religion, the Black church, and indigenous religions. Creating Women's Theology invites new generations of undergraduate, seminary, and university graduate students to the methods and insights of process relational feminist theology. Endorsements: "Fifty years ago Valerie Saivings noted the congeniality between the process critique of the philosophical and theological tradition and the insights of Christian women. This remarkable volume shows how the work of women process theologians and of feminists and womanists who found process categories useful together constitute a single richly textured movement. From the perspective of this male process theologian, this movement is today the most promising expression of process theology. Indeed, I view it as embodying the cutting edge of Christian theology as a whole." --John B. Cobb Jr. Claremont Graduate School and Claremont School of Theology "Creating Women's Theology is an important contribution to the literature. It offers a good summary of the relation to feminism and process theology. It also delves into some basic questions about the universality of feminist approaches to theology in different religious traditions. This book will be a helpful introduction for courses in feminist theology." --Rosemary Radford Ruether Claremont Graduate University "In its relational structure and transtemporal movement, this book works like a society of occasions in process should It is a beautifully aimed series of reflective events, displaying the transgenerational trajectories of the feminist and womanist process theologies as they have been massively but often indirectly unfolding. By making this movement within a movement so becomingly readable and so dialogically explicit, by highlighting its intersections with other movements and its internal differences, it will lure yet another generation of thinkers into a vital conversation." --Catherine Keller Drew University Theological School Editor Biography: Monica A. Coleman is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religions and Co-Director of the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology and Associate Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. She is the author of The Dinah Project: A Handbook for Congregational Response to Sexual Violence (2004) and Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology (2008). Nancy R. Howell is Professor of Theology and Philosophy of Religion and Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. She is author of A Feminist Cosmology: Ecology, Solidarity, and Metaphysics (2000). Helene Tallon Russell is Associate Professor of Theology at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana. She is author of Irigaray and Kierkegaard: On the Construction of the Self (2009).

The question of the transcendence of God has traditionally been thought in terms of the difference between pantheism, which affirms that God is wholly "within" the world, and theism, which affirms that God is both "within" and "outside" the world, both immanent and transcendent. Against Heidegger s critique of onto-theology and the general postmodern concern for respecting and preserving the difference of the other, Merold Westphal seeks to rethink divine transcendence in relation to modes of human self-transcendence. Touching upon Spinoza, Hegel, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Aquinas, Barth, Kierkegaard, Levinas, Derrida, and Marion, Westphal s work centers around a critique of onto-theology, the importance of alterity, the decentered self, and the autonomous transcendental ego. Westphal s phenomenology of faith sets this book into the main currents of Continental philosophy of religion today."

In this groundbreaking book, Benezet Bujo, a leading voice in African Christian theology, offers an informed critique of Western ethics and lays the theoretical groundwork for a new African ethic. By skillfully drawing on themes from African life such as marriage, therapy, and art, Bujo exposes the shortcomings of the philosophical anthropology implicit in Western ethics, comparing Western theories of natural law, discourse ethics, and communitarianism with the African emphasis on community and remembrance. He then considers whether African ethics can account for central Western values such as autonomy, freedom, and individual identity. Finally, he considers how African ethics both challenges the Church and contributes to its richness, suggesting that an African palaver ethic can integrate the best features of communitarianism and discourse ethics. This timely contribution to African theology will be of special interest to students of religion, comparative and non-Western philosophy, anthropology, and African studies, as well as those intrigued by ongoing debates about universal ethical norms.

'Faith in Development' discusses the principles and practicalities of a partnership, covering a broad range of development topics. It draws on an extraordinary conference held in Nairobi in March 2000, organized jointly by the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa and the World Bank, to explore closer collaboration, especially at the grassroots level. This book provides a fascinating glimpse of the spiritual dimensions of poverty. Foreword by James D. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, and George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury.

A popular introduction to archaeology and the methods archaeologists use to reconstruct the history of ancient Israel.

Denise and John Carmody introduce the concept of mysticism and its practice in each of the world's major religions. For each religion they provide a brief description of its history, doctrine, and major mystical figures, and compare its mystical dimension to those of other traditions.

Writing in the wake of a near-fatal stroke, eminent theologian Anthony C. Thiselton addresses a universally significant topic: death and what comes next. This distinctive study of "the last things" comprehensively explores questions about individual death, the intermediate state, the return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, hell, the final state of the redeemed, and more. At once scholarly and pastoral, Thiselton's Life after Death offers biblically astute, historically informed, and intellectually sound answers -- making this book an invaluable resource for thinking Christians.

The reader is taken on a journey from the earliest roots of Christianity to its near acceptance as religion of the Roman Empire. The reader is taken from the very first generation of Christians in Rome, a tiny group of Jews who acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, down to the point when Christianity had triumphed over savage persecution and was on the verge of becoming the religion of the Roman Empire. Rome was by far the biggest city in the Roman world and this had a profound effect on the way Christianity developed there. It became separate from Judaism at a very early date. The Roman Christians were the first to suffer savage persecution at the hands of Nero. Rome saw the greatest theological movements of the second century thrashing out the core doctrines of the Christian faith. The emergence of the papacy and the building of the catacombs gave the Roman Church extraordinary influence and prestige in the third century, another time of cruel persecution. And it was in Rome that Constantine's patronage of the Christian faith was most evident as he built great basilicas and elevated the personal status of the Pope.