Religion : History

Evangelical Christians comprise roughly a fourth of the U.S. population—more than 60 million Americans who say they are “born again” and experience a daily personal relationship with God. They live in every part of the country and are engaged in every walk of life. They include farmers and factory workers, teachers and tycoons, doctors, lawyers, homemakers, and the current president of the United States. Theirs is a faith tradition that goes back more than 300 years in this country and to Europe before that. Their personal faith and their vision of America are shaped by an understanding of the Bible as God’s inerrant word and of the universe as a cosmic battlefield between the forces of good and evil. They earnestly believe that having a personal faith in Jesus Christ is humankind’s only hope of salvation and are committed to what they consider to be a divine mandate to win the world to Christ and bring biblical values to bear in what they see as an increasingly secular and hedonistic society. With panoramic sweep and intimate narrative detail, award-winning religion journalist and onetime fundamentalist Jeffery L. Sheler takes readers to the places where today’s evangelicals live, work, and worship, to meet them firsthand and discover how their unique brand of Christian faith shapes their lives and how they, in turn, are shaping and being shaped by their communities and the wider culture around them. Stops along the way include:. The trend-setting Saddleback Church in Southern California, a 15,000-member congregation that has become a template for the evangelical mega-church movement with its marketing savvy and non-traditional approach to worship and outreach, through the efforts of “America’s pastor”—Saddleback’s founder and best-selling author of The Purpose-Driven Life, Rick Warren. The Colorado Springs, Colorado, headquarters of Focus on the Family and a revealing encounter with its controversial founder, more...

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The United States is the most religiously diverse. nation in the world and the most religiously diverse. collection of people in history. And even in this age of. increasing religious violence, there is a growing movement. of cooperation: thousands of devout worshippers. who are willing to take a gamble on people of radically. different faiths. In this insightful, deeply felt examination of the. nature of community and religion, former New York. Times religion reporter Gustav Niebuhr traces the. roots of religious freedom in America and the setbacks. and triumphs it has encountered along the way. From. Hindus and Quakers in Queens to Catholics and. Jews in Baltimore, to black Baptists and Catholics in. Louisville, to Catholics and Buddhists in Los Angeles,. Niebuhr focuses on the ways people build ties between. groups. He looks at why this movement is a particularly. American endeavor and how it can save us all. Beyond Tolerance is a handbook for religious cooperation. in our fractured times. more...

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The volume contains the contributions to a symposium in which specialists in different fields worked together in the attempt to throw by their cooperation more light on the conditions - theological convictions and worldview, political climate, influence of state officials, educational institutions and churches - which were influential in the development of biblical studies in the second half of the 19th century. The discussion originated with a special problem: the thesis of William Farmer, one of the co-editors of the volume, that the appointment of Heinrich Julius Holtzmann, who defended the priority of the gospel of Mark as the oldest synoptic gospel, to the New Testament professorship in Strasbourg in 1872 was the result of a direct intervention of the emperial chancellor Bismarck in the context of the kulturkampf, who wished thereby to weaken the Roman Catholic position defending the supremacy of the chair of St Peter by the authority of the gospel of St Matthew (Mt 16,18). The question belongs in the broader context of the presuppositions of Bible exegesis in the second half of the 19th century. As both editors agreed that the matter is not yet finally settled, it seemed to be essential for coming to deeper insights into the conditions under which biblical exegesis was enacted in the 19th century to broaden the scenery and to include other aspects that might throw more light on a period widely unknown to many scholars belonging to the present generation. Therefore specialists of different fields joined a symposium in order to elucidate from their respective viewpoints and interests basic themes and methods of biblical exegesis, scientific theology and the relations between state and university in the 19th centruy, especially during the period of the second Reich. But the themes were not restricted to this special area. They included also a wider outlook into the first half of the century and across the borders of Germany into other European countries. So the v more...

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This companion brings together new contributions from internationally renowned scholars in order to examine the past, present and future of Protestantism. more...

Price: $126.95

In The Blood of Martyrs, Salisbury chronicles the many spectacles of violent martydom that took place during the first three centuries of the Christian era. more...

Price: $35.95