Secularization and the Working Class brings together contributions from thirteen Central European historians who have taken a long-term interest in the issue of the secularization of modern society and social issues affecting the working class. By using contemporary historical methods they have researched the theoretical aspects of secularization theories as well as individual cases which illustrate Czech developments within the framework of the Austrian monarchy. These cases touch upon working conditions, working-class organizations and political parties, cultural life and means of communication. Among other things they present the conflicts that led to rifts within society. This representative collection of texts is will appeal to historians of modern history interested in the fascinating issues of European development, all those who are interested in the living conditions of the working class in the 19th and 20th centuries.
For the last two centuries biblical interpretation has been guided by perspectives that have largely ignored the oral context in which the gospels took shape. Only recently have scholars begun to explore how ancient media inform the interpretive process and an understanding of the Bible. This collection of essays, by authors who recognize that the Jesus tradition was a story heard and performed, seeks to reevaluate the constituent elements of narrative, including characters, structure, narrator, time, and intertextuality. In dialogue with traditional literary approaches, these essays demonstrate that an appreciation of performance yields fresh insights distinguishable in many respects from results of literary or narrative readings of the gospels.
Thoughtful Christians are legitimately perplexed by a number of issues relating to the church's belief and practice. They are perplexed partly because they recognize that the issues themselves are thorny, and partly because they are not sure how to test the mutually inconsistent theories and explanations affirmed by diverse voices speaking with equal assurance.
Most Christians find relatively little occasion or encouragement to address their perplexities with intellectual candor and integrity. If they dare to acknowledge their theological perplexities at all, they are too often told that these perplexities are unimportant, or that they can be answered very simply, or that they should be left to the experts.
Guide for the Christian Perplexed, written by members of the faculty of Wycliffe College, Toronto, aims to explore a diversity of issues and questions to do with
oour knowledge of Jesus othe meaning of suffering othe function of doctrine othe understanding of Scripture othe place of other religions othe challenge of atheism othe pleasures and complications of sexuality othe nature of worship othe way to evangelize ounderstanding who our neighbor is locally and globally odiversities of spirituality Here you will find thoughtful reflections and answers to the questions around these issues. A study guide is included for individual and group use.
By Bartholomew's Day, 24 August, 1662, all ministers and schoolmasters in England and Wales were required by the Act of Uniformity to have given their «unfeigned assent and consent» to the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. On theological grounds nearly two thousand ministers–approximately one fifth of the clergy of the Church of England–refused to comply and thereby forfeited their livings.
This book has been written to commemorate the 350th Anniversary of the Great Ejectment. In Part One three early modern historians provide accounts of the antecedents and aftermath of the ejectment in England and Wales, while in Part Two the case is advanced that the negative responses of the ejected ministers to the legal requirements of the Act of Uniformity were rooted in positive doctrinal convictions that are of continuing ecumenical significance.
The Reformed tradition of worship in England has given the English-speaking world the Westminster Directory for the Public Worship of God, and the hymns of Isaac Watts. In this collection of essays, scholars and ministers who are inheritors of this tradition reflect on the continuities, innovations, and tensions in Reformed worship and their lived expression in contemporary church life. Among the tensions explored is that between order and freedom in worship, and the bold contention is made that «ordered freedom» is the scriptural mark of the church's worship and the character of all good liturgy, for «order is love in regulative operation» (Anglican- Reformed International Commission). This collection of essays on the theology, history, and practice of Reformed worship also includes examples of psalmody, liturgy, and a sermon.
Radical Orthodoxy, whose founding father is John Milbank, claims that God has been pushed to the margins in modernity and that a false and misleading neo-theology has taken hold that needs to be revisited and contested. It is this return to the premodern that often leads theologians to have reservations about Radical Orthodoxy when they might otherwise have some sympathy for many of its positions. Radical Orthodoxy, like most traditional theology, claims that the power of God is in all creation and that God sits everywhere for all to partake of. But there appears to be a failure to see that the church and theology do not set in place systems that live out this basic assumption. Liberation theology, while sharing much of the same assumption that God is everywhere and to be shared, at the same time engages in a critique of the structures that claim to facilitate this vision, and finds them wanting. From here, then, liberation theologians attempt to refigure our understanding of shared power in order to broaden the vision, while it may be argued that Radical Orthodoxy simply restates the assumption with little political critique of the issues. Perhaps this point explains why this book is titled The Poverty of Radical Orthodoxy rather than Radical Error!
In Soft Shepherd or Almighty Pastor? contributors seek to go beyond the taboo on «power» within pastoral contexts. They not only discuss fundamental theological and philosophical questions about power but also develop ways to prevent power abuse in pastoral context. Power is considered as omnipresent and is analyzed in its positive and negative aspects. Not only the classical associations of «power over» or «domination» are discussed in relation to ecclesial and pastoral situations, but also forms of power linked to «service» and «care.» A sacrificial spirituality might also be dangerous. Soft Shepherd or Almighty Pastor? gathers ten contributions, all of which reflect on the complexity of power issues, also in relation to sexual abuse. The authors argue that dealing adequately with power requires renewed forms of theological thinking, especially about ministry.
Historical writings on Our Lady of Guadalupe, the most revered sacred figure indigenous to the western hemisphere, have tended to focus on the sixteenth-century origins of her cult. But recent publications have increasingly extended Guadalupan studies beyond the origin debates to analyses of the subsequent evolution and immense influence of the Guadalupe tradition. New Frontiers in Guadalupan Studies significantly enhances this growing body of literature with insightful essays on topics that span the early stages of Guadalupan devotion to the milestone of Pope Benedict XIV establishing an official liturgical feast for Guadalupe in 1754. The volume also breaks new ground in theological analyses of Guadalupe, which comprise an ongoing effort to articulate a Christian response to one of the most momentous events of Christianity's second millennium: the conquest, evangelization, and struggles for life, dignity, and self-determination of the peoples of the Americas.
The Spirit of Adoption explores many of the complexities inherent in adoption and its relationship to spirituality, challenging us to move beyond the common mythologies about adoption to consider the more difficult questions adoption raises about the nature of God, family, culture, loss, and joy. Rather than hearing from experts in adoption, this collection uses the narratives of birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees themselves, bearing witness to the ways adoption shapes its participants' spiritual lives. By allowing others to narrate their spiritual journeys through adoption, we hope to proclaim that adoption can be a wonderful, powerful, hopeful experience, and one that is difficult, painful, despairing–and that these paradoxes of adoption might be held together in God's hand.
Walk Together Children: Black and Womanist Theologies, Church, and Theological Education draws on the long religious, cultural, and singing history of blacks in the U.S.A. Through the slavery and emancipation days until now, black song has both nurtured and enhanced African American life as a collective whole. Communality has always included a variety of existential experiences. What has kept this enduring people in a corporate process is their walking together through good times and bad, relying on what W. E. B. DuBois called their «dogged strength» to keep «from being torn asunder.» Somehow and someway they intuited from historical memory or received from transcendental revelation that keeping on long enough on the road would yield ultimate fruit for the journey.