Communities of Faith is a collection of essays on the multicultural Christian spirit and practices of churches around the world, with particular attention to Africa and the African diaspora. The essays span history, theology, anthropology, ecumenism, and missiology.
Readers will be treated to fresh perspectives on African Pentecostal higher education, Pentecostalism and witchcraft in East Africa, Methodist camp meetings in Ghana, Ghanaian diaspora missions in Europe and North America, gender roles in South African Christian communities, HIV/AIDS ministries in Uganda, Japanese funerary rites, enculturation and contextualization principles of mission, and many other aspects of the Christian world mission.
With essays from well-known scholars as well as young and emerging men and women in academia, Communities of Faith illuminates current realities of world Christianity and contributes to the scholarship of today's worldwide Christian witness.
Most accounts of Canada and the First World War either ignore or merely mention in passing the churches' experience. Such neglect does not do justice to the remarkable influence of the wartime churches nor to the religious identity of the young Dominion. The churches' support for the war was often wholehearted, but just as often nuanced and critical, shaped by either the classic just war paradigm or pacifism's outright rejection of violence. The war heightened issues of Canadianization, attitudes to violence, and ministry to the bereaved and the disillusioned. It also exacerbated ethnic tensions within and between denominations, and challenged notions of national and imperial identity. The authors of this volume provide a detailed summary of various Christian traditions and the war, both synthesizing and furthering previous research. In addition to examining the experience of Roman Catholics (English and French speaking), Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Mennonites, and Quakers, there are chapters on precedents formed during the South African War, the work of military chaplains, and the roles of church women on the home front.
What happens to the church when the emperor becomes a Christian? Seventeen hundred years after Constantine's victory at Milvian Bridge, scholars and students of history continue to debate the life and impact of the Roman emperor who converted to faith in the Christian God and gave peace to the church. This book joins that conversation and examines afresh the historical sources that inform our picture of Constantine, the theological developments that occurred in the wake of his rise to power, and aspects of Constantine's legacy that have shaped church history.
Karl Barth was an eminently conversational theologian, and with the Internet revolution, we live today in an eminently conversational age. Being the proceedings of the 2010 Karl Barth Blog Conference, Karl Barth in Conversation brings these two factors together in order to advance the dialogue about Barth's theology and extend the online conversation to new audiences. With conversation partners ranging from Wesley to Žižek, from Schleiermacher to Jenson, from Hauerwas to the Coen brothers, this volume opens up exciting new horizons for exploring Barth's immense contribution to church and world. The contributors, who represent a young new generation of academic theologians, bring a fresh perspective to a topic–the theology of Karl Barth–that often seems to have exhausted its range of possibilities. This book proves that there is still a great deal of uncharted territory in the field of Barth studies. Today, more than forty years since the Swiss theologian's death, the conversation is as lively as ever.
The mission of the church to the Jews is a unique one. The biblical, theological and practical issues differ from those with other groups because Israel was, and is, the people to whom God gave his promises. However, the unbelief of many Jewish people and the persecution of Jewish people in the name of Jesus makes mission to the Jews uniquely difficult, requiring considerable sensitivity. But it is also full of hope, for there is promise of both a remnant and a fullness coming to faith in Jesus the Messiah. The lectures in this book were part of a series organized by Christian Witness to Israel in Australia to explore this unique challenge and to encourage an intelligent, heartfelt, and persevering interest in mission to the Jewish people. The studies focus on Biblical, theological, historical, and current issues. They were named the Edersheim Lectures after Alfred Edersheim, the well-known nineteenth-century Jewish Christian scholar and author who served in Romania as a missionary and in the United Kingdom as a pastor. Following in his example, The Gospel and Israel engages in an in-depth examination of themes relating to the Jewish people and the Christian faith.
Most evangelical Christians believe that those people who are not saved before they die will be punished in hell forever. But is this what the Bible truly teaches? Do Christians need to rethink their understanding of hell? In the late twentieth century, a growing number of evangelical theologians, biblical scholars, and philosophers began to reject the traditional doctrine of eternal conscious torment in hell in favor of a minority theological perspective called conditional immortality. This view contends that the unsaved are resurrected to face divine judgment, just as Christians have always believed, but due to the fact that immortality is only given to those who are in Christ, the unsaved do not exist forever in hell. Instead, they face the punishment of the «second death»–an end to their conscious existence. This volume brings together excerpts from a variety of well-respected evangelical thinkers, including John Stott, John Wenham, and E. Earl Ellis, as they articulate the biblical, theological, and philosophical arguments for conditionalism. These readings will give thoughtful Christians strong evidence that there are indeed compelling reasons for rethinking hell.
This collection of essays concerns the development of contextualized theologies of liberation in Palestine and the indigenous Palestinian people's struggle for justice and liberation. The work is innovative because of its inclusion of indigenous perspectives within its remit and the introduction of new concepts such as civil liberation theology. The collection offers other ways to look at biblical discourses and their impact on the ongoing conflict, ways to live peace, ways to be ethical when visiting these conflicted lands, understandings of resource ethics, and even a new way to understand how we approach our understanding of liberation theology. Contributors include well-known scholars from Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Palestinian-Israeli, Indian, American, and British contexts. This work goes beyond standard academic collections. It is aimed not only at scholars and students but also at peace activists and policymakers. It should be of use not only in academic courses but also for practitioners of conflict resolution, peace and reconciliation.
New Testament studies are witnessing many exciting developments. And Douglas Campbell's groundbreaking publications are an important contribution to future discussions relating to Paul. Familiar problems relating to justification, «old» and «new» perspectives, and much more besides, have been tackled in fresh and exciting ways, setting down challenge after challenge to all those involved in Pauline studies. Campbell's publications therefore demand serious engagement. This book seeks to facilitate academic engagement with Campbell's work in a unique way. It contains numerous chapters critiquing his proposals, while others summarize the key themes succinctly. But it also contains Campbell's own response to the reception of his work, allowing him space to outline how his thinking has developed. In so doing, this work allows readers to be drawn into a vitally important conversation. It is academic theology in the making and constitutes the cutting edge of Pauline studies.
Twelve scholars take us on a journey through twelve books that have defined the methodologies and orthodoxies of key disciplines within the university curriculum. These books have not only been formative for their respective disciplines, but have reshaped the university and continue to reframe our understanding of education. Each chapter places a Great Book in its historical context, summarizes the key ideas, and assesses the influence of the text on its discipline and society as a whole. In addition, each contributor offers an evaluation from a Christian perspective, explaining both the benefits of the book and the challenges it presents to a Christian worldview and philosophy of education.
ReVisioning: Critical Methods of Seeing Christianity in the History of Art examines the application of art historical methods to the history of Christianity and art. As methods of art history have become more interdisciplinary, there has been a notable emergence of discussions of religion in art history as well as related fields such as visual culture and theology. This book represents the first critical examination of scholarly methodologies applied to the study of Christian subjects, themes, and contexts in art.
ReVisioning contains original work from a range of scholars, each of whom has addressed the question, in regard to a well-known work of art or body of work, «How have particular methods of art history been applied, and with what effect?» The study moves from the third century to the present, providing extensive treatment and analysis of art historical methods applied to the history of Christianity and art.