Search Results

While religious communities often stress the universal nature of their beliefs, it remains true that people choose to worship alongside those they identify with most easily. Multiethnic churches are rare in the United States, but as American attitudes toward diversity change, so too does the appeal of a church that offers diversity. Joining such a community, however, is uncomfortable — worshippers must literally cross the barriers of ethnic difference by entering the religious space of the ethnically “other”. Using the story of one multiethnic congregation in Southern California, this book examines what it means to confront the challenges in forming a religious community across ethnic divisions and attracting a more varied membership.

This book assesses the role of local worship communities — churches, mosques, temples, and others — in promoting civic engagement among recent immigrants to the United States. The product of a three-year study of immigrant worship communities in the Washington, D.C. area, the study looked at churches, mosques, temples, and other communities of immigrants from Korea, China, India, West Africa, the Muslim world, and El Salvador. The researchers surveyed 200 of these communities and studied twenty in depth. Communities vary widely in how much they build social capital, provide social services to immigrants, develop the civic skills of members, and shape immigrants' identities. Local leadership and group characteristics much more than ethnic origin or religious tradition shape the level and kind of civic engagement that the communities foster. Particularly, where leaders are civically engaged, they provide personal and organizational links to the wider American society and promote civic engagement by members. Homeland causes and a strong sense of religious and ethnic identity, far from alienating immigrants from American society, promote higher levels of civic engagement in immigrant communities.

This book looks at how churches attempt to realize Dr. King's dream of racial integration. Recognizing that race is central to the organization of American life, the book situates race theory at the heart of understanding the cultural and social dynamics of racially integrated congregations and how they attract and retain members. The book, focusing on black–white interracial churches, argues that for these organizations to sustain a racially diverse congregation they must primarily appeal to whites. African‐Americans will need to affirm whites' religious and cultural predilections to retain white membership and bear the brunt of the sacrifices required to make racial integration work. In the end, interracial churches end up reproducing the racial structures they purport to oppose. The compelling stories that unfold in this book expose the tenuous nature of interracial churches and the barriers they need to overcome to realize the dream.

This book uses the martyrs’ imitation of Jesus in the acts of the martyrs as a window into the history of ideas. It argues, first, that the presentations of the deaths of the martyrs are modeled on portrayals of the death of Jesus in early Christian literature and practice. Given that the martyrs are presented as Christ figures, they serve as narrative reinterpretations of the death of Jesus and can serve as valuable, early sources for the reception history of the New Testament. It also argues that the assimilation of the martyrs to Christ goes further than the narrative contours and stylistic features of their deaths. In the depiction of the salvific value of the martyr’s death, the postmortem functions of martyrs in heaven, and the martyrs’ status vis-à-vis Christ in the afterlife, the martyrs continue to be presented as Christly figures. As a result, the martyr acts can also contribute to our understanding of the development of ideas about Jesus (Christology) and the way in which human beings are saved (soteriology) in the early church in the pre-Constantinian period.

At the time of the Nazi invasion in May 1940, Belgium was a Catholic country with linguistic divisions between north and south. The Catholic Church was the only institution untouched by the German occupiers. Therefore many hunted Jews sought the Church's help, which was spontaneously extended by the lower clergy. The book is based on unstructured interviews with formerly hidden children, with nuns who sheltered them, and with two surviving escorts who worked for the Committee for the Defense of Jews resistance network and took the children from their families to convents willing to hide them. The interviews detail from the point of view of both nuns and children how the children were integrated into daily convent life and how they reacted to Catholic rituals and socialization. The lives are framed by their historical context. The chapter on the escorts and on the Committee for the Defense of Jews leads to a general discussion of the different facets of the Belgian resistance. A chapter on memory and commemoration then traces the emergence of the concept of the hidden child and the construction of collective memories. The chapter also addresses the formal recognition of rescuers as “Righteous Among the Nations” and offers an in‐depth interpretation of Yad Vashem, the memorial institution of Israel. At the same time, it uncovers how gender initially played a major role in the recognition of priests and nuns who were rescuers. The struggle for the souls of some orphaned Jewish children who were baptized during the war and whose return to the Jewish community was contested is discussed as a particularly painful episode. This book contributes to Holocaust literature written in English about Belgium, a country given relatively too little attention. With its focus on commemoration, the book also adds to the understanding of how memory is institutionalized and reinforced by mnemonic practices.

The works of Ambrosiaster, a Christian writing in Rome in the late 4th century, were influential on at the time and throughout the Middle Ages. This book starts by addressing the problem of the author's mysterious identity (which scholars have puzzled over for centuries) and places him in a broad historical and intellectual context. Later, it addresses Ambrosiaster's political theology, an idea which has been explored in other late Roman Christian writers but which has never been addressed in his works. The book also looks at how Ambrosiaster's attitudes to social and political order were formed on the basis of theological concepts and the interpretation of scripture, and shows that he espoused a rigid hierarchical and monarchical organization in the church, society, and the Roman empire. He also traced close connections between the Devil, characterized as a rebel against God, and the earthly tyrants and usurpers who followed his example.

This book is an initial response to the call of the World Council of Churches for renewed theological reflection on the biblical roots of ordination to strengthen the vocational identity of the ordained and to provide a framework for ecumenical dialogue. It is grounded in the assumption that the vocation of ordination requires an understanding of holiness and how it functions in human religious experience. The goal is to construct a biblical theology of ordination, embedded in broad reflection on the nature of holiness. The study of holiness and ministry interweaves three methodologies. First, the history of religions describes two theories of holiness in the study of religion — as a dynamic force and as a ritual resource — which play a central role in biblical literature and establish the paradigm of ordination to Word and Sacrament in Christian tradition. Second, the study of the Moses in the Pentateuch and the formation of the Mosaic office illustrate the ways in which the two views of holiness model ordination to the prophetic word and to the priestly ritual. And, third, canonical criticism provides the lens to explore the ongoing influence of the Mosaic office in the New Testament literature.

Gregory of Nazianzus has long been regarded as the premier teacher on the Holy Trinity in Eastern Christianity. Yet, ironically, for over a century historians and theologians have neglected his work in favor of his fellow Cappadocians Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, while Gregory has long been overshadowed in the West by Augustine. Christopher Beeley's groundbreaking study—the first comprehensive treatment in modern scholarship—examines Gregory's Trinitarian doctrine within the full range of his theological and practical vision. Following an introductory orientation to Gregory's life and theological works, the book traces Gregory's Trinitarian doctrine through a wide range of concerns, from biblical interpretation and language theory to the practicalities of Christian worship, asceticism, and pastoral ministry. It highlights the soteriological nature of Gregory's doctrine, which seamlessly integrates what have more recently been distinguished as dogmatic and ascetical, or doxological and systematic, theology. Unique among modern studies, this book examines Gregory's doctrine across his entire corpus of orations, poems, and letters, giving special attention to its highly rhetorical and contextualized form. It offers new insights in many areas and a major reinterpretation of the famous Theological Orations and Christological epistles (Ep. 101‐102, 202). By comparing Gregory's work with that of his great master, Origen, his Eastern contemporaries, and his Western counterpart, Augustine, the book shows Gregory to be the most outstanding example of the Origenist Trinitarian tradition of fourth‐century Asia Minor. Gregory offered the most powerful and comprehensive Trinitarian doctrine of his age from a distinctively Eastern point of view, largely independent of the work of Athanasius, while also representing the interests of Damasus of Rome and the Italian bishops as the leading pro‐Nicene theologian at the heart of the Eastern empire—a fact which sharply qualifies the long‐accepted dominance of the Athanasian‐Western paradigm as the normative standard for Trinitarian orthodoxy. Long eclipsed in twentieth‐century scholarship, Gregory's doctrine is now brought into full view as the major Greek authority on the Trinity and one of the greatest theologians in the history of the Church.

Although many refer to the American South as the “Bible Belt”, the region was not always characterized by a powerful religious culture. In the 17th century and early 18th century, religion was virtually absent from southern culture. The late 18th century and early 19th century, however, witnessed the astonishingly rapid rise of evangelical religion in the Upper South. Within just a few years, evangelicals had spread their beliefs and their fervor, gaining converts and building churches throughout Virginia and North Carolina and into the western regions. This book argues that early evangelicals successfully negotiated the various challenges of the 18th-century landscape by creating churches that functioned as civil as well as religious bodies. As the era experienced substantial rifts in the relationship between church and state, the disestablishment of colonial churches paved the way for new formulations of church-state relations. The evangelical churches were well-positioned to provide guidance in uncertain times, and their multiple functions allowed them to reshape many of the central elements of authority in southern society. They assisted in reformulating the lines between the “religious” and “secular” realms, with significant consequences for both religion and the emerging nation-state.

This book provides a detailed narrative history of the first six centuries of the Christian Church, from the first followers of Jesus to the papacy of Gregory the Great (590–604). It describes how Christianity, initially a persecuted sect, developed the ideas and organization to fulfil its ambition of being a universal faith, not tied to any particular people. The new religion had to separate itself completely from Judaism and set about the capture of the society and state of the Roman Empire during the centuries when the Empire divided into a Latin west and a Greek east and was beset by invasions by Christian and pagan barbarians, resulting in the disintegration of the western empire. Debates within Christianity, most fundamentally about the divine or human nature of Christ, are discussed in detail and in relation to both the politics and power struggles of the Empire and to the all‐important question of authority within the Church. The origins and fate of schismatic movements are considered in the context of the struggle for authority among the rival sees of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch. Christianity is discussed, therefore, in relation to its internal growth and divisions and also to how it was viewed by Jews and pagans, showing its debts to and division from both its Jewish origins and Graeco‐Roman philosophy. The major theological and ecclesiastical texts and debates are considered in relation to the diverse beliefs and practices of the people who attended churches and the local and regional conditions that profoundly affected the outcome of events. The major Christian thinkers and their contributions to the success of Christianity are examined in detail. The importance of theological, personal, and political factors is demonstrated in showing how they fostered divisions in the Church and prevented reconciliation and balanced against the desire of successive emperors to foster unity for political reasons. The Church captured society, east and west, but at the cost of long‐lasting divisions and conflicts.

In early Victorian England the cross was widely thought to be a deadly idol that led worshippers to the devil. This book is a study of the intense anxieties surrounding ‘idolatry’ which was, in a narrow sense, the worship of idols, but in a broad sense could mean worship of or devotion to anything that intervened between the believer and God. In early Victorian England there was intense interest in understanding the early Church as an inspiration for contemporary sanctity. One aspect of this was a surge in archaeological inquiry and the construction of new churches using medieval models. A number of Anglicans began to use a much more complex form of ritual involving vestments, candles, and incense. They were opposed by evangelicals and dissenters on the grounds that this represented the vanguard of Popery. The disputed buildings, objects, and artworks were regarded by one side as impure additions to holy worship, and by the other as sacred and beautiful Anglo-Catholic expressions of devotion. This situation forms the background to this study, the aim of which is to understand accusations of idolatry and to understand the fierce passions that were thereby unleashed. Comparative religion provided access to modes of reading Catholicism as being related to paganism and Hinduism. The reinterpretation of ‘primitive’ religion as a site of gothic excitement led to the production of texts (such as novels and newspapers) which were sold as commodities. In this way, the challenging bodily ‘primitiveness’ of medieval forms of ritual and material culture were uneasily but excitingly accommodated into the world of Victorian textuality, capitalism, and Protestantism.

This book brings together sixteen originally independent articles dealing with various aspects of 1 Corinthians and published between 1976 and 1993. As the series develops there are more frequent cross‐references. The first deals with the issue of co‐authorship, and the last with the question of interpolations in 1 Cor. The rest focus on the most difficult and disputed texts in 1 Corinthians, namely, 1 Cor 5: 3–5 (incest in the name of Christ); 6: 12–20 (Corinthian slogans about the body); 7: 10–11 (divorce and remarriage); 7: 14 (holiness); 8: 6 (baptismal acclamation); 8: 8 (Corinthian slogan regarding food); chs. 8–10 (food offered to idols); 11: 2–16 (3 articles; blurring of the distinction between the sexes in worship); 11: 17–34 (2 articles; house‐churches and the eucharist); 15: 3–7 (creed); 15: 29 (baptism for the dead). Each original article took contemporary scholarship into full account. A ‘Postscript’ appended to each one brings the discussion up to the present by documenting the ensuing debate about the proposed hypotheses.

Religious free exercise conflicts occur when religiously compelled behavior (whether action or inaction) appears to violate a law that contraindicates or even criminalizes such behavior. Fearful of the anarchy of religious conscience, the U.S. Supreme Court opted instead for authoritarianism in this church and state matter: The state's need for civil order is conclusively presumed to be achieved by enforcing uniform obedience to generally applicable laws, and thus legislation must trump the human and constitutional right to religious freedom. Rejecting the Court's unthinking rigorism, the book more appropriately views a free exercise case as a conflict of principles or “goods”: the basic constitutional and human right to freedom of conscience and religious freedom versus the societal good furthered and protected by the legislation. The book recommends an alternative analytical free exercise process grounded within the common law tradition as well as social ethics: casuistry. Casuistical reasoning requires a careful analysis of the particulars and factual context of the case, and relies upon analogies and paradigmatic illustrations to get to the heart of the principles at issue. The book furthermore explores the panoply of theories, self‐understandings, typologies, contexts, and societal constructs at play in free exercise conflicts, and in the final chapters applies casuistry to two free exercise situations, spiritual healing methods applied to children, and ingestion of sacramental peyote in Native American Church rituals.

This book is about the political views of the ‘classic’ poor of London's East End in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. The residents of this area have been historically characterized as abjectly poor, casually employed, slum dwellers with a poverty-induced apathy toward political solutions interspersed with occasional violent displays of support for populist calls for protectionism, imperialism, or anti-alien agitation. These factors, in combination, have been thought to have allowed the Conservative Party to politically dominate the East End in this period. This study demonstrates that many of these images are wrong. Economic conditions in the East End were not as uniformly bleak as often portrayed. The workings of the franchise laws also meant that those who possessed the vote in the East End were generally the most prosperous and regularly employed of their occupational group. Conservative electoral victories in the East End were not the result of poverty. Political attitudes in the East End were determined to a far greater extent by issues concerning the ‘personal’ in a number of senses. The importance given to individual character in the political judgements of the East End working class was greatly increased by a number of specific local factors. These included the prevalence of particular forms of workplace structure, and the generally somewhat shorter length of time on the electoral register of voters in the area. Also important was a continuing attachment to the Church of England amongst a number of the more prosperous working class. In the place of many ‘myths’ about the people of the East End and their politics, this study provides a model that does not seek to explain the politics of the area in full, but suggests the point strongly that we can understand politics, and the formation of political attitudes, in the East End or any other area, only through a detailed examination of very specific localized community and workplace structures. This book challenges the idea that a ‘Conservatism of the slums’ existed in London's East End in the Victorian and Edwardian period. It argues that images of abjectly poor residents who supported Conservative appeals about protectionism, imperialism, and anti-immigration are largely wrong. Instead, it was the support of better-off workers, combined with a general importance in the area of the ‘personal’ in politics emphasized by local social and workplace structures, which delivered the limited successes that the Conservatives did enjoy.

Religious diversity in the United States has increased dramatically in recent decades. How are Christians relating to their Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and other new religious neighbors? Using local examples, this book covers the gamut of Christian perspectives in a multireligious America, including debate over a new Hindu temple in town, an Episcopal church that has hosted a mosque since 1987, cooperative efforts between African American pastors and Muslim leaders, immigrant Christians seeking to save non-Christian fellow immigrants, evangelicals resettling immigrants and refugees through “friendship evangelism,” Catholics learning about other religions in the spirit of Vatican II, and Greek Orthodox Christians and Turkish Muslims gaining a new appreciation of their shared history. The effects of September 11, 2001, are also discussed from increased dialogue to missionary initiatives. Here Christian theology meets the multireligious real world, with multiple results suggestive of national trends.

It has long been known that Jerome depended on Origen to some extent in producing his own commentary on Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. Several excerpts from Origen's commentary on Ephesians have been preserved in Greek. This book demonstrates the extent of Jerome's dependence on Origen by placing English translations of these excerpts from Origen's Commentary on Ephesians parallel to the English translation of Jerome's commentary on Ephesians. These parallels show that in every case where Jerome's commentary can be compared with Origen's, Jerome has followed Origen, either by translating his text or paraphrasing his thought. By this and other means, all the passages that can be attributed in some degree to Origen have been identified in Jerome's commentary in order to allow Origen's comments on Ephesians to be heard again, even if muffled at times, through the words of Jerome. This is important because Origen's commentary, in all probability, was the first complete commentary ever composed on the Epistle to the Ephesians. Origen's comments are sometimes philological, discussing the meaning of Greek words in the text and the syntax of the phrases in the Greek sentences of Paul. His comments deal also with theology, for Ephesians provided many texts that were key elements in some of his theological views, such as the pre‐existent church, the constitution of the foundation of the material world after the fall, God's foreknowledge, the unity of revelation based on the ancient prophets’ knowledge of God's future work in Christ, and the Christian struggle against hostile spiritual powers.

The westward movement of people connected to the nineteenth‐century expansionism of the developing U.S. helped promote the growth and expansion of many of the mainline Protestant denominations that traveled to the southwest borderlands of this country. Following the expanding western frontier, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) entered what is today the state of Texas and came face to face with the Tejanos. Bringing Protestantism as a new element in the southwest borderlands of Texas, the Disciples of Christ also carried with them the Euro‐American ideologies and self‐definitions that would function at two levels. First, these would shape their relationship as English‐speaking Protestants with the Spanish‐speaking Roman Catholic Tejanos, and secondly, an ethos was created that would influence the Disciples’ ministry to the Mexican population. This shaping and influence were notable in the often racist and paternalistic missionary ideology of the Disciples throughout the late nineteenth century, into the twentieth century, and even to the present day. This is one slice of the religious history of the nineteenth‐century borderlands where the frontier ethos – with its manifest destiny ideology about a chosen race, a virgin land, divine providence, and democracy – prevented Protestantism from developing and maintaining helpful and empowering relationships with the Tejano‐Mexican community it encountered.