The 2000 year history of Christian worship is viewed from a sociological perspective as Martin Stringer develops the idea of discourse as a way of understanding worship's place within many diverse social contexts. Stringer provides a broad survey of changes over 2000 years of the Christian church, together with a series of case studies that highlight particular elements of the worship, or specific theoretical applications. Offering a contribution to the ongoing debate that breaks away from a purely textual or theological study, this book provides a greater understanding of the place of...

The 2000 year history of Christian worship is viewed from a sociological perspective as Martin Stringer develops the idea of discourse as a way of understanding worship's place within many diverse social contexts. Stringer provides a broad survey of changes over 2000 years of the Christian church, together with a series of case studies that highlight particular elements of the worship, or specific theoretical applications. Offering a contribution to the ongoing debate that breaks away from a purely textual or theological study, this book provides a greater understanding of the place of...

The Eucharist is the central act of Christian worship. In this book Martin Stringer brings together some of the scholarship associated with the sociological analysis of biblical texts into conversation with liturgists and historians of the first century. He begins his analysis of the Eucharist and other early Christian meals from a detailed discussion of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, the most studied text in the sociological tradition of biblical scholarship. He proposes that the meal portrayed in chapter 11 of that letter is more likely to have been an annual event rather than a...

Exploring whether the widespread activity of sitting next to a grave and talking to a deceased person is a religious act forms the basis of this book, and the author argues that it is probably much more typical of a fundamental religious act than much of what happens in churches, synagogues or mosques. Beginning with the definitions of religion provided by a number of anthropologists and sociologists this book claims that the large majority of these definitions have been influenced by Christian thinking, so leading to definitions that stress the systematic nature of religion, the importance...