With the discovery of the "Gospel of Judas" came an outpouring of hyperbolic language, both negative and positive. Alongside the loudly stated opinions of historians and scholars was the quiet bewilderment of people who simply weren't sure what to think -- confusion not helped by vast, often incorrect, media attention.
In this book Stanley Porter and Gordon Heath set the muddied record straight. After first looking at the initial ballyhoo surrounding the publication of the "Gospel of Judas," they carefully set the "Gospel" in context, providing a brief history of Judas himself as seen in...

The book is an introductory textbook for seminary students who take church history courses. Most seminary students do not have a history background (and many do not look forward to taking history courses at seminary), and so there is a need to provide a brief, basic, non-technical introduction to the discipline. There are other texts written for those seeking to do more rigorous research in church history (e.g., theses and dissertations), but those works are quite technical, long and dense. This book is for those in seminary who are training for ministry, need help in their church history...

Gordon Heath's A War with a Silver Lining is a ground-breaking analysis of why the Canadian Protestant churches enthusiastically supported the war effort. Extensive archival research allows Heath to show how the churches' concern for international justice, the development of the nascent nation Canada, the unifying and strengthening of the empire, and the spreading of missions led to passionate and widespread support for the war effort. Providing a valuable link between Victorian and twentieth-century Protestantism, war, and the British Empire, A War with a Silver Lining is a revealing account...

Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-257) and indexes.

Description:
Public discussion about the relationship between religion and public life in Canada can be heated at times, and scholars have recently focused on the historical study of the many expressions of this relationship. The experience of Canadas smaller Protestant Christian groups, however, has remained largely unexplored. This is particularly true of Canadas Baptists. This volume, the first produced by the Canadian Baptist Historical Society, explores the connections between Baptist faith and Baptist activity in the public domain, and expands the focus of the existing scholarship to...

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...

"While Christianity appears to be in decline in the West it is growing robustly in the global South. What does this mean for the Christianity that was once considered to be the religion of the West? The new contexts and trajectories require innovative responses and relevant theological reflection in the church. This volume addresses these changes through identifying and analyzing global shifts, highlighting practical innovations in the church that attempt to deal with new trajectories, and proposing theological positions intended to help face the issues and challenges of the twenty-first...

While Baptists through the years have been certain that ""war is hell,"" they have not always been able to agree on how to respond to it. This book traces much of this troubled relationship from the days of Baptist origins with close ties to pacifist Anabaptists to the responses of Baptists in America to the war in Vietnam. Essays also include discussions of the English Baptist Andrew Fuller's response to the threat of Napoleon, how Baptists in America dealt with the War of 1812, the support of Canadian Baptists for Britain's war in Sudan and Abyssinia in the 1880s, the decisive effect of the...

The centenary of America's declaration of war in 1917 is a fitting time to examine afresh the reaction of the American churches to the conflict. What was the impact of the war on the churches as well as the churches' hoped-for influence on the nation's war effort? Commenting on themes such as nationalism, nativism, nation-building, dissent, just war, and pacifism, this book provides a window into those perilous times from the viewpoint of Mainline and Evangelical Protestants, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Mennonites, Quakers, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses. Also included are...