Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Christianity - General

Ceremony as therapy

Formal ceremonies seem to be universal in human experience, addressing something very deep and basic in the human psyche. They tap into that vast subconscious reservoir of wisdom and strength that every human being possesses. To these qualities ceremonies add their own understandings of life and of God. They emphasize the presence of God in all things.

The important transitions in our lives inevitably create anxiety--even happy transitions, such as weddings. We move from the familiar to the unknown. Our role in the community may change,...

The point in turning to faith is not to escape, but to engage.

Santmire's much-acclaimed The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology documented the unfortunate legacy of many Christian theological notions in the use, abuse, and destruction of the natural world, along with its positive aspects. This new brief, but penetrating, look at Christian theological concepts of nature returns to the fray, this time to reclaim classic, mostly pre-modern Christian themes and re-envision them in light of the global environmental and cultural crisis. This revisionist work-"to revise the classical Christian story in order to identify...

You can't be a good missionary without a good snake story," jokes Suzanne Crocker. And as a missionary to Africa, she has plenty Crocker's stories are current, funny, and sure to hit close to home. Each fascinating vignette is accompanied by Scripture, practical application, and ideas on how to pray for missionaries around the world.

Pig in a Taxi and Other African Adventures addresses topics such as obedience, materialism, hospitality, and sensing God's presence in every situation. Its lighthearted tone challenges readers to keep their sense of humor and let it strengthen them in their...

This book features the new Presbyterian liturgy 'The Funeral: A Service of Witness to the Resurrection.' There is a new sermon for the funeral of one who completed suicide, plus a section of suggested readings on suicide. The music for funerals has been revised and supplemented. Appropriate Scripture passages are included.

The work of Christ as savior of the world is central to Christianity. In this book respected scholar and churchman Geoffrey Wainwright presents the classical confession of Christ's incarnation and atoning work in ways that allow the gospel message to engage with contemporary culture.

Infant baptism is an issue that divides the largest Protestant denomination from its sister denominations; and it remains, in many churches, the subject of frequent and sometimes heated debate. This is particularly the case in Reformation churches where the influence of Baptist doctrine has caused members to question their practice of baptizing infants. Children of Promise is Geoffrey Bromiley's attempt to "get at the biblical understanding which underlies the continuation of infant baptism in many of the evangelical churches." In addition to examining the scriptural basis for baptizing...

Available now for the first time in paperback, Losing Our Virtue offers a bold critique of the moral disintegration taking place in contemporary society and its reflection in today's evangelical church. Continuing the series begun with David Wells's No Place for Truth and God in the Wasteland, this acclaimed volume urges the church to regain its moral weight and become a missionary of truth once more to our relativistic postmodern world.

Symbols of the Sacred gathers four classic essays by Louis Dupre on the role of symbols in our understanding of the sacred and on their fundamental importance to religious consciousness. A leading philosopher of religion, Dupre here discusses the nature of religious symbols, the importance of language for capturing symbolic meaning, the ancient link between art and expressions of the sacred, and the vital relationship between religious symbol and myth. The volume concludes with a powerful reflection on the innate capacity of human minds to grasp the transcendent. Elegantly expressed,...

"'The Story of Frontier Religion' could have been told in a great many ways, many of them dull. Here, however, interpretative matter has been kept to a minimum and source material selected with an unerring sense of humor. . . . There are chapters on the styles of preaching and of praying, the phenomena of revivalism, the church as a disciplinary force, frauds and 'bad men' who preached, scoffers and trouble-makers, the fiercely jocular competition among the various sects, and the hard lot of circuit ministers."--Virginia Kirkus' Bulletin. "This is an admirable piece of research, unpedantic...

Most twentieth-century Americans fail to appreciate the power of Christian conversion that characterized the eighteenth-century revivals, especially the Great Awakening of the 1740s. The common disdain in this secular age for impassioned religious emotion and language is merely symptomatic of the shift in values that has shunted revivals to the sidelines.

The very magnitude of the previous revivals is one indication of their importance. Between 1740 and 1745 literally thousands were converted. From New England to the southern colonies, people of all ages and all ranks of society...

Analyzes five distinct styles of theological reflection: ministerial, spiritual wisdom, feminist, inculturation and practical theology, how they connect to theology and what sort of praxis they envision.

No child of this century, women s liberation existed as a Christian movement in the 2nd century. In this first study of the social context that produced the Apocryphal Acts, Stevan L. Davies contends that women wrote the Acts and that the Acts appear to have been a striving by Christian women for both a mode of self-expression and a way to preach rebellion for the sake of sexual continence. These early rebelscalled widows because they left their husbands for the churchrefused absolute subservience to the male hierarchy of the church.The three parts of Davies s study include an investigation...

In February 1996 six Jesus scholars took part in a symposium in the USA to commemorate the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus, discussing his historical, religious and cultural significance. This book derives from the symposium, and provides an introduction to the historical study of Jesus and Christian origins and an examination of the intricacies of this New Testament scholarship.

New Religious Movements is a highly unique volume, bringing together primary documents conveying the words and ideas of a wide array of new religious movements (NRMs), and offering a first-hand look into their belief systems.

Arranged by the editors according to a new typology, the text allows readers to consider NRMS along five interrelated pathways--from those that offer new perceptions of existence or new personal identities, to those that center on relationships within family-like units, to those movements that highlight the need for recasting the social order...

The complicity of the Hungarian Christian church in the mass extermination of Hungarian Jews by the Nazis is a largely forgotten episode in the history of the Holocaust. Using previously unknown correspondence and other primary source materials, Moshe Y. Herczl recreates the church's actions and its disposition toward Hungarian Jewry. Herczl provides a scathing indictment of the church's lack of compassion toward--and even active persecution of--Hungary's Jews during World War II.

The complicity of the Hungarian Christian church in the mass extermination of Hungarian Jews by the Nazis is a largely forgotten episode in the history of the Holocaust. Using previously unknown correspondence and other primary source materials, Moshe Y. Herczl recreates the church's actions and its disposition toward Hungarian Jewry. Herczl provides a scathing indictment of the church's lack of compassion toward--and even active persecution of--Hungary's Jews during World War II.

Why does Christianity feel the need to impose its customs and beliefs on the rest of the world? And why has an impulse driven at least partially by sincere concern for the -salvation- of others so often played into the hands of ruthless colonizers with more cynical aims?

Bringing together scholars in literature, history, and religion, Christian Encounters with the Other Approaches these questions by analyzing literary accounts of historically famous sites of conversion. Covering the Renaissance through to the present and spanning much of the globe, the volume discusses a...

Why does Christianity feel the need to impose its customs and beliefs on the rest of the world? And why has an impulse driven at least partially by sincere concern for the -salvation- of others so often played into the hands of ruthless colonizers with more cynical aims?

Bringing together scholars in literature, history, and religion, Christian Encounters with the Other Approaches these questions by analyzing literary accounts of historically famous sites of conversion. Covering the Renaissance through to the present and spanning much of the globe, the volume discusses a...