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A seminal figure in late antique Christianity and Christian orthodoxy, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus published a collection of more than…
240 letters. Whereas these letters have often been cast aside as readers turn to his theological orations or autobiographical poetry for insight into his life, thought, and times, Self-Portrait in Three Colors focuses squarely on them, building a provocative case that the finalized collection constitutes not an epistolary archive but an autobiography in epistolary form—a single text composed to secure his status among provincial contemporaries and later generations. Shedding light on late-ancient letter writing, fourth-century Christian intelligentsia, Christianity and classical culture, and the Christianization of Roman society, these letters offer a fascinating and unique view of Gregory’s life, engagement with literary culture, and leadership in the church. As a single unit, this autobiographical epistolary collection proved a powerful tool in Gregory’s attempts to govern the contours of his authorial image as well as his provincial and ecclesiastical legacy.Gently Between the Words: Essays and Poems
By Andrew Taylor-Troutman. 2019
Gently Between the Words guides and instructs our heartsIn his latest collection of essays and poems Taylor-Troutman guides readers through…
seemingly simple stories of death, life, parenting struggles, successes and failures that speak to larger questions we all face: How do we best spend our time? How can we raise our kids to be kind and confident? Who gives us guidance and wisdom? What does love look like in our lives on a day-to-day basis?In simple and important gestures like cleaning spilled milk with toilet paper, flipping the perfect pancake with your partner, and walking down the beach with your young child, readers find universal truths to guide their own lives regardless of personal circumstances.Gently Between the Words guides and instructs our hearts to keep the endangered language of beauty, love, forgiveness, grace, and sensitivity alive in order that we all might become more and more necessary to the urgency of our times and the dreams of our children. —Jaki Shelton Green, NC Poet LaureateThis book addresses the challenge of providing for the free exercise of religion without allowing religious exercise by some individuals…
and groups to impinge upon the conscientious convictions of others. State neutrality toward religion is impossible, because neutrality means inattention to religion for some, but leveling the playing field through accommodations or exemptions for others. Both formal and substantive neutrality have a place in addressing particular conflicts. One such example is public funding for religiously affiliated social service programs, for which neither type of neutrality is satisfactory and thus some restrictions are justifiable; conversely, private voluntary organizations that do not receive direct public funding should be allowed wide latitude regarding their practices. This title also examines the expansive free exercise claims that are now made by those who argue that following the law impinges upon their beliefs, as exemplified by the ministerial exception and the Hobby Lobby and Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court cases. It concludes by analyzing the relationship between neutrality and marriage as a civil status, which impacts a variety of commitment types and plural marriage.Evangelicals and Republicans have been powerful—and active—allies in American politics since the 1970s. But as public opinions have changed, are…
young evangelicals’ political identities and attitudes on key issues changing too? And if so, why? In Rock of Ages, Jeremiah Castle answers these questions to understand their important implications for American politics and society. Castle develops his own theory of public opinion among young evangelicals to predict and explain their political attitudes and voting behavior. Relying on both survey data and his own interviews with evangelical college students, he shows that while some young evangelicals may be more liberal in their attitudes on some issues, most are just as firmly Republican, conservative, and pro-life on abortion as the previous generation. Rock of Ages considers not only what makes young evangelicals different from the previous generation, but also what that means for both the church and American politics.Super Dad Jokes: Saving the World, One Bad Joke at a Time
By Jimmy Niro. 2019
The ultimate gift for Father's Day and Christmas!Q: What super power do you get when you become a parent? A:…
Supervision.In a world of annoyed eye rolls and embarrassed head shakes, super dads rise as the unsung heroes of delightfully cringe-worthy humor. Super Dad Jokes embraces this power in an all-new edition filled with over 500 magnificent puns, stories, and anti-jokes. So arm yourself against the forces of evil and good taste with this heroically funny joke book—and save the world!Includes knee-slappers like: I have a fear of speed bumps, but I'm slowly getting over it.Q: What is the sleepiest fruit? A: Napricot."Dad, do you want a box for your leftovers?" "No, but I'll wrestle you for them!"Special: Antidotes to the obsessions that come with a child's disability
By Melanie Dimmitt. 2019
Most of us expect to meander through the motions of love, marriage and (textbook) baby in the carriage, but once…
in a while life has something a little more special in store. Special is an uplifting, candid companion for those in the early stages of navigating a child’s disability, offering honest, reassuring and relatable insight into a largely unknown (and so, initially terrifying) part of our world. It features antidotes to the obsessions at the forefront of a newly minted special-needs parent’s mind: Why has this happened to me? Will I ever stop comparing my child to typical children? How will my relationship survive? Will I be able to work again? Should I have another baby? And the big one: What will my future look like? Inspired by the author’s own crash-landing into special-needs parenthood, and shaped by her conversations with parents of children with wide-ranging disabilities, alongside specialists, psychologists and researchers, Special shares stories, guidance and simple coping strategies to soothe and surprise anyone whose life has taken an unexpected turn.Godless: 150 Years of Disbelief
By Dan Arel. 2019
Godless is a compilation of wide-ranging texts, both hilarious and horrifying, on atheism, belief, and religion. The selections in the…
book appeared in various formats from the late 19th century through the early 21st, and their authors were often active in the anarchist, Marxist, or radical leftist movements of their day. Derived from printed pamphlets, periodicals, and newspaper pieces that were mass-produced and widely distributed, these texts serve as freethinking propaganda in a media war against morbid authoritarian doctrines. With both a sophisticated analysis of inconsistencies in deistic beliefs and a biting satirical edge, Godless gives ammunition to those fighting fundamentalist bigotry—and more than a few reasons to abandon Christianity. Readers previously familiar with the authors' political polemics will be rewarded in contemplating another side of their remarkable literary output. Contributors include Emma Goldman, Ambrose Bierce, Chaz Bufe, E. Haldeman-Julius, Earl Lee, G. Richard Bozarth, Johann Most, Joseph McCabe, Matilda Gage, Pamela Sutter, S.C. Hitchcock, and Sébastien Faure.Cross and Cosmos: A Theology of Difficult Glory
By John D. Caputo. 2019
John D. Caputo stretches his project as a radical theologian to new limits in this groundbreaking book. Mapping out his…
summative theological position, he identifies with Martin Luther to take on notions of the hidden god, the theology of the cross, confessional theology, and natural theology. Caputo also confronts the dark side of the cross with its correlation to lynching and racial and sexual discrimination. Caputo is clear that he is not writing as any kind of orthodox Lutheran but is instead engaging with a radical view of theology, cosmology, and poetics of the cross. Readers will recognize Caputo’s signature themes—hermeneutics, deconstruction, weakness, and the call—as well as his unique voice as he writes about moral life and our strivings for joy against contemporary society and politics.Divine Action and the Human Mind (Current Issues in Theology #14)
By Sarah Lane Ritchie. 2019
Is the human mind uniquely nonphysical or even spiritual, such that divine intentions can meet physical realities? As scholars in…
science and religion have spent decades attempting to identify a 'causal joint' between God and the natural world, human consciousness has been often privileged as just such a locus of divine-human interaction. However, this intuitively dualistic move is both out of step with contemporary science and theologically insufficient. By discarding the God-nature model implied by contemporary noninterventionist divine action theories, one is freed up to explore theological and metaphysical alternatives for understanding divine action in the mind. Sarah Lane Ritchie suggests that a theologically robust theistic naturalism offers a more compelling vision of divine action in the mind. By affirming that to be fully natural is to be involved with God's active presence, one may affirm divine action not only in the human mind, but throughout the natural world.Monotheism and Contemporary Atheism (Elements in Religion and Monotheism)
By Michael Ruse. 2019
In this Element, Michael Ruse offers a critical analysis of contemporary atheism. He puts special emphasis on the work of…
so-called 'New Atheists': Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchins, whose views are contrasted with those of Edward O. Wilson. Ruse also provides a full exposition of his own position, which he labels 'Darwinian Existentialism'.God and Abstract Objects (Elements in the Philosophy of Religion)
By Einar Duenger Bøhn. 2019
Some believe that there is a God who is the source of all things; and some believe that there are…
necessarily existing abstract objects. But can one believe both these things? That is the question of this Element. First, Einar Duenger Bøhn clarifies the concepts involved, and the problem that arises from believing in both God and abstract objects. Second, he presents and discusses the possible kinds of solutions to that problem. Third, Bøhn discusses a new kind of solution to the problem, according to which reality is most fundamentally made of information.Monotheism and the Meaning of Life (Elements in Religion and Monotheism)
By T. J. Mawson. 2019
Monotheism and The Meaning of Life explores the role of God, and the relationship to the question 'What is the…
meaning of life?' for adherents of the main monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Exploring the various senses of 'meaning' and 'life', Mawson argues that there are various questions implicit in the notion of the meaning of life and that the God of monotheistic religion is central to the correct answers to all of them.Paul McKechnie explores how Christianity grew and expanded in Roman Asia over the first three centuries of the religion. Focusing…
on key individuals, such as Aberkios (Avircius Marcellus) of Hierapolis, he assesses the pivotal role played by Early Christian preachers who, in imitation of Paul of Tarsus, attracted converts through charismatic preaching. By the early fourth century, they had brought many cities and rural communities to a tipping point at which they were ready to move under a 'Christian canopy' and push polytheistic Greco-Roman religion to the margins. This volume brings new clarity of our understanding of how the Christian church grew and thrived in Asia Minor, simultaneously changing Roman society and being changed by it. Combining patristic evidence with the archaeological and epigraphic record, McKechnie's study creates a strong factual and chronological framework to the study of Christianization, while bringing Church History and Roman history more closely together.Matthew
By James Davison. 2019
This study focuses on Jesus as Messiah as a beginning point for considering Matthew's perspective of the life and ministry…
of Jesus Christ. Jesus' important teachings are explored and we find how they shape our Christian lives today. They give the church--as the community of faith--directions for its mission and ministries in the world. The Six Themes Everyone Should Know series introductes biblical books and their main themes. Each volume consists of six chapters that present major biblical themes; each chapter contains an introduction and three major sections: What does the biblical theme mean? What is the meaning of this biblical theme for the life of faith? What does the biblical theme mean for the church at this point in history for action?Criticism about the neo-Victorian novel — a genre of historical fiction that re-imagines aspects of the Victorian world from present-day…
perspectives — has expanded rapidly in the last fifteen years but given little attention to the engagement between science and religion. Of great interest to Victorians, this subject often appears in neo-Victorian novels including those by such well-known authors as John Fowles, A. S. Byatt, Graham Swift, and Mathew Kneale. This book discusses novels in which nineteenth-century science, including geology, paleontology, and evolutionary theory, interacts with religion through accommodations, conflicts, and crises of faith. In general, these texts abandon conventional religion but retain the ethical connectedness and celebration of life associated with spirituality at its best. Registering the growth of nineteenth-century secularism and drawing on aspects of the romantic tradition and ecological thinking, they honor the natural world without imagining that it exists for humans or functions in reference to human values. In particular, they enact a form of wonderment: the capacity of the mind to make sense of, creatively adapt, and enjoy the world out of which it has evolved — in short, to endow it with meaning. Protagonists who come to experience reality in this expansive way release themselves from self-anxiety and alienation. In this book, Glendening shows how, by intermixing past and present, fact and fiction, neo-Victorian narratives, with a few instructive exceptions, manifest this pattern.This book offers a radical new reading of William James’s work on the idea of ‘religion.’ Moving beyond previous psychological…
and philosophical interpretations, it uncovers a dynamic, imaginative, and critical use of the category of religion. This work argues that we can only fully understand James’s work on religion by returning to the ground of his metaphysics of relations and by incorporating literary and historical themes. Author Jeremy Carette develops original perspectives on the influence of James’s father and Calvinism, on the place of the body and sex in James, on the significance of George Eliot’s novels, and Herbert Spencer’s ‘unknown,’ revealing a social and political discourse of civil religion and republicanism and a poetic imagination at the heart of James understanding of religion. These diverse themes are brought together through a post-structural sensitivity and a recovery of the importance of the French philosopher Charles Renouvier to James’s work. This study pushes new boundaries in Jamesian scholarship by reading James with pluralism and from the French tradition. It will be a benchmark text in the reshaping of James and the nineteenth-century foundations of the modern study of ‘religion.’Media, Religion and Gender presents a selection of eminent current scholarship that explores the role gender plays when religion, media…
use and values in contemporary society interact. The book: surveys the development of research on media, religion and culture through the lens of key theoretical and methodological issues and debates within gender studies. includes case studies drawn from a variety of countries and contexts to illustrate the range of issues, theoretical perspectives and empirical material involved in current work outlines new areas and reflects on challenges for the future. Students of media, religion and gender at advanced level will find this a valuable resource, as will scholars and researchers working in this important and growing field.The Bible and the Ballot: Using Scripture in Political Decisions
By Tremper Longman III. 2020
How to read the Bible on matters of public policyChristians affirm the Bible as our standard of faith and practice.…
We turn to it to hear God&’s voice. But what relevance does the Bible have for the contentious public policy issues we face today? Although the Bible does not always speak explicitly to modern issues, it does give us guiding principles as we think about how we might vote or act as political figures ourselves. The Bible and the Ballot demonstrates the proper use of Scripture in contemporary political discussions. Christians regularly invoke the Bible to support their positions on many controversial political topics—gay marriage, poverty, war, religious liberty, immigration, the environment, taxes, etc.—and this book will help facilitate those conversations. Tremper Longman provides a hermeneutical approach to using the Bible in this manner, then proceeds topic by topic, citing important Scriptures to be taken into consideration in each case and offering an evangelical interpretation. Longman is careful to suggest levels of confidence in interpretation and acknowledges that often there are a range of possible applications. Each chapter includes questions to provoke further thought in individuals&’ minds or for group discussion. The Bible and the Ballot is a ready guide to understanding the Bible on issues that American Christians face today as we live within a pluralistic society.Harlot or Holy Woman?: A Study of Hebrew Qedešah
By Phyllis A. Bird. 2019
Harlot or Holy Woman? presents an exhaustive study of qedešah, a Hebrew word meaning "consecrated woman" but rendered "prostitute" or…
"sacred prostitute" in Bible translations. Reexamining biblical and extrabiblical texts, Phyllis A. Bird questions how qedešah came to be associated with prostitution and offers an alternative explanation of the term, one that suggests a wider participation for women as religious specialists in Israel’s early cultic practice.Bird’s study reviews all the texts from classical antiquity cited as sources for an institution of "sacred prostitution," alongside a comprehensive analysis of the cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia containing the cognate qadištu and Ugaritic texts containing the masculine cognate qdš. Through these texts, Bird presents a portrait of women dedicated to a deity, engaged in a variety of activities from cultic ritual to wet-nursing, and sharing a common generic name with the qedešah of ancient Israel. In the final chapter she returns to biblical texts, reexamining them in light of the new evidence from the ancient Near East.Considering alternative models for constructing women’s religious roles in ancient Israel, this wholly original study offers new interpretations of key texts and raises questions about the nature of Israelite religion as practiced outside the royal cult and central sanctuary.Ecological Solidarities: Mobilizing Faith and Justice for an Entangled World (World Christianity #1)
By Krista E. Hughes. 2019
Operating on the premise that our failure to recognize our interconnected relationship to the rest of the cosmos is the…
origin of planetary peril, this volume presents academic, activist, and artistic perspectives on how to inspire reflection and motivate action in order to construct alternative frameworks and establish novel solidarities for the sake of our planetary home.The selections in this volume explore ecologies of interdependence as a frame for religious, theological, and philosophical analysis and practice. Contributors examine questions of justice, climate change, race, class, gender, and coloniality and discuss alternative ways of engaging the world in all its biodiversity. Each essay, poem, reflection, and piece of art contributes to and reflects upon how to live out entangled differences toward positive global change.Constructive and practical, global and local, communal and personal, Ecological Solidarities is an innovative contribution to the discourses on relational and liberative thought and practice in religion, philosophy, and theology. It will be welcomed by scholars of World Christianity and theology as well as seminary students, activists, and laity interested in issues of justice and ecology.