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The case for miracles: A journalist investigates evidence for the supernatural
By Lee Strobel. 2018
New York Times bestselling author Lee Strobel trains his investigative sights on the hot-button question: is it really credible to…
believe God intervenes supernaturally in people's lives today? This provocative book starts with an unlikely interview in which America's foremost skeptic builds a seemingly persuasive case against the miraculous. But then Strobel travels the country to quiz scholars to see whether they can offer solid answers to atheist objections. Along the way, he encounters astounding accounts of healings and other phenomena that simply cannot be explained away by naturalistic causes. The book features the results of exclusive new scientific polling that shows miracle accounts are much more common than people think. What's more, Strobel delves into the most controversial question of all: what about miracles that don't happen? If God can intervene in the world, why doesn't he do it more often to relieve suffering? Many American Christians are embarrassed by the supernatural, not wanting to look odd or extreme to their neighbors. Yet, The Case for Miracles shows not only that the miraculous is possible, but that God still does intervene in our world in awe-inspiring ways. Here's a unique book that examines all sides of this issue and comes away with a passionate defense for God's divine action in lives today. Also available: The Case for Miracles Spanish edition, kids' edition, and student editionWomen and Redemption: A Theological History
By Rosemary Radford Ruether. 2012
Rosemary Radford Ruether's authoritative, award-winning critique of women's unequal standing in the church, which explored the complex history of redemption…
in evaluating conflict over the fundamental meaning of the Christian gospel for gender relations, is now in an updated and expanded edition. Ruether highlights women theologians' work to challenge the patriarchal paradigm of historical theology and present redemption linked to women's liberation. Ruether turns her attention to the situation of women globally and how the growing plurality of women's voices from multicultural and multireligious contexts articulates feminist liberation theology today.The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism (Wiley Blackwell Companions to Religion)
By Frederick C. Bauerschmidt, James J. Buckley, Jennifer Newsome Martin, Trent Pomplun. 2024
Provides a broad and deep survey of Roman Catholic life and thought, updated and expanded throughout The Wiley Blackwell Companion…
to Catholicism provides an authoritative overview of the history, doctrine, practices, and expansion of Catholicism. Written by a group of distinguished scholars, this comprehensive reference work offers an illuminating account of the global, historical, and cultural phenomena of Catholicism. Accessible chapters address central topics in the practice of Catholic theology and the development of doctrine, including God and Jesus Christ, creation and Church, the Virgin Mary, the sacraments, moral theology, eschatology, and more. Throughout the text, the authors illustrate the unity and diversity of Catholic life and thought while highlighting the ways Catholicism overlaps with, and transforms, other ways of living and thinking. Now in its second edition, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism is fully updated to include recent developments in the study of Catholicism. Extensively revised and expanded chapters, many of which written by new authors, address contemporary issues such as theology and politics, environmentalism, and the clerical sexual abuse crisis. Entirely new chapters cover the early modern Church, the Bible in Catholic theology, the Eastern Catholic churches, liturgy, care for creation, the consecrated life, challenges for the Catholic Church, and more. An informed and engaging intellectual journey through the past and present of Roman Catholicism, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism: Illustrates the diversity of modern Catholic life and thought Describes Catholics in different lands, including the Holy Land, India, Africa, Europe, the British Isles, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas Surveys spirituality and ecumenism, inter-religious dialog, Catholic schools and hospitals, art and the sciences, the Holy See, and other central Catholic institutions and practices Covers major eras in Catholic history, from the Scriptures and the early Church to Post-Modernity Features new material on diverse practices of Catholicism across cultures, the global dimensions of the Catholic Church, race and ethnicity, and Eastern Catholic ChurchesThe Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism, Second Edition, is the ideal textbook for surveys classes on Catholicism and Catholic theology in Catholic, Protestant, and non-confessional colleges and universities. It is also an invaluable resource for scholars and general readers interested in broadening their knowledge of Catholicism.The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society
By Henri J. Nouwen. 1972
A radically fresh interpretation of how we can best serve others from the bestselling author of The Return of the Prodigal…
Son, hailed as &“one of the world&’s greatest spiritual writers&” by Christianity Today&“In our own woundedness, we can become a source of life for others.&” In this hope-filled and profoundly simple book, Henri Nouwen inspires devoted men and women who want to be of service in their church or community but who have found traditional outreach alienating and ineffective. Weaving keen cultural analysis with his psychological and religious insights, Nouwen presents a balanced and creative theology of service that begins with the realization of fundamental woundedness in human nature. According to Nouwen, ministers are called to identify the suffering in their own hearts and make that recognition the starting point of their service. Ministers must be willing to go beyond their professional, somewhat aloof roles and leave themselves open as fellow human beings with the same wounds and suffering as those they serve. In other words, we heal from our wounds. The Wounded Healer is a thoughtful and insightful guide that will be welcomed by anyone engaged in the service of others.Blue Windows: A Christian Science Childhood
By Barbara Wilson. 1997
From Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christian Science, to Deepak Chopra, Americans have struggled with the…
connection between health and happiness. Barbara Wilson was taught by her Christian Scientist family that there was no sickness or evil, and that by maintaining this belief she would be protected. But such beliefs were challenged when Wilson's own mother died of breast cancer after deciding not to seek medical attention, having been driven mad by the contradiction between her religion and her reality. In this perceptive and textured memoir Blue Windows, Wilson surveys the complex history of Christian Science and the role of women in religion and healing.The Bible Doesn't Say That: 40 Biblical Mistranslations, Misconceptions, and Other Misunderstandings
By Joel M. Hoffman. 2016
The Bible Doesn't Say That explores what the Bible meant before it was misinterpreted over the past 2,000 years. Acclaimed…
translator and biblical scholar Dr. Joel M. Hoffman walks the reader through dozens of mistranslations, misconceptions, and other misunderstandings about the Bible. In forty short, straightforward chapters, he covers morality, life-style, theology, and biblical imagery, including: *The Bible doesn't call homosexuality a sin, and it doesn't advocate for the one-man-one-woman model of the family that has been dubbed "biblical." *The Bible's famous "beat their swords into plowshares" is matched by the militaristic, "beat your plowshares into swords." *The often-cited New Testament quotation "God so loved the world" is a mistranslation, as are the titles "Son of Man" and "Son of God." *The Ten Commandments don't prohibit killing or coveting. What does the Bible say about violence? About the Rapture? About keeping kosher? About marriage and divorce? Hoffman provides answers to all of these and more, succinctly explaining how so many pivotal biblical answers came to be misunderstood.The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC
By Jesse Fink. 2014
The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC is unlike any AC/DC book you've read before. Less a biography, more a…
critical appreciation, it tells the story of the trio through 11 classic rock songs and reveals some of the personal and creative secrets that went into their making.Important figures from AC/DC's long way to the top open up for the very first time, while unsung heroes behind the band's success are given the credit they are due. Accepted accounts of events are challenged while sensational new details emerge to cast a whole new light on the band's history—especially their early years with Atlantic Records in the United States. Former AC/DC members and musicians from bands such as Guns N' Roses, Dropkick Murphys, Airbourne and Rose Tattoo also give their take on the Youngs' brand of magic.Their music has never pulled its punches. Neither does The Youngs. After 40 years, AC/DC might just have gotten the serious book it deserves.Spiritual writer Thomas Merton is the most influential American Catholic author of the twentieth century. Despite appearances to the contrary,…
in 1966 he was a troubled, lonely monk. Only when the suffering Merton fell madly in love with a student nurse, a forbidden, erotic affair condemned by the Catholic Church, would he discover whether his devotion to God was stronger than his dedication to the woman he called "a miracle in my life." Truly an inspirational story based on Merton's personal journals, new information and sources such as fellow monks, Beneath the Mask of Holiness presents a unique portrayal of the famous man, one never revealed in its entirety before.Holiness and Pentecostal Movements: Intertwined Pasts, Presents, and Futures (Studies in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements)
By David Bundy, Geordan Hammond, and David Sang-Ehil Han. 2022
Since the 1830s, Holiness and Pentecostal movements have had a significant influence on many Christian churches, and they have been…
a central force in producing what is known today as World Christianity. This book demonstrates the advantages of analyzing them in relation to one another.The Salvation Army, the Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church, and the Free Methodist Church identify strongly with the Holiness Movement. The Assemblies of God and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World identify just as strongly with the Pentecostal Movement. Complicating matters, denominations such as the Church of God (Cleveland), the International Holiness Pentecostal Church, and the Church of God in Christ have harmonized Holiness and Pentecostalism. This book, the first in the new series Studies in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements, examines these complex relationships in a multidisciplinary fashion. Building on previous scholarship, the contributors provide new ways of understanding the relationships, influences, and circulation of ideas among these movements in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Southeast and East Asia.In addition to the editors, the contributors are Kimberly Ervin Alexander, Insik Choi, Robert A. Danielson, Chris E. W. Green, Henry H. Knight III, Frank D. Macchia, Luther Oconer, Cheryl J. Sanders, and Daniel Woods.Songs of the Lisu Hills: Practicing Christianity in Southwest China (World Christianity #2)
By Aminta Arrington. 2020
The story of how the Lisu of southwest China were evangelized one hundred years ago by the China Inland Mission…
is a familiar one in mission circles. The subsequent history of the Lisu church, however, is much less well known. Songs of the Lisu Hills brings this history up to date, recounting the unlikely story of how the Lisu maintained their faith through twenty-two years of government persecution and illuminating how Lisu Christians transformed the text-based religion brought by the missionaries into a faith centered around an embodied set of Christian practices.Based on ethnographic fieldwork as well as archival research, this volume documents the development of Lisu Christianity, both through larger social forces and through the stories of individual believers. It explores how the Lisu, most of whom remain subsistence farmers, have oriented their faith less around cognitive notions of belief and more around participation in a rhythm of shared Christian practices, such as line dancing, attending church and festivals, evangelizing, working in one another’s fields, and singing translated Western hymns. These embodied practices demonstrate how Christianity developed in the mountainous margins of the world’s largest atheist state.A much-needed expansion of the Lisu story into a complex study of the evolution of a world Christian community, this book will appeal to scholars working at the intersections of World Christianity, anthropology of religion, ethnography, Chinese Christianity, and mission studies.Reading Mennonite Writing: A Study in Minor Transnationalism
By Robert Zacharias. 2022
Mennonite literature has long been viewed as an expression of community identity. However, scholars in Mennonite literary studies have urged…
a reconsideration of the field’s past and a reconceptualization of its future. This is exactly what Reading Mennonite Writing does.Drawing on the transnational turn in literary studies, Robert Zacharias positions Mennonite literature in North America as “a mode of circulation and reading” rather than an expression of a distinct community. He tests this reframing with a series of methodological experiments that open new avenues of critical engagement with the field’s unique configuration of faith-based intercultural difference. These include cross-sectional readings in nonnarrative literary history; archival readings of transatlantic life writing; Canadian rewritings of Mexican film’s deployment of Mennonite theology as fantasy; an examination of the fetishistic structure of ethnicity as a “thing” that has enabled Mennonite identity to function in a post-identity age; and, finally, a tentative reinvestment in ideals of Mennonite community via the surprising routes of queerness and speculative fiction. In so doing, Zacharias reads Mennonite writing in North America as a useful case study in the shifting position of minor literatures in the wake of the transnational turn.Theoretically sophisticated, this study of minor transnationalism will appeal to specialists in Mennonite literature and to scholars working in the broader field of transnational literary studies.To Heaven or to Hell: Bartolomé de Las Casas’s Confesionario (Latin American Originals)
By David Thomas Orique, O.P.. 2018
This volume is the first complete English translation and annotated study of Bartolomé de Las Casas’s important and provocative 1552…
treatise commonly known as the Confesionario or Avisos y reglas. A text that generated controversy, like Las Casas’s more famous Brevísima relación, the Confesionario outlined a strikingly novel and arguably harsh use of confession for those administering the sacrament to conquistadores, encomenderos, slaveholders, settlers, and others who had harmed the indigenous people, thus using magisterial authority and jurisdictional power to promote restitution.David Orique addresses how, from 1516 to 1547, Las Casas subscribed to and wrote about the theory and practice of the doctrine of restitution. He then presents the specific historical context of the development of the initial manuscript of the Confesionario in 1547 as Doce reglas (Twelve Rules), which later became the augmented Confesionario manuscript. Orique’s commentary on the 1552 Confesionario treatise highlights how Las Casas’s Argumento, and its approval by theologians, legitimates his work. Orique outlines the various guidelines proposed to confessors to identify, investigate, and seek restitution from offending Spaniards based on their possessions and circumstances. He also explores Las Casas’s use of the Thomistic tripartite scheme of divine, natural, and human law.With insightful analysis and commentary accompanied by an eminently readable translation, To Heaven or to Hell will be especially useful to students and scholars of Latin American colonial history, early modern religion, and Catholic studies.Religion Around Bono: Evangelical Enchantment and Neoliberal Capitalism (Religion Around)
By Chad E. Seales. 2019
For many, U2’s Bono is an icon of both evangelical spirituality and secular moral activism. In this book, Chad E.…
Seales examines the religious and spiritual culture that has built up around the rock star over the course of his career and considers how Bono engages with that religion in his music and in his activism.Looking at Bono and his work within a wider critique of white American evangelicalism, Seales traces Bono’s career, from his background in religious groups in the 1970s to his rise to stardom in the 1980s and his relationship with political and economic figures, such as Jeffrey Sachs, Bill Clinton, and Jesse Helms. In doing so, Seales shows us a different Bono, one who uses the spiritual meaning of church tradition to advocate for the promise that free markets and for-profits will bring justice and freedom to the world’s poor. Engaging with scholarship in popular culture, music, religious studies, race, and economic development, Seales makes the compelling case that neoliberal capitalism is a religion and that Bono is its best-known celebrity revivalist.Engagingly written and bitingly critical, Religion Around Bono promises to transform our understanding of the rock star’s career and advocacy. Those interested in the intersection of rock music, religion, and activism will find Seales’s study provocative and enlightening.War and Memory at the Time of the Fifth Crusade
By Megan Cassidy-Welch. 2019
In this book, Megan Cassidy-Welch challenges the notion that using memories of war to articulate and communicate collective identity is…
exclusively a modern phenomenon. War and Memory at the Time of the Fifth Crusade explores how and why remembering war came to be culturally meaningful during the early thirteenth century.By the 1200s, discourses of crusading were deeply steeped in the language of memory: crusaders understood themselves to be acting in remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice and following in the footsteps of their ancestors. At the same time, the foundational narratives of the First Crusade began to be transformed by vernacular histories and the advent of crusading romance. Examining how the Fifth Crusade was remembered and commemorated during its triumphs and immediately after its disastrous conclusion, Cassidy-Welch brings a nuanced perspective to the prevailing historiography on war memory, showing that remembering war was significant and meaningful centuries before the advent of the nation-state.This thoughtful and novel study of the Fifth Crusade shows it to be a key moment in the history of remembering war and provides new insights into medieval communication. It will be invaluable reading for scholars interested in the Fifth Crusade, medieval war memory, and the use of war memory.Ecological Solidarities: Mobilizing Faith and Justice for an Entangled World (World Christianity)
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.Considered by many to be one of the most influential German Pietists, August Hermann Francke lived during a moment when…
an emphasis on conversion was beginning to produce small shifts in how the sacraments were defined—a harbinger of later, more dramatic changes to come in evangelical theology. In this book, Peter James Yoder uses Francke and his theology as a case study for the ecclesiological stirrings that led to the rise of evangelicalism and global Protestantism.Engaging extensively with Francke’s manuscript sermons and writings, Yoder approaches Francke’s life and religious thought through his theology of the sacraments. In doing so, Yoder delivers key insights into the structure of Francke's Pietist thought, providing a rich depiction of his conversion-driven theology and how it shaped his views of the sacraments and the church. The first in-depth study of Francke’s theology written for an English-speaking audience, this book supports recent scholarship in English that not only challenges long-held assumptions about Pietism but also argues for the role of Pietism’s influence on the changing religious landscape of the eighteenth century. Through his examination of Francke’s theology of the sacraments, Yoder presents a fresh view into the eighteenth-century ecclesiological developments that caused a rupture with the dogmas of the Reformation.Original and vital, this study recognizes Francke’s importance to the history of Pietism in Germany and beyond. It will become the standard reference on Francke for American audiences and will influence scholarship on Lutheranism, Pietism, early modern German studies, and eighteenth-century history and religion.Metanoia: Rhetoric, Authenticity, and the Transformation of the Self
By Adam Ellwanger. 2019
Western culture is in a moment when wholly new kinds of personal transformations are possible, but authentic transformation requires both…
personal testimony and public recognition. In this book, Adam Ellwanger takes a distinctly rhetorical approach to analyzing how the personal and the public relate to an individual’s transformation and develops a new vocabulary that enables a critical assessment of the concept of authenticity. The concept of metanoia is central to this project. Charting the history of metanoia from its original use in the classical tradition to its adoption by early Christians as a term for religious conversion, Ellwanger shows that metanoia involves a change within a person that results in a truer version of him- or herself—a change in character or ethos. He then applies this theory to our contemporary moment, finding that metanoia provides unique insight into modern forms of self-transformation. Drawing on ancient and medieval sources, including Thucydides, Plato, Paul the Apostle, and Augustine, as well as contemporary discourses of self-transformation, such as the public testimonies of Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal, Ellwanger elucidates the role of language in signifying and authenticating identity. Timely and original, Ellwanger’s study formulates a transhistorical theory of personal transformation that will be of interest to scholars working in social theory, philosophy, rhetoric, and the history of Christianity.Once a vibrant part of religious life for many Pennsylvania Germans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Fraktur manuscripts today…
are primarily studied for their decorative qualities. The Word in the Wilderness takes a different view, probing these documents for what they tell us about the lived religious experiences of the Protestant communities that made and used them and opening avenues for reinterpretation of this well-known, if little understood, set of cultural artifacts.The resplendent illuminated religious manuscripts commonly known as Fraktur have captivated collectors and scholars for generations. Yet fundamental questions about their cultural origins, purpose, and historical significance remain. Alexander Lawrence Ames addresses these by placing Fraktur manuscripts within a “Pietist paradigm,” grounded in an understanding of how their makers viewed “the Word,” or scripture. His analysis combines a sweeping overview of Protestant Christian religious movements in Europe and early America with close analysis of key Pennsylvania devotional manuscripts, revealing novel insights into the religious utility of calligraphy, manuscript illumination, and devotional reading as Protestant spiritual enterprises. Situating the manuscripts in the context of transatlantic religious history, early American spirituality, material culture studies, and the history of book and manuscript production, Ames challenges long-held approaches to Pennsylvania German studies and urges scholars to engage with these texts and with their makers and users on their own terms. Featuring dozens of illustrations, this lively, engaging book will appeal to Fraktur scholars and enthusiasts, historians of early America, and anyone interested in the material culture and spiritual practices of the German-speaking residents of Pennsylvania.Kenyan, Christian, Queer: Religion, LGBT Activism, and Arts of Resistance in Africa (Africana Religions #3)
By Adriaan Van Klinken. 2019
Popular narratives cite religion as the driving force behind homophobia in Africa, portraying Christianity and LGBT expression as incompatible. Without…
denying Christianity’s contribution to the stigma, discrimination, and exclusion of same-sex-attracted and gender-variant people on the continent, Adriaan van Klinken presents an alternative narrative, foregrounding the ways in which religion also appears as a critical site of LGBT activism.Taking up the notion of “arts of resistance,” Kenyan, Christian, Queer presents four case studies of grassroots LGBT activism through artistic and creative expressions—including the literary and cultural work of Binyavanga Wainaina, the “Same Love” music video produced by gay gospel musician George Barasa, the Stories of Our Lives anthology project, and the LGBT-affirming Cosmopolitan Affirming Church. Through these case studies, Van Klinken demonstrates how Kenyan traditions, black African identities, and Christian beliefs and practices are being navigated, appropriated, and transformed in order to allow for queer Kenyan Christian imaginations.Transdisciplinary in scope and poignantly intimate in tone, Kenyan, Christian, Queer opens up critical avenues for rethinking the nature and future of the relationship between Christianity and queer activism in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa.Catholic Social Thought and Prison Ministry: Resourcing Theory and Practice (Explorations in Practical, Pastoral and Empirical Theology)
By Elizabeth Phillips, Stone-Davis, Férdia J.. 2024
This book explores how the themes and insights of official Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and broader Catholic social thought might…
illuminate, and be illuminated by, a deeper engagement with the context of prisons. What resources might Catholic social thought bring to pastoral work in prisons? And what might listening to the prison context bring to Catholic social thought? The volume includes constructive proposals for the relationship between CST and prison ministry, as well as critical questions about the role and shortcomings of prisons, CST, and chaplaincy. It contains contributions by scholars and practitioners of theology, criminology, and prison chaplaincy from the UK, US, and Ireland, and reflects on the inextricable relationship of social action and pastoral care in the work of prison ministry.