Bücher veröffentlicht von William B Eerdmans Publishing Co

Black Church Beginnings provides an intimate look at the struggles of African Americans to establish spiritual communities in the harsh world of slavery in the American colonies. Written by one of today's foremost experts on African American religion, this book traces the growth of the black church from its start in the mid-1700s to the end of the nineteenth century.As Henry Mitchell shows, the first African American churches didn't just organize; they labored hard, long, and sacrificially to form a meaningful, independent faith. Mitchell insightfully takes readers inside this process of development. He candidly examines the challenge of finding adequately trained pastors for new local congregations, confrontations resulting from internal class structure in big city churches, and obstacles posed by emerging denominationalism.Original in its subject matter and singular in its analysis, Mitchell's Black Church Beginnings makes a major contribution to the study of American church history.

As Christians we believe that God speaks - that God has spoken to people down through the centuries and still speaks to us today. But just how does God speak to us? Has his speech changed over time? And how do we "hear" the voice of God? In this insightful book Ben Campbell Johnson explores the subject of divine speech, highlighting its importance to faith and leading Christian believers into the practice of listening for God's voice in daily life.Johnson first explores the biblical foundations of divine communication, tracing the ways that God has spoken to humankind from the calling of Abraham, to the appearance of Jesus, to the continuing work of the Spirit in the early church. He then gleans important lessons about God's language from a wide range of Christian figures throughout history - Polycarp, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Ávila, Henri Nouwen, and others.As this historical record shows, God communicates with us in a variety of ways. In exploring these different modes of "GodSpeech," Johnson deftly guides readers into the practice of "intensive listening," a way of posing issues to God and discerning his response. Numerous anecdotes illuminate Johnson's discussion, and each chapter ends with questions for reflection and discussion as well as suggestions for journaling. Johnson concludes the book by recounting a number of personal experiences that vividly illustrate the value of learning to listen to God's voice.At a time when many Christians hunger for a more personal, meaningful connection with God, this book shows readers how to discern divine language and forge a closer, richer relationship with "the God who speaks."

A much-needed addition to the emerging literature on the formative power of religious practices, Educating People of Faith creates a vivid portrait of the lived practices that shaped the faith of Jews and Christians in synagogues and churches from antiquity up to the seventeenth century.This significant book is the work of Jewish, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant scholars who wished to discover and describe how Jews and Christians through history have been formed in religious ways of thinking and acting. Rather than focusing solely on either intellectual or social life, the authors all use the concept of "practices" as they attend to the embodied, contextual character of religious formation. Their studies of religious figures, community life, and traditional practices such as preaching, sacraments, and catechesis are colorful, detailed, and revealing. The authors are also careful to cover the nature of religious education across all social levels, from the textual formation of highly literate rabbis and monks engaged in Scripture study to the local formation of illiterate medieval Christians for whom the veneration of saints' shrines, street performances of religious dramas, and public preaching by wandering preachers were profoundly formative.Educating People of Faith will benefit scholars and teachers desiring a fuller perspective on how lived practices have historically formed people in religious faith. It will also be useful to practical theologians and pastors who wish to make the resources of the past available to practitioners in the present.Contributors: John C. Cavadini Anne L. Clark Lawrence S. Cunningham Joseph Goering Robert Goldenberg Stanley Samuel Harakas Robert M. Kingdon Blake Leyerle Michael A. Signer Philip M. Soergel David C. Steinmetz John Van Engen Lee Palmer Wandel Robert Louis Wilken Elliot R. Wolfson

Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803-1876) was a philosopher, essayist, and minister whose broad-ranging ideas both reflected and influenced the social and religious mores of his day. This superb biography by Patrick Carey provides a thorough, incisive account of Brownson's shifting intellectual and religious life within the context of American cultural history.Based on a close reading of Brownson's diary notebooks, letters, essays, and books, this biography chronicles the course of Brownson's eventful life, particularly his restless search for a balance between freedom and communion in his relations with God, nature, and the human community. Yet Carey's work is more than an excellent account of one man's development; it also portrays the face of an important period in American religious history. What is more, 200 years after Brownson's birth, America is marked by the same pressing social and religious issues that he himself addressed: religious pluralism, changing religious identifications, culture wars, military conflicts, and challenges to national peace and security. Carey's book shows how Brownson's values and ideas transcend his own time period and resonate helpfully with our own.

Paul is traditionally seen as one of the founders of Christian sexual asceticism. As early as the second century C.E. church leaders looked to him as a model for their lives of abstinence. But is this a correct reading of Paul? What exactly did Paul teach on the subjects of marriage and celibacy? Will Deming here answers these questions - often in provocative new ways.By placing Paul's statements on marriage and celibacy against the backdrop of ancient Hellenistic society, Deming constructs a coherent picture of Paul's views. He shows that the conceptual world in which Paul lived and wrote had substantially vanished by 100 C.E., and terms like "sin," "body," "sex," and "holiness" began to acquire moral implications quite unlike those Paul knew. Paul conceived of marriage as a social obligation that had the potential of distracting Christians from Christ. For him, celibacy was the single life, free from such distraction, not a life of saintly denial. Sex, in turn, was not sinful but natural, and sex within marriage was both proper and necessary.

Foreword by Trevor CairneyMONEY - the world today revolves around it. Particularly in capitalist societies, money plays a central role. Given money's pride of place in modern life and given how often the Bible addresses money's use and abuse, the subject of money clearly deserves serious Christian reflection. Craig Gay offers just that in this short, incisive, balanced book.Considering the insights of several classical and contemporary social theorists, Gay shows the duplicity of a monetary ethos: capitalism is without question the most productive economic system ever devised, yet the market system also fosters a subtle nihilism that tends to empty the world of substance and meaning. Gay's study encourages readers to rediscover meanings and values that transcend "cash values" - higher values that can free us from the market economy's grip on our culture.

This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. This comprehensive introduction examines the place, significance, and scope of the practice of missiology, its biblical foundations, motives, goals, and methods. Particular consideration is given to Asian, African, and Latin American missions, and to the church's mission to the Jews.

"To think about the Spirit it will not do to think 'spiritually': to think about the Spirit you have to think materially," claims Eugene F. Rogers. The Holy Spirit, who in classical Christian discourse "pours out on all flesh," has tended in modern theology and worship to float free of bodies. The result of such disembodiment, contends Rogers, is that our talk about the Spirit has become flat and uninspiring. In After the Spirit Rogers diagnoses a related gap in the revival of trinitarian theology, a mentality that "there's nothing the Spirit can do that the Son can't do better."The Eastern Christian tradition, by contrast, has usually linked the Holy Spirit with holy places, holy people, and holy things. Weaving together a rich tapestry of sources from this tradition, Rogers locates the Spirit in the Gospel stories of the annunciation, Jesus' baptism, the transfiguration, and the resurrection. These stories offer illuminating glimpses into both the Spirit's connection with the tangible world and the Spirit's distinctive place in relation to the other persons of the Trinity.

In this classic treatise, first published in 1925, J. Gresham Machen explores biblical answers to this pivotal question.Lamenting the "false and disastrous opposition which has been set up between knowledge and faith" and continuing what was his longrunning polemic against liberalism, Machen speaks out against halfhearted, watered-down attempts at faith that seek to engage the heart and the soul yet disregard the mind. He illuminates the Bible's teaching on the foundational tenets of Christian faith, clearly demonstrating that it is knowledge - the intellectual pursuit and embrace of God the Father and Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture - that forms the foundation of all true belief.

This book collects a fascinating series of letters written by theologian-philosopher Romano Guardini in the mid-1920s in which he works out for the first time his sense of the challenges of humanity in a culture increasingly dominated by the machine. With prophetic clarity and unsettling farsightedness, Guardini's letters poignantly capture the personal implications and social challenges of living in the technological age - concerns that have now come to fruition seventy years after they were first raised.