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Church History

Showing 1–75 of 261 results

  • Gods Ghostwriters : Enslaved Christians And The Making Of The Bible

    $30.00

    For the past two thousand years, Christian tradition, scholarship, and pop culture have credited the authorship of the New Testament to a select group of men: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul. But hidden behind these named and sainted individuals are a cluster of unnamed, enslaved coauthors and collaborators. These essential workers were responsible for producing the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament: making the parchment on which the texts were written, taking dictation, and refining the words of the apostles. And as the Christian message grew in influence, it was enslaved missionaries who undertook the arduous journey across the Mediterranean and along dusty roads to move Christianity to Rome, Spain, and North Africa–and into the pages of history. The impact of these enslaved contributors on the spread of Christianity, the development of foundational Christian concepts, and the making of the Bible was enormous, yet their role has been almost entirely overlooked until now.

    Filled with profound revelations both for what it means to be a Christian and for how we read individual texts themselves, God’s Ghostwriters is a groundbreaking and rigorously researched book about how enslaved people shaped the Bible, and with it all of Christianity.

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  • Zwingli The Pastor

    $26.99

    The Reformer at war

    In Zwingli the Pastor, Stephen Brett Eccher tells the story of Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531), embattled pastor and reformer. Zwingli’s ministry in Zurich was characterized by conflict–conflict that fueled him. It influenced his theological development, inspired his commitment to bring reform, and compelled his devotion to the congregation he led through the tumult of the Reformation. Eccher reveals a complex Zwingli, whose life and legacy continue to influence Protestantism today.

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  • Methodism And American Empire

    $29.99

    Living into a less colonial way of being together.

    Methodism and American Empire investigates historical trajectories and theological developments that connect American imperialism since World War II to the Methodist tradition as a global movement. The volume asks: to what extent is United Methodists’ vision of the globe marred by American imperialism? Through historical analyses and theological reflections, this volume chronicles the formation of an understanding of The United Methodist Church since the mid-20th century that is both global and at the same time dominated by American interests and concerns. Methodism and American Empire provides a historical and theological perspective to understand the current context of The United Methodist Church while also raising ecclesiological questions about the impact of imperialism on how Methodists have understood the nature and mission of the church over the last century. Gathering voices and perspectives from around the world, this volume suggests that the project of global Methodism and the tensions one witnesses therein ought to be understood in the context of American imperialism and that such an understanding is critical to the task of continuing to be a global denomination. The volume tells a tale of complex negotiations happening between United Methodists across different national, cultural, and ecclesial contexts and sets up the historical backdrop for the imminent schism of The United Methodist Church.

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  • Turning Points In American Church History

    $49.99

    American history has profoundly shaped, and been shaped by, Christianity. This engaging introduction provides a brisk and lively yet deeply researched survey of these intertwined forces from the colonial period to the present.

    Elesha Coffman tells the story of Christianity in the United States by focusing on 13 key events over four centuries of history. The turning points are as varied as the movements they track, including a naval battle, a revival, a schism, a court case, an outpouring of the Spirit, an act of terrorism, the election of a bishop, and the election of a president. Coffman highlights women and men from a range of traditions and shows how throughout these events, Christians endeavored to discern what it meant to live faithfully in the diverse and rapidly changing place that became the United States.

    This book helps readers understand their own faith and the landscape of American religion. Each chapter includes a hymn, a prayer, relevant historical images, excerpts from primary sources, and resources for further reading. Foreword by Mark A. Noll.

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  • Fundamentalists In The Public Square

    $29.99

    A myth-busting work on fundamentalists and culture

    The Scopes Trial of 1925 is often regarded as a turning point in the history of American fundamentalism and evangelicalism. It is claimed that Scopes was a public relations defeat that sent fundamentalism into retreat from mainstream culture.

    In Fundamentalists in the Public Square: Evolution, Alcohol, and the Culture Wars after the Scopes Trial, Madison Trammel argues that such a characterization is misguided. Using documentary evidence from newspapers in the 1920s and 1930s, Trammel shows that fundamentalists remained fully active in seeking to transform the culture for Christ, and they remained so through the rise of Billy Graham’s ministry.

    Grounded in historical evidence, Fundamentalists in the Public Square offers a fresh take on the relationship between fundamentalism, evangelicalism, and the public square.

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  • Triumph : The Power And The Glory Of The Catholic Church – A 2,000 Year His (Exp

    $39.99

    A Catholic Classic — UPDATED AND EXPANDED!

    For 2,000 years, Catholicism-the largest religion in the world and in the United States-has shaped global history on a scale unequaled by any other institution.

    Triumph offers an accessible, affirmative, and exciting entry into that history. Inside, you’ll discover the spectacular story of the Church from Biblical times and the early days of St. Peter-the first pope-to Pope John Paul the Great (already a saint), Pope Benedict XVI (a master theologian), and the controversies surrounding Pope Francis.

    It is a sweeping drama of Roman legions, great crusades, epic battles, toppled empires, heroic saints, and enduring faith, as well as Dark Age skullduggery, the Inquisition, the Renaissance popes, and the Protestant Revolt.

    A classic for twenty years — now updated and expanded — Triumph is a brawling, colorful history full of inspiring pageantry and spirited polemic that will exhilarate, amuse, and infuriate as it extols the power and the glory the Catholic Church and the gripping stories of some of its greatest men and women.

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  • Basic Guide To The Just War Tradition

    $39.99

    This brief introduction surveys Christian thinking on an array of topics related to security and peace from a just war perspective. Drawing primarily on Scripture and theology, Eric Patterson explores the moral dimensions of order, justice, and peace in light of key Christian doctrines such as love of neighbor, stewardship, vocation, and sphere sovereignty. He also examines the perennial questions of civil disobedience, terrorism, revolution, and holy war (including a discussion of Israel’s removal of the Canaanites and the Crusades) and interacts with theological thinkers throughout Christian history. The volume concludes with a treatment of punishment and restitution, considering how these can help move a society toward conciliation.

    While ideal as a textbook for courses on Christian ethics, theology and politics, and church and society, this book will also appeal to pastors and lay readers questioning the morality of war and Christians’ involvement in force. Christians who serve in government, law enforcement, and the military will also find helpful guidance for thinking theologically about their vocations.

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  • Jesus Through Medieval Eyes

    $29.99

    C.S. Lewis noted that the church has a problem: Whenever Christians are brainstorming together about who Jesus is and who we are, we go out and read mostly people who agree with us, or who live in our same time and place. It’s hard to separate the cultural wheat from the chaff. But what happens when we do read people’s answers to Jesus’s question from the past lives and places of the church–people who may be wholly unlike us? Who is Jesus? What is he like? And who am I, encountering Jesus?

    The answers will surprise you.

    Jesus through Medieval Eyes, by Grace Hamman, looks to the Christians of the Middle Ages, to a time and culture dissimilar to our own, for their answers to these questions. Medieval Europeans were also suffering through pandemics, dealing with political and ecclesial corruption and instability, and reckoning with gender, money, and power. Yet their concerns and imaginations are unlike ours. Their ideas, narratives, and art about Jesus open up paradoxically fresh and ancient ways to approach and adore Christ–and reveal where our own cultural ideals about the Messiah fall short.

    In thoughtful and accessible chapters, medievalist scholar Grace Hamman explores and meditates upon medieval representations of Jesus in theology and literature. These representations of Jesus span from the familiar, like Jesus as the Judge at the End of Days, or Jesus as the Lover of the Song of Songs, to the more unusual, like Jesus as Our Mother. Through the words of medieval people like Julian of Norwich, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Margery Kempe, and St. Thomas Aquinas, we meet these faces of Jesus and find renewed ways to love the Savior, in the words of St. Augustine, that “beauty so ancient and so new.”

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  • Kingdom The Power And The Glory

    $35.00

    The award-winning journalist and staff writer for The Atlantic follows up his New York Times bestseller American Carnage with this timely, rigorously reported, and deeply personal examination of the divisions that threaten to destroy the American evangelical movement.

    Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarizing–and least understood–people living in America today. In his seminal new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, himself a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor, paints an expansive and profoundly troubling portrait of the American evangelical movement. Through the eyes of televangelists and small-town preachers, celebrity revivalists and everyday churchgoers, Alberta tells the story of a faith cheapened by ephemeral fear, a promise corrupted by partisan subterfuge, and a reputation stained by perpetual scandal.

    For millions of conservative Christians, America is their kingdom–a land set apart, a nation uniquely blessed, a people in special covenant with God. This love of country, however, has given way to right-wing nationalist fervor, a reckless blood-and-soil idolatry that trivializes the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Alberta retraces the arc of the modern evangelical movement, placing political and cultural inflection points in the context of church teachings and traditions, explaining how Donald Trump’s presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated historical trends that long pointed toward disaster. Reporting from half-empty sanctuaries and standing-room-only convention halls across the country, the author documents a growing fracture inside American Christianity and journeys with readers through this strange new environment in which loving your enemies is “woke” and owning the libs is the answer to WWJD.

    Accessing the highest echelons of the American evangelical movement, Alberta investigates the ways in which conservative Christians have pursued, exercised, and often abused power in the name of securing this earthly kingdom. He highlights the battles evangelicals are fighting–and the weapons of their warfare–to demonstrate the disconnect from scripture: Contra the dictates of the New Testament, today’s believers are struggling mightily against flesh and blood, eyes fixed on the here and now, desperate for a power that is frivolous and fleeting. Lingering at the intersection of real cultural displacement and perceived religious persecution, Alberta portrays a rapidly

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  • Concise Dictionary Of The Christian Tradition

    $29.99

    In this single volume you will find nearly three-and-a-half thousand terms and names from the history, teachings, and liturgy of the church.

    *Terms and names that are difficult to find in standard dictionaries
    *Brief definitions and descriptions for quick reference
    *Names and terms from the history of the church in its various expressions
    *Concepts and terms related to the teachings of the church
    *Terms connected with the Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox liturgies

    This indispensable reference work is for anyone who wants quick access to information that is sometimes difficult to find, even in a well-stocked library. The perfect single-volume reference for the layperson, students, pastors, and teachers.

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  • Infinite Fountain Of Light

    $26.00

    Christians need to pause once in a while to get their bearings. For perspective on our own times and how we got here, it helps to listen to wise guides from other eras. In An Infinite Fountain of Light, the renowned American historian George Marsden illuminates the landscape with wisdom from one such mentor: Jonathan Edwards.

    Drawing on his deep expertise on Edwards and American culture, Marsden explains where Edwards stood within his historical context and sets forth key points of his complex thought. By also considering Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield, two of Edwards’s most influential contemporaries, Marsden unpacks the competing cultural and religious impulses that have shaped our times. In contrast, Edwards offered us an exhilarating view of the centrality of God’s beauty and love. Christians’ love for God, he taught, can be the guiding love of our lives, opening us to transformative joy and orienting all our lesser loves.

    “There is an infinite fullness of all possible good in God, a fullness of every perfection, of all excellency and beauty, and of infinite happiness,” wrote Edwards. “This infinite fountain of light should, diffusing its excellent fullness, pour forth light all around.”

    With Marsden’s guidance, readers will discover how Edwards’s insights can renew our own vision of the divine, of creation, and of ourselves.

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  • How The Saints Shaped History

    $27.95

    In every era of the Catholic Church, holy men and women have shaped history through their gifts and talents and, most importantly, through their resolute commitment to Jesus Christ. Some led armies, some founded monasteries, some lived a radical call to charity – and each one had a unique part to play.

    How the Saints Shaped History focuses on the essential role of the saints, as vessels of God’s grace, in moving the Church (and the world!) through her two-thousand-year history. Written especially for everyday Catholics hungry to learn more about the Faith, this book is both comprehensive and accessible. It tells the story of how more than 180 saints, from Saint Mary Magdalene to Pope Saint John Paul II, led the Church through many crises and back to her spiritual roots.

    As our Church continues to face crises, this book reminds us that we still have reason to hope in our own time. As the providential hand of God worked through the saints to shape history, each of us is called to become a new saint to shape the history of the Church today.

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  • Dining With The Saints

    $39.99

    Michael Foley’s fans have been devoutly drinking with the saints for years. Now it’s time for dinner! The inimitable theologian and mixologist teams up with the priest and TV chef Leo Patalinghug in a culinary romp through the liturgical year.

    Want to get closer to the saints while upping your dinner game? Now every meal can be a family feast-with the Saints!

    Dining with the Saints brings the Catholic liturgical year to life, pairing over two hundred saints’ stories with an irresistible smorgasbord of international recipes.

    Craving a breakfast treat? Join St. David of Wales and learn to craft Crempogs-Welsh pancakes-in March. Searching for a spicey dinner feast? Uncover the life of St. Cristobal of Mexico and serve up a delicious pinto bean soup with queso fresco dumplings during the month of May. Tempted by sweets? Honor St. Agrippina of Mineo with a crostata di pesca, a free-form peach tart.

    Featuring dozens of new and exciting recipes, Dining with the Saints provides an unforgettable feast that sinners and saints will enjoy!

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  • Worship By Faith Alone

    $35.00

    In every age, the church must consider what it means to gather together to worship God.

    If the church is primarily the people who follow the risen Christ, then its worship should be “gospel-centered.” But where might the church find an example of such worship for today?

    In this Dynamics of Christian Worship volume, scholar, worship leader, and songwriter Zac Hicks contends that such a focus can be found in the theology of worship presented by Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury during the English Reformation. Hicks argues that Cranmer’s reformation of the church’s worship and liturgy was shaped primarily by the Protestant principle of justification by faith alone as reflected in his 1552 edition of the Book of Common Prayer, which was later codified under Elizabeth I and has guided Anglican worship for centuries.

    Here, we find a model of “gospel-centered” worship through which the church of today might be reformed yet again.

    The Dynamics of Christian Worship series draws from a wide range of worshiping contexts and denominational backgrounds to unpack the many dynamics of Christian worship–including prayer, reading the Bible, preaching, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, music, visual art, architecture, and more–to deepen both the theology and practice of Christian worship for the life of the church.

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  • What Nuns Read

    $49.95

    The literacy and education of medieval nuns has been a subject of dispute and study in recent years. In his third Index of medieval libraries, David Bell presents a comprehensive list of all manuscripts and printed books which have been traced with certainty or high probability to english nunneries. A systematic listing of the books available to english nuns, and in the process an indication of the wealth, the intellectual level, and the spirituality of english nuns from the Conquest to the Reformation.

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  • Faithful Disobedience : Writings On Church And State From A Chinese House C

    $28.00

    Throughout China’s rapidly growing cities, a new wave of unregistered house churches is growing. They are developing rich theological perspectives that are both uniquely Chinese and rooted in the historical doctrines of the faith. To understand how they have endured despite government pressure and cultural marginalization, we must understand both their history and their theology.

    In this volume, key writings from the house church have been compiled, translated, and made accessible to English speakers. Featured here is a manifesto by well-known pastor Wang Yi and his church, Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, to clarify their theological stance on the house church and its relationship to the Chinese government. There are also works by prominent voices such as Jin Tianming, Jin Mingri, and Sun Yi. The editors have provided introductions, notes, and a glossary to give context to each selection.

    These writings are an important body of theology historically and spiritually. Though defined by a specific set of circumstances, they have universal applications in a world where the relationship between church and state is more complicated than ever. This unique resource will be valuable to practical and political theologians as well as readers interested in international relations, political philosophy, history, and intercultural studies.

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  • Great Is Thy Faithfulness

    $34.99

    From basement Bible study to leading evangelical institution

    Starting from humble beginnings in the late nineteenth century, the story of Trinity International University and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School is one of faithfulness.

    In Great Is Thy Faithfulness, scholars John D. Woodbridge, David M. Gustafson, Scott M. Manetsch, and Bradley J. Gundlach trace the journey of Trinity International University and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. In order to tell the story of evangelicalism in America, one must know the story of Trinity International University. Great Is Thy Faithfulness is an essential resource for understanding an institution that has been at the center of evangelical theological life for decades. Readers will be encouraged by God’s faithfulness to his people.

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  • Turning Points : Decisive Moments In The History Of Christianity

    $29.99

    Now in its fourth edition, this bestselling textbook (over 125,000 copies sold) isolates key events that provide a framework for understanding the history of Christianity. The book presents Christianity as a worldwide phenomenon rather than just a Western experience.

    This popular textbook is organized around 14 key moments in church history, providing contemporary Christians with a fuller understanding of God as he has revealed his purpose through the centuries. The new edition includes a new preface, updates throughout the book, revised “further readings” for each chapter, new sidebar content, and study questions. It also more thoroughly highlights the importance of women in Christian history and the impact of world Christianity.

    Turning Points is well suited to introductory courses on the history of Christianity as well as study groups in churches. Additional resources for instructors are available through Textbook eSources.

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  • What Kind Of Christianity

    $30.00

    Like most Americans, Presbyterians in the United States know woefully little about the history of slavery and the rise of anti-Black racism in our country. Most think of slavery as a tragedy that “just happened” without considering how it happened and who was involved. In What Kind of Christianity William Yoo paints an accurate picture of the complicity of the majority of Presbyterians in promoting, supporting, or willfully ignoring the enslavement of other human beings. Most Presbyterians knew of the widespread physical and sexual violence that enslavers visited on the enslaved, and either approved of it or did nothing to prevent it. Most Presbyterians in the nineteenth century-whether in the South or the North–held racist attitudes toward African Americans and put those attitudes into daily application. In short, during that period when the Presbyterian church was establishing itself as a central part of American life most of its members were promoting slavery and anti-Black racism. In this important book William Yoo demonstrates that to understand how Presbyterian Christians can promote racial justice today, they must first understand and acknowledge how deeply racial injustice is embedded in their history and identity as a denomination.

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  • Reorganized Religion : The Reshaping Of The American Church And Why It Matt

    $27.00

    Uncover the ways the Christian church has changed in recent years–from the decline of the mainline denominations to the mega-churchification of American culture to the rise of the Nones and Exvaneglicals–and a hopeful reimagining of what the church might look like going forward.

    The United States is in the middle of an unprecedented spiritual, technological, demographic, political and social transformation– moving from an older, mostly white, mostly Protestant, religion-friendly society to a younger diverse, multiethnic, pluralistic culture, where no one faith group will have the advantage. At the same time, millions of Americans are abandoning organized religion altogether in favor of disorganized disbelief.

    Reorganized Religion is an in-depth and critical look at why people are leaving American churches and what we lose as a society as it continues. But it also accepts the dismantling of what has come before and try to help readers reinvent the path forward. This book looks at the future of organized religion in America and outline the options facing churches and other faith groups. Will they retreat? Will they become irrelevant? Or will they find a new path forward?

    Written by veteran religion reporter Bob Smietana, Reorganized Religion is a journalistic look at the state of the American church and its future. It draws on polling data, interviews with experts, and reporting on how faith communities old and new are coping with the changing religious landscape, along with personal stories about how faith is lived in everyday life. It also profiles faith communities and leaders who are finding interesting ways to reimagine what church might look like in the future and discuss various ways we can reinvent this organization so it survives and thrives. The book also reflects the hope that perhaps people of faith can learn to become, if not friends with the larger culture, then at least better neighbors.

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  • Suffering Not Power

    $26.99

    Overturning a popular view of the atonement

    Was Christ’s death a victory over death or a substitution for sin? Many today follow Gustav Aulen’s Christus Victor view, which portrays Christ’s death as primarily a ransom paid to the powers of evil and which, according to Aulen, reflected the beliefs of the early church. Aulen held that this ransom theory view dominated until Anselm reframed atonement as satisfaction and the Reformers reframed it as penal substitution.

    In Suffering, Not Power, Benjamin Wheaton challenges this common narrative that Christ’s work of atonement was reframed by Anselm, showing that sacrificial and substitutionary language was common well before Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo. Wheaton displays this through a careful analysis of three medieval theologians whose writings on the atonement are commonly overlooked: Caesarius of Arles, Haimo of Auxerre, and Dante Alighieri. These figures come from different times and contexts and wrote in different genres, but each spoke of Christ’s death as a sacrifice of expiation and propitiation made by God to God.

    Let history speak for itself, read the evidence, and reconsider the church’s belief in Christ’s substitutionary death for sinners.

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  • Klaas Schilder Reader

    $49.99

    Recovering a forgotten theologian.

    Klaas Schilder (1890-1952) was a prominent Dutch Reformed theologian in the early twentieth century, first as a pastor and then as a professor. While his fame spread to North America in the 1940s, he is mostly forgotten today. In Schilder Reader: The Essential Theological Writings, readers will rediscover this important Dutch theologian.

    Working in the tradition of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, Schilder applies Dutch Neo–Calvinism to the twentieth century. This includes secularism, the rise and influence of Karl Barth, opposition to Nazism, and the relation between the church and society. Schilder Reader contextualizes his work and furthers the neo–Calvinist tradition.

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  • Historical Foundations Of Worship

    $29.99

    This volume brings together an ecumenical team of scholars to offer a historical overview of how worship developed. The book first orients readers to the common core elements the global church shares in the history and development of worship theology and historical practice. It then introduces the major streams of worship practice: Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, including Reformation traditions, evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism. The book includes introductions by John Witvliet and Nicholas Wolterstorff. A previous volume addressed the theological foundations of worship.

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  • Voices Long Silenced

    $40.00

    Hundreds of women studied and interpreted the Bible between the years 100-2000 CE, but their stories have remained largely untold. In this book, Schroeder and Taylor introduce readers to the notable contributions of female commentators through the centuries. They unearth fascinating accounts of Jewish and Christian women from diverse communities-rabbinic experts, nuns, mothers, mystics, preachers, teachers, suffragists, and household managers-who interpreted Scripture through their writings. This book recounts the struggles and achievements of women who gained access to education and biblical texts. It tells the story of how their interpretive writings were preserved or, all too often, lost. It also explores how, in many cases, women interpreted Scripture differently from the men of their times. Consequently, Voices Long Silenced makes an important, new contribution to biblical reception history. This book focuses on women’s written words and briefly comments on women’s interpretation in media, such as music, visual arts, and textile arts. It includes short, representative excerpts from diverse women’s own writings that demonstrate noteworthy engagement with Scripture. Voices Long Silencedcalls on scholars and religious communities to recognize the contributions of women, past and present, who interpreted Scripture, preached, taught, and exercised a wide variety of ministries in churches and synagogues.

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  • To Think Christianly

    $35.00

    In the late 1960s and on into the next decade, the American pastor and bestselling author Francis Schaeffer regularly received requests from evangelicals across North America seeking his help to replicate his innovative learning community, L’Abri, within their own contexts.

    At the same time, an innovative school called Regent College had started up in Vancouver, British Columbia, led by James Houston and offering serious theological education for laypeople. Before long, numerous admirers and attendees of L’Abri and of Regent had launched Christian “study centers” of their own–often based on or near university campuses–from Berkeley to Maryland. For evangelical baby boomers coming of age in the midst of unprecedented educational opportunity and cultural upheaval, these multifaceted communities inspired a generation to study, pray, and engage culture more faithfully–in the words of James M. Houston, “to think Christianly.” In this compelling and comprehensive history, Charles Cotherman traces the stories of notable study centers and networks, as well as their influence on a generation that would reshape twentieth-century Christianity. Beginning with the innovations of L’Abri and Regent College, Cotherman elucidates the histories of:
    *The C. S. Lewis Institute near Washington, DC
    *R. C. Sproul’s Ligonier Valley Study Center in Stahlstown, Pennsylvania
    *New College Berkeley
    *The Center for Christian Study at the University of Virginia
    *The Consortium of Christian Study Centers, which now includes dozens of institutions

    Each of these projects owed something to Schaeffer’s and Houston’s approaches, which combined intellectual and cultural awareness with compelling spirituality, open-handed hospitality, relational networks, and a deep commitment to the gospel’s significance for all fields of study–and all of life. Cotherman argues that the centers’ mission of lay theological education blazed a new path for evangelicals to fully engage the life of the mind and culture. Built on a rich foundation of original interviews, archival documents, and contemporary sources, To Think Christianly sheds new light on this set of defining figures and places in evangelicalism’s life of the mind.

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  • Turning Points In The Expansion Of Christianity

    $28.99

    This book tells the story of pivotal turning points in the expansion of Christianity, enabling readers to grasp the big picture of missional trends and critical developments. Alice Ott examines thirteen key points in the growth of Christianity and its impact on world history from the Jerusalem Council to Lausanne ’74. Each chapter begins with a close-up view of a particularly compelling episode in Christian history before panning out for a broader historical outlook. This fascinating account of worldwide Christianity is suitable not only for the classroom, but also for churches, workshops, and other seminars.

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  • Evangelicals And Social Action

    $35.99

    Evangelical Christians around the world have debated for years the extent to which they should be involved in ministries of social action and concern.

    In Evangelicals and Social Action Ian J. Shaw offers clarity to these debates by tracing the historical involvement of the evangelical church with issues of social action. Focusing on thinking and practices from John Wesley, one of the architects of eighteenth century evangelicalism, to John Stott’s work in the second half of the twentieth century, he explores whether evangelism and social action really have been intimately related throughout the history of the church as Stott contended.

    After an overview of Christian social action prior to Wesley, from the early church through to the eighteenth century, Evangelicals and Social Action explores in detail responses from the evangelical church around the world to eighteen key issues of social action and concern – including poverty, racial equality, addiction, children ‘at risk, ‘ slavery, unemployment, and learning disability – encountered between the 1730s and the 1970s. Drawn from a wide range of contexts, these examples illuminate and clarify how Evangelical Christianity has viewed and been a part of ministries of social action over the last three centuries.

    With an assessment of the issues raised by this historical survey and its implications for evangelicals in the contemporary world, Evangelicals and Social Action is a book that will help better inform the debates around the evangelical church and social action still happening today. This is a book for anyone wanting to deepen their knowledge of the history of the evangelical church, and anyone wanting to better understand Christian social action from an evangelical perspective.

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  • In The Name Of God

    $29.99

    In the Name of God tells the story of two of the most iconic figures of national lore, George W. Truett and J. Frank Norris, who dominated much of the first half of twentieth century ecclesiology and culture not just in Fort Worth and Dallas but in the whole of America. Norris, at the First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, and Truett, at the First Baptist Church in Dallas lived lives of conflict and controversy with each other for decades. Both led the largest churches in the world in the 1920s and 1930s. Both shot and killed a man, one by accident and the other in self-defense. This work provides a virtual panoply of intrigue, espionage, confrontation, manipulation, plotting, scheming, and even blackmail. All in God’s name.

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  • From Plato To Christ

    $32.00

    What does Plato have to do with the Christian faith?

    Quite a bit, it turns out. In ways that might surprise us, Christians throughout the history of the church and even today have inherited aspects of the ancient Greek philosophy of Plato, who was both Socrates’s student and Aristotle’s teacher. To help us understand the influence of Platonic thought on the Christian faith, Louis Markos offers careful readings of some of Plato’s best-known texts and then traces the ways that his work shaped the faith of some of Christianity’s most beloved theologians, including Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Dante, and C. S. Lewis. With Markos’s guidance, readers can ascend to a true understanding of Plato’s influence on the faith.

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  • Church History In Plain Language

    $39.99

    Over 330,000 copies sold. This is the story of the church for today’s readers.

    Bruce Shelley’s classic history of the church brings the story of global Christianity into the twenty-first century. Like a skilled screenwriter, Shelley begins each chapter with three elements: characters, setting, plot. Taking readers from the early centuries of the church up through the modern era he tells his readers a story of actual people, in a particular situation, taking action or being acted upon, provides a window into the circumstances and historical context, and from there develops the story of a major period or theme of Christian history. Covering recent events, this book also:
    *Details the rapid growth of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity in the southern hemisphere

    *Addresses the decline in traditional mainline denominations

    *Examines the influence of technology on the spread of the gospel

    *Discusses how Christianity intersects with other religions in countries all over the world

    For this fifth edition, Marshall Shelley brought together a team of historians, historical theologians, and editors to revise and update this father’s classic text. The new edition adds important stories of the development of Christianity in Asia, India, and Africa, both in the early church as well as in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It also highlights the stories of women and non-Europeans who significantly influenced the development of Christianity but whose contributions are often overlooked in previous overviews of church history.

    This concise book provides an easy-to-read guide to church history with intellectual substance. The new edition of Church History in Plain Language promises to set a new standard for readable church history.

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  • Passion Of Anne Hutchinson

    $32.99

    When English colonizers landed in New England in 1630, they constructed a godly commonwealth according to precepts gleaned from Scripture. For these ‘Puritan’ Christians, religion both provided the center and defined the margins of existence. While some Puritans were called to exercise power as magistrates and ministers, and many more as husbands and fathers, women were universally called to subject themselves to the authority of others. Their God was a God of order, and out of their religious convictions and experiences Puritan leaders found a divine mandate for a firm, clear hierarchy. Yet not all lives were overwhelmed; other religious voices made themselves heard, and inspired voices that defied that hierarchy.

    Gifted with an extraordinary mind, an intense spiritual passion, and an awesome charisma, Anne Hutchinson arrived in Massachusetts in 1634 and established herself as a leader of women. She held private religious meetings in her home and later began to deliver her own sermons. She inspired a large number of disciples who challenged the colony’s political, social, and ideological foundations, and scarcely three years after her arrival, Hutchinson was recognized as the primary disrupter of consensus and order–she was then banished as a heretic.

    Anne Hutchinson, deeply centered in her spirituality, heard in the word of God an imperative to ignore and move beyond the socially prescribed boundaries placed around women. The Passion of Anne Hutchinson examines issues of gender, patriarchal order, and empowerment in Puritan society through the story of a woman who sought to preach, inspire, and disrupt.

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  • Climate Catastrophe And Faith

    $31.99

    One of the world’s leading scholars of religious trends shows how climate change has driven dramatic religious upheavals.

    Long before the current era of man-made climate change, the world has suffered repeated, severe climate-driven shocks. These shocks have resulted in famine, disease, violence, social upheaval, and mass migration. But these shocks were also religious events. Dramatic shifts in climate have often been understood in religious terms by the people who experienced them. They were described in the language of apocalypse, millennium, and Judgment. Often, too, the eras in which these shocks occurred have been marked by far-reaching changes in the nature of religion and spirituality. Those changes have varied widely–from growing religious fervor and commitment; to the stirring of mystical and apocalyptic expectations; to waves of religious scapegoating and persecution; or the spawning of new religious movements and revivals. In many cases, such responses have had lasting impacts, fundamentally reshaping particular religious traditions.

    In Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith historian Philip Jenkins draws out the complex relationship between religion and climate change. He asserts that the religious movements and ideas that emerge from climate shocks often last for many decades, and even become a familiar part of the religious landscape, even though their origins in particular moments of crisis may be increasingly consigned to remote memory. By stirring conflicts and provoking persecutions that defined themselves in religious terms, changes in climate have redrawn the world’s religious maps, and created the global concentrations of believers as we know them today.

    This bold new argument will change the way we think about the history of religion, regardless of tradition. And it will demonstrate how our growing climate crisis will likely have a comparable religious impact across the Global South.

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  • Every Leaf Line And Letter

    $36.00

    “I was filled with a pining desire to see Christ’s own words in the Bible. . . . I got along to the window where my Bible was and I opened it and . . . every leaf, line, and letter smiled in my face.” — The Spiritual Travels of Nathan Cole, 1765

    From its earliest days, Christians in the movement known as evangelicalism have had “a particular regard for the Bible,” to borrow a phrase from David Bebbington, the historian who framed its most influential definition. But this “biblicism” has taken many different forms from the 1730s to the 2020s. How has the eternal Word of God been received across various races, age groups, genders, nations, and eras? This collection of historical studies focuses on evangelicals’ defining uses–and abuses–of Scripture, from Great Britain to the Global South, from the high pulpit to the Sunday School classroom, from private devotions to public causes. Contributors:

    *David Bebbington, University of Stirling
    *Kristina Benham, Baylor University
    *Catherine Brekus, Harvard Divinity School
    *Malcolm Foley, Truett Seminary
    *Bruce Hindmarsh, Regent College, Vancouver
    *Thomas S. Kidd, Baylor University
    *Timothy Larsen, Wheaton College
    *K. Elise Leal, Whitworth University
    *John Maiden, The Open University, UK
    *Mark A. Noll, University of Notre Dame
    *Mary Riso, Gordon College
    *Brian Stanley, University of Edinburgh
    *Jonathan Yeager, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

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  • 16th Century Mission

    $29.99

    Did the Reformers lack a vision for missions?

    In Sixteenth-Century Mission, a diverse cast of contributors explores the wide-reaching practice and theology of mission during this era. Rather than a century bereft of cross-cultural outreach, we find both Reformers and Roman Catholics preaching the gospel and establishing the church in all the world. This overlooked yet rich history reveals themes and insights relevant to the practice of mission today.

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  • Introduction To Ecclesiology (Revised)

    $35.00

    What is the church? Why are there so many different expressions of church throughout time and space, and what ties them all together?

    Ecclesiology–the doctrine of the church–has risen to the center of theological interest in recent decades. In this text, theologian Veli-Matti Karkkainen provides a wide-ranging survey of the rich field of ecclesiology in the midst of rapid developments and new horizons. Drawing on Karkkainen’s international experience and comprehensive research on the church, this revised and expanded edition is thoroughly updated to incorporate recent literature and trends. This unique primer not only orients readers to biblical, historical, and contemporary ecclesiologies but also highlights contextual and global perspectives and includes an entirely new section on interfaith comparative theology. An Introduction to Ecclesiology surveys.

    *major theological traditions, including Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Reformed, and Pentecostal

    *ecclesiological insights from Latin American, Africa, and Asia

    *distinct perspectives from women, African Americans, and recent trends in the United States

    *key elements of the church such as mission, governance, worship, and sacraments

    *interreligious comparison with Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist communities

    As the church today encounters challenges and opportunities related to rapid growth in the Majority World, new congregational forms, ecumenical movements, interfaith relations, and more, Christians need a robust ecclesiology that makes room for both unity and diversity. In An Introduction to Ecclesiology students, pastors, and laypeople will find an essential resource for understanding how the church can live out its calling as Christ’s community on earth.

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  • Understanding The Jewish Roots Of Christianity

    $29.99

    How Jewish is Christianity?

    The question of how Jesus’ followers relate to Judaism has been a matter of debate since Jesus first sparred with the Pharisees. The controversy has not abated, taking many forms over the centuries. In the decades following the Holocaust, scholars and theologians reconsidered the Jewish origins and character of Christianity, finding points of continuity.

    Understanding the Jewish Roots of Christianity advances this discussion by freshly reassessing the issues. Did Jesus intend to form a new religion? Did Paul abrogate the Jewish law? Does the New Testament condemn Judaism? How and when did Christianity split from Judaism? How should Jewish believers in Jesus relate to a largely gentile church? What meaning do the Jewish origins of Christianity have for theology and practice today?

    In this volume, a variety of leading scholars and theologians explore the relationship of Judaism and Christianity through biblical, historical, theological, and ecclesiological angles. This cutting-edge scholarship will enrich readers’ understanding of this centuries-old debate.

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  • Separated Siblings : An Evangelical Understanding Of Jews And Judaism

    $36.99

    In the minds of many American evangelicals today, Judaism exists in two places: the pages of the Bible and the modern nation of Israel. In Separated Siblings, John Phelan offers to fill in the gaps of this limited understanding with the larger story of Judaism, including its long history and key facets of Jewish thought and practice. Phelan shows that Judaism is anything but monolithic or unchanging. Readers may be surprised to learn that contemporary Judaism exists in a multiplicity of forms and continues to evolve, as recent changes in scholarly Jewish perspectives on Jesus and Paul attest.

    An evangelical Christian himself, Phelan addresses what other evangelicals are often most curious about, such as Jewish beliefs concerning salvation and eschatology. Nevertheless, Separated Siblings is geared toward understanding rather than Christian apologetics, aiming for an undistorted view of Judaism that is sensitive to the painful history of Christian replacement theology and other forms of anti-Semitism. Readers of this book will emerge with more informed attitudes toward their Jewish brothers and sisters-those in Israel and those across the street.

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  • Anchored In The Current

    $34.00

    In this volume, internationally known leaders like Marian Wright Edelman, Parker Palmer, and Barbara Brown Taylor invite the reader into creative engagement with Thurman’s writings.

    Howard Thurman was famously known as one of the towering giants of American religion in the twentieth century. His writings have influenced some of the most important religious and political figures of the last century, from Martin Luther King to Barack Obama. Theologians such as James Cone and Cornel West regularly signal their indebtedness to him. He was a mystic, a preacher, an educator, a theologian, and much more. It is impossible to understand the African American church today without an appreciation for his contributions.

    And yet, while Thurman’s name is often recognized, his seminal ideas have not received the attention they deserve. In this volume, internationally known leaders like Marian Wright Edelman, Parker Palmer, and Barbara Brown Taylor invite the reader into creative engagement with Thurman’s writings. Anchored in the Current illuminates how Thurman’s life and wisdom lead these influential names on the ancient quest to connect with the Ultimate, all while discovering the contemporary need to seek racial justice and sharpening the minds and faith of those who come after us. Readers will find important and enduring answers in the works of this indispensable prophet and teacher.

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  • Voices Of The Martyrs Graphic Novel Anthology AD 34-AD 203

    $29.99

    Voices of the Martyrs, A.D. 34 – A.D. 203 covers the earliest period of church history. Though we will never know how many have given their lives for following Jesus Christ, this volume contains the stories of the first, and best known. Men and women who were faithful to their Savior, regardless the cost.

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  • God Has Chosen

    $30.00

    “He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world . . .” Among the traditional tenets of the Christian faith is the belief that God chooses or elects people for salvation. For some Christians, such an affirmation is an indication of God’s sovereign and perfect will. For others, such a notion is troubling for it seems to downplay the significance of human agency and choice. Throughout the church’s history, Christians have sought to understand the meaning of relevant biblical texts and debated this theological conundrum. With care and insight, theologian Mark Lindsay surveys the development of the Christian doctrine of election. After exploring Scripture on this theme, he turns to the various articulations of this doctrine from the early church fathers, including Augustine, and medieval theologians such as Aquinas, to John Calvin’s view, the subsequent debate between Calvinists and Arminians, and Karl Barth’s modern reconception of the doctrine. On this journey through the Bible and church history, readers will discover how Christians have understood the notion that God has chosen.

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  • Questions Of Context

    $40.00

    The gospel is for every tribe, tongue, and nation (Revelation 7:9), but there is no single biblical or theological model for the relationship between the gospel and these diverse cultures. Indeed, every suggested approach carries its own range of philosophical and theological commitments that all too often remain unexamined. Contextualization is fraught with challenges-yet wrestling with questions of context is essential for how we understand mission, theology, and the embodiment of the Christian faith. German missiology has engaged these questions in a variety of ways that can both inform and critique Anglo-American traditions. In this compilation and analysis, John Flett and Henning Wrogemann translate and comment on a core thread of German missiological works, explaining both their historical and current significance. Drawn from journals and books across a century of academic discourse, these classic writings trace developments from Gustav Warneck, the father of contemporary missiology, through key thinkers such as Karl Hartenstein, who coined the term missio Dei, down to twenty-first century discussions of intercultural hermeneutics. Along the way they reveal advances, mistakes, and changing definitions as German missiologists interacted with the cultural and political realities of their time. This longitudinal study, showcasing many texts available in English for the first time, tackles the history and dynamics of contextualization head-on and sheds new light on the state of missiology today. We are reminded, Flett and Wrogemann argue, that we must keep working to honor difference within the worldwide Christian community as necessary to the fullness of our being in Christ.

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  • Gloss And The Text

    $28.99

    Scripture opens itself up by its own words and interpretation.

    William Perkins is the father of Puritanism, often remembered for his preaching manual, The Art of Prophesying. Much attention has been given to the Puritan movement, especially in its later forms, but comparatively little has been given to Perkins.

    In The Gloss and the Text, Andrew Ballitch provides a thorough examination of the hermeneutical principles that governed Perkins’s approach to biblical interpretation. Perkins taught that the Bible was God’s word as well as the interpretation of God’s word. Interpretation is no private matter; it is a public gift of the Spirit of God for the people of God. Ballitch’s study sheds light on Perkins as a preacher, theologian, and student of Scripture.

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  • History Of The Early Church

    $34.95

    The History of the Early Church is an attempt to get behind the popular myths which have dominated church life for nearly 2000 years by bringing together accounts from the New Testament and a few other works which describe the same incidents from different perspectives and often distort the narrative for security reasons. He points out the anomalies and comments on speculations which now seem to have a sounder base than most theologians would acknowledge. The result will disappoint many fundamentalists who have used the most tortuous arguments to support their version of events. However the essential message which emerges is that God is Love.

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  • Brown Church : Five Centuries Of Latina/O Social Justice, Theology, And Ide

    $30.00

    Interest in and awareness of the demand for social justice as an outworking of the Christian faith is growing. But it is not new.

    For five hundred years, the Latina/o culture and identity has been shaped by its challenges to the religious, socio-economic, and political status quo, whether in its opposition to Spanish colonialism, Latin American dictatorships, US imperialism in Central America, the oppression of farmworkers, or the current exploitation of undocumented immigrants. Christianity has played a significant role in that movement at every stage. Robert Chao Romero, the son of a Mexican father and a Chinese immigrant mother, explores the history and theology of what he terms the “Brown Church.” Romero considers how this movement has responded to these and other injustices throughout its history by appealing to the belief that God’s vision for redemption includes not only heavenly promises but also the transformation of every aspect of our lives and the world. Walking through this history of activism and faith, readers will discover that Latina/o Christians have a heart after God’s own.

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  • Multitude Of All Peoples

    $35.00

    Christianity is not becoming a global religion. It has always been a global religion.

    The early Christian movement spread from Jerusalem in every direction, taking on local cultural expression all around the ancient world. So why do so many people see Christianity as a primarily Western, white religion? In A Multitude of All Peoples, Vince Bantu surveys the geographic range of the early church’s history, revealing an alternate, more accurate narrative to that of Christianity as a product of the Western world. He begins by investigating the historical roots of the Western cultural captivity of the church, from the conversion of Constantine to the rise of European Christian empires. He then shifts focus to the too-often-forgotten concurrent development of diverse expressions of Christianity across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In the process, Bantu removes obstacles to contemporary missiological efforts. Focusing on the necessity for contextualization and indigenous leadership in effective Christian mission, he draws out practical lessons for intercultural communication of the gospel. Healing the wounds of racism, imperialism, and colonialism will be possible only with renewed attention to the marginalized voices of the historic global church. The full story of early Christianity makes clear that, as the apostle Peter said, “God does not show favoritism, but accepts those from every people who fear him and do what is right.”

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  • Dynamics Of Spiritual Life (Expanded)

    $45.00

    In this expanded edition of a classic work of spiritual theology, historian Richard Lovelace presents a history of spiritual renewals in light of biblical models. With scholarly and pastoral insight, he offers a powerful vision of renewal that can unify various models across traditions, combining individual and corporate spirituality, social activism, and evangelism.

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  • Challenging The Spirit Of Modernity

    $25.99

    God’s word illumines the darkness of society.

    Dutch politician and historian Groen van Prinsterer’s Unbelief and Revolution is a foundational work addressing the inherent tension between the church and secular society. Writing at the onset of modernity in Western culture, Groen saw with amazing clarity the dire implications of abandoning God’s created order for human life in society. Groen’s work served as an inspiration for many contemporary theologians, and he had a profound impact on Abraham Kuyper’s famous public theology.

    In Challenging the Spirit of Modernity, Harry Van Dyke places this seminal work into historical context, revealing how this vital contribution still speaks into the fractured relationship between religion and society. A deeper understanding of the roots of modern secularism and Groen’s strong, faithful response to it gives us a better grasp of the same conflict today.

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  • Why Church : A Basic Introduction

    $28.00

    Is a church just something we create to serve our purposes or to maintain old traditions? Or is the church something more vital, more meaningful, and more powerful?

    This can be hard to believe when we look at what happens in any one congregation or denomination. Certainly not all churches act like Jesus in the world, and in fact many churches in the West are dying. When it’s so easy to be confused, frustrated, or simply apathetic about the church, how should we understand its purpose today? In this appealing introduction to the nature of the local church, set in the context of Christian history and global diversity, historian and missionary Scott Sunquist brings us a portrait of the church in motion. Why Church? clarifies the two primary purposes of the church: worship and witness. Sunquist unpacks what the church is–and ought to be–using five movements of worship:
    *come together
    *stand to praise God
    *kneel to confess
    *sit to listen to the Word of God
    *go out into the world

    Packed with stories and insights from experiences in churches around the world, this book explores issues such as cultural contextualization, the meaning of conversion, worship in both personal and communal aspects, and how mission should combine telling the good news with being good news as a community. This primer on “what is church?” comes from Fuller Theological Seminary’s renowned church-planting program and is well suited to church leaders and their core teams to read together and share with new attenders as they catch the spirit of the dynamic gathering that is the local church.

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  • Meaning Of Protestant Theology

    $36.00

    This book offers a creative and illuminating discussion of Protestant theology. Veteran teacher Phillip Cary explains how Luther’s theology arose from the Christian tradition, particularly from the spirituality of Augustine. Luther departed from the Augustinian tradition and inaugurated distinctively Protestant theology when he identified the gospel that gives us Christ as its key concept. More than any other theologian, Luther succeeds in carrying out the Protestant intention of putting faith in the gospel of Christ alone. Cary also explores the consequences of Luther’s teachings as they unfold in the history of Protestantism.

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  • Christian Mission : A Concise, Global History

    $26.99

    A deeper understanding of the grand history of mission leads to a faithful expression of God’s mission today.

    From the beginning, God’s mission has been carried out by people sent around the world. From Abraham to Jesus, the thread that weaves its way throughout Scripture is a God who sends his people across the world, proclaiming his kingdom. As the world has evolved, Christian mission continues to be a foundational tradition in the church.

    In this one-volume textbook, Edward Smither weaves together a comprehensive history of Christian mission, from the apostles to the modern church. In each era, he focuses on the people sent by God to the ends of the earth, while also describing the cultural context they encountered. Smither highlights the continuity and development across thousands of years of global mission.

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  • Larger Hope : Universal Salvation From The Reformation To The Nineteenth Ce

    $31.00

    This book aims to uncover and explore the ideas of notable people in the story of Christian universalism from the time of the Reformation until the end of the nineteenth century. It is a story that is largely unknown in both the church and the academy, and the characters that populate it have for the most part passed into obscurity. With carefully located bore holes drilled to release the long-hidden theologies of key people and texts, the volume seeks to display and historically situate the roots, shapes, and diversity of Christian universalism. Here we discover a diverse and motley crew of mystics and scholars, social prophets and end-time sectarians, evangelicals and liberals, orthodox and heretics, Calvinists and Arminians, Puritans, Pietists, and a host of others. The story crisscrosses Continental Europe, Britain, and America, and its reverberations remain with us to this day.

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  • John Henry Newman And His Age

    $47.00

    Many books exist devoted to the life, thought, and writings of Blessed John Henry Newman, the premier Catholic theologian in nineteenth-century England. His influence has been enormous, perhaps especially on Vatican II (1962-65). This book is a Newman primer, and not only a primer about Newman himself, but also about his time and place in church history. It attends to the papacy during his lifetime, his companions and friends, some of his peers at Oxford University, the First Vatican Council (1869-70), as well as some of his writing and theology. It should be especially helpful to an interested reader who has no particular background in nineteenth-century church history or in Newman himself.

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  • Benedictine Reader 530-1530

    $49.95

    This Benedictine Reader, 530-1530, has been more than twenty years in the making. A collaboration of a dozen scholars, this project gives as broad and deep a sense of the reality of the first one thousand years of Benedictine monasticism as can be done in one volume, using primary sources in English translation. The texts included are drawn from many different genres and from several languages and areas of Europe. The introduction to each of the thirty-two chapters aims to situate each author and text and to make connections with other texts and studies within and outside the Reader. The general introduction summarizes the main ideas and practices that are present in the Rule of Saint Benedict and in the first thousand years of Benedictine monasticism while suggesting questions that a reader might bring to the texts.

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  • Disputed Teaching Of Vatican 2

    $43.99

    The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) radically shook up many centuries of tradition in the Roman Catholic Church. This book by Thomas Guarino, a noted expert on the sources and methods of Catholic doctrine, investigates whether Vatican II’s highly contested teachings on religious freedom, ecumenism, and the Virgin Mary represented a harmonious development of-or a rupture with-Catholic tradition.

    Guarino’s careful explanations of such significant terms as continuity, discontinuity, analogy, reversal, reform, and development greatly enhance and clarify his discussion. No other book on Vatican II so clearly elucidates the essential theological principles for determining whether-and to what extent-a conciliar teaching is in continuity or discontinuity with antecedent tradition.

    Readers from all faith traditions who care about the logic of continuity and change in Christian teaching will benefit from this masterful case study.

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  • Rise Of Evangelicalism

    $40.00

    Acknowledgments
    Abbreviations And Short Titles
    Introduction
    1. Landscapes: Political, Ecclesiastical, Spiritual
    2. Antecedents, Stirrings
    3. Revival, 1734-1738
    4. Revival, Fragmentation, Consolidation, 1738-1745
    5. Explanations
    6. Development, 1745-1770
    7. Diversification, 1770-1795
    8. In The World
    9. True Religion
    Afterword
    Select Bibliography
    Index

    Additional Info
    The word evangelical is widely used and widely misunderstood.

    Where did evangelicals come from?
    What motivated them?
    How did their influence become so widespread throughout the world during the eighteenth century?

    In this paper edition of this inaugural book in a series that charts the course of English-speaking evangelicalism over the last 300 years, Mark Noll offers a multinational narrative of the origin, development and rapid diffusion of evangelical movements in their first two generations. Theology, hymnody, gender, warfare, politics and science are all taken into consideration. But the focus is on the landmark individuals, events and organizations that shaped the story of the beginnings of this vibrant Christian movement.

    The revivals in Britain and North America in the mid-eighteenth century proved to be foundational in the development of the movement, its ethos, beliefs and subsequent direction. In these revivals, the core commitments of evangelicals were formed that continue to this day. In this volume you will find the fascinating story of their formation, their strengths and their weaknesses, but always their dynamism.

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  • Quest For The Historical Apostles

    $32.00

    This comprehensive historical and literary introduction to the lives of the apostles underscores their impact on the growth of the early church.

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  • Covenantal Priesthood : A Narrative Of Community For Baptist Churches

    $39.99

    This work in practical theology begins with an exploration of the psychosocial issues at play in Australian Baptist churches as communities. Many of those who attend such churches, and those like them in Britain and North America, often find a warm sense of welcome and belonging. What follows builds on this positive subjective experience through the lens of Christian community framed by the rich scriptural narrative of covenantal priesthood. Such corporate priesthood, as demonstrated by our early Baptist forebears, comes to joint expression in worship and sharing God’s blessing with his world, and affirms the mutual priestly service of covenanted church community.

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  • For The Gospels Sake

    $48.99

    Informed take on the amazing growth of a very unusual missionary organization

    The two-sided mission organization comprising Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics is a paradox that begs explanation. The scientific Summer Institute of Linguistics has worked in many countries around the world to translate the New Testament, develop unwritten languages, and educate indigenous communities. At the same time, Wycliffe Bible Translators has been one of the largest, fastest growing, and most controversial evangelical Christian movements during the last century.

    In this wide-ranging study Boone Aldridge-a religious historian and twenty-year insider at WBT-SIL-looks back at the organization’s early years, from its inception in 1934 to the death of its visionary founder, William Cameron Townsend, in 1982. He situates the iconic institution within the evolving landscape of mid-twentieth-century evangelicalism, examines its complex and occasionally confusing strategies and policies, and investigates the factors that led, despite persistent criticism from many sides, to its remarkable rise to prominence.

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  • Faith In A Pluralist Age

    $42.00

    Most academics agree with Peter Berger that pluralism theory appears more accurate than secularization theory in accounting for the societal changes that accompany modernization. Yet Berger’s earlier book Many Altars of Modernity gives limited attention to the implications of the pluralist paradigm for religious discourse, in particular for evangelicals. According to Berger–who wrote the first chapter in this book–while pluralism leads to less certainty about faith and creates “”secular spaces,”” it also, more positively, clarifies the importance of trust in God, highlights the nature of religious institutions as voluntary associations rather than birth rights, and challenges Christians to know what they believe in. Subsequent chapters respond to the first. Four responses are theoretical (e.g., challenging the concept of secular spaces, exploring social constructionism) and four are contextual (e.g., describing anti-pluralist forces in India, challenging feminists to pluralism, examining women’s responses to pluralism, and exploring values in Brazil and China). The ideas are easily accessible to the lay reader and are intended to initiate a much-needed conversation about the implications of pluralist theory. We conclude that pluralism is challenging for Christian faith but, as Peter Berger says, in most ways it is “”good for you.””

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  • Christian Peace Experiment

    $33.00

    This book examines part of the development of the Bruderhof community, which emerged in Germany in 1920. Community members sought to model their life on the New Testament. This included sharing goods. The community became part of the Hutterite movement, with its origins in sixteenth-century Anabaptism. After the rise to power of the Nazi regime, the Bruderhof became a target and the community was forcibly dissolved. Members who escaped from Germany and travelled to England were welcomed as refugees from persecution and a community was established in the Cotswolds. In the period 1933 to 1942, when the Bruderhof’s witness was advancing in Britain, its members were in touch with many individuals and movements. This book covers the Bruderhof’s connections with (among others) the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Peace Pledge Union, the social work of Muriel and Doris Lester in East London, Jewish refugee groups, and artistic pioneers like Eric Gill. As significant numbers of British people joined the Bruderhof, its farming, publishing and arts and crafts activities extended considerably. But with the outbreak of the Second World War, German members came to be regarded with suspicion and British members became unpopular locally because they were pacifists. Although the Bruderhof was defended in Parliament, notably by Lady Astor, it seemed that German members would be interned as enemy aliens. The consequence was that by 1942 over 300 community members had left England. With Mennonite assistance, they began to forge a new life in South America. This book traces a remarkable Christian peace experiment being undertaken in a time of great political upheaval.

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  • Christianity At The Crossroads

    $32.00

    Christianity in the twenty-first century is a global phenomenon. But in the second century, its future was not at all certain.

    Initially Christianity possessed little social or cultural influence and found itself fighting for its life. While apostolic tradition was emerging as a “rule of faith,” factions contested the nature of the gospel, and pagan philosophers found its claims scandalous. And while its pathway was tenuous, Christianity was forming structures of leadership and worship, and a core of apostolic texts was emerging as authoritative. But it was the challenges, obstacles, and transitions faced by Christians in the second century that, in many ways, would determine the future of the church for the next two millennia. It was a time when Christianity stood at a crossroads.

    Michael Kruger’s introductory survey examines how Christianity took root in the second century, how it battled to stay true to the vision of the apostles, and how it developed in ways that would shape both the church and Western culture over the next two thousand years. Christianity at the Crossroads provides an accessible and informative look at the complex and foundational issues faced by an infant church still trying to determine its identity. The church’s response to the issues of heresy and orthodoxy, the development of the canon, and the transmission of the Christian Scriptures not only determined its survival, but determined the kind of church it would be for generations to come.

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  • John Wesley : Optimist Of Grace

    $44.00

    John Wesley was an Anglican priest and major leader in the eighteenth-century Evangelical awakening whose theology and practice continues to influence the church today. This book tells how his own search for a heart renewed in love ultimately led him to a fresh vision of the way of salvation, one that is centered on sanctification, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and available to all. Transcending the theological dichotomies of his day, Wesley developed a distinctive Protestant tradition that continues to shape Methodist and Holiness Christians, and has had a significant impact on Pentecostalism. It was Wesley’s optimism of grace that gave his Methodists and generations to come a vibrant hope that hearts and lives, churches, and the world at large can all be changed by the power of God’s amazing love.

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  • Studies In Hellenistic Religions

    $49.00

    This selection of essays by Luther Martin brings together studies from throughout his career–both early as well as more recent–in the various areas of Graeco-Roman religions, including mystery cults, Judaism, Christianity, and Gnosticism. It is hoped that these studies, which represent spatial, communal, and cognitive approaches to the study of ancient religions might be of interest to those concerned with the structures and dynamics of religions past in general, as well as to scholars who might, with more recent historical research, confirm, evaluate, extend, or refute the hypotheses offered here, for that is the way scholars work and by which scholarship proceeds.

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  • Remembering The Reformation

    $37.00

    In 1517, Martin Luther set off what has been called, at least since the nineteenth century, the Protestant Reformation. Can Christians of differing traditions commemorate the upcoming 500th anniversary of this event together? How do we understand and assess the Reformation today? What calls for celebration? What calls for repentance? Can the Reformation anniversary be an occasion for greater mutual understanding among Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants? At the 2015 Pro Ecclesia annual conference for clergy and laity, meeting at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, an array of scholars–Catholic and Orthodox, Evangelical Lutheran and American Evangelical as well as Methodist–addressed this topic. The aim of this book is not only to collect these diverse Catholic and Evangelical perspectives but also to provide resources for all Christians, including pastors and scholars, to think and argue about the roads we have taken since 1517–as we also learn to pray with Jesus Christ “”that all may be one”” (John 17:21).

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  • Thinking With The Church

    $48.00

    Over the centuries, Baptists have labored to follow Christ in faithful devotion and service. More recently, they have occasionally partnered with fellow Christians from other traditions in these efforts while learning from each other along the way. In Thinking With the Church, Derek Hatch argues that Baptists need to follow the same pattern when it comes to their theological reflection, engaging the wisdom of all Christian pilgrims across time. This will require a new theological method–ressourcement–that embraces Baptists’ place within the Great Tradition of the Christian faith. Such work will not abandon long-held Baptist convictions but offers resources for renewing Baptists’ theological vision as they participate in the fullness of the mystical body of Christ.

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  • Jesus Followers In The Roman Empire

    $33.99

    When Jesus of Nazareth began proclaiming the kingdom of God early in the first century, he likely had no intention of starting a new religion, especially one that included former pagans. Yet a new religion did eventually develop–one that not only included non-Jews but was soon dominated by them. How did this happen?

    Jesus Followers in the Roman Empire by Paul Duff offers an accessible and informed account of Christian origins, beginning with the teaching of Jesus and moving to the end of the first century. Duff’s narrative shows how the rural Jewish movement led by Jesus developed into a largely non-Jewish phenomenon permeating urban centers of the Roman Empire.

    Paying special attention to social, cultural, and religious contexts–as well as to early Christian ideas about idolatry, marriage, family, slavery, and ethnicity– Jesus Followers in the Roman Empire will help readers cultivate a deeper understanding of the identity, beliefs, and practices of early Christ-believers.

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  • Rediscovering Paul : An Introduction To His World Letters And Theology

    $50.00

    Introduction: The Challenges Of Rediscovering Paul
    1. Rediscovering Paul In His World
    2. The Christophany
    3. Paul, The Letter Writer
    4. The Itinerant Paul: Galatians
    5. The Itinerant Paul: The Thessalonian Letters
    6. The Itinerant Paul: The Corinthian Letters
    7. The Itinerant Paul: Romans
    8. The Imprisoned Paul
    9. The Pastoral Paul
    10. Paul’s Theology And Spirituality
    11. Paul’s Legacy
    12. Paul’s Letters To Our Churches
    Maps
    Glossary
    Bibliography
    Author Index
    Subject Index
    Scripture Index

    Additional Info
    For some of us, the apostle Paul is intimidating, like a distant and difficult uncle. We’re told he’s pretty important. We’ve even read some of the good parts of his letters. But he can come across as prickly and unpredictable. Not someone you’d like to hang out with at a coffee shop on a rainy day. He’d make a scene, evangelize the barista, and arouse looks across the room. For a mid-morning latte, we’d prefer Jesus over Paul.

    But Paul is actually the guy who-from Ephesus to Athens-was the talk of the marketplace, the raconteur of the Parthenon. He knew everyone, founded emerging churches, and held his own against the intellectuals of his day. Maybe it’s time to give Paul a break, let go of some stereotypes, and try to get to know him on his own terms.

    If you’re willing to give Paul a try, Rediscovering Paul is your reliable guide. This is a book that reacquaints us with Paul, as if for the first time-arrested by Christ on the Damascus Road, holding forth in the marketplace of Corinth, working with a secretary in framing his letter to the Romans, or dealing with the messiness of emerging churches from Ephesus to Rome.

    Drawing on the best of contemporary scholarship, and with language shaped by teaching and conversing with today’s students, Rediscovering Paul is a textbook that has passed the test. Now in an expanded edition, it’s better than ever. There are fresh discussions of Paul’s letter writing and how those letters were received in the churches, new considerations of pseudonymity and the authenticity of Paul’s letters, and updated coverage of recent developments in interpreting Paul. In addition, the “So What?” feature-much loved by students-has been expanded. For considering the full range of issues, from Paul’s conversion and call to his ongoing impact on church and culture, this second edition of Rediscovering Paul comes enthusiastically recommended.

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  • Martin Luther And The Seven Sacraments

    $30.00

    This introduction to Luther’s sacramental theology explores the medieval church’s understanding of the seven sacraments, the Protestant rationale for keeping or eliminating each sacrament, and implications for contemporary theology and worship.

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  • Christian Women In The Patristic World (Reprinted)

    $35.00

    Illuminates the influence, authority, and legacy of women in the early Christian centuries, showing how they helped shape Christianity in its beliefs and practices.

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  • Rise And Fall Of The Incomparable Liturgy

    $32.99

    Most histories of Church of England liturgy, for good reason, begin in the 1530s, and centre on the 1549 and 1552 Books of Common Prayer. That is important for initial doctrinal changes, and the establishment of the liturgical text, However, both liturgies were extremely short-lived, and the real history of the Book of Common Prayer as the Liturgy of the Church of England begins with the Elizabethan Settlement, 1559, and a long tenure of the enacted Elizabethan liturgy. The only revision of any note was that of 1662, and this revision lasted without serious challenge until the 19th century, and without legal alternative until the twentieth century. This study therefore concentrates on 1559 until the Report of the Royal Commission in 1906 which paved the way for liturgical revision.

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  • Presbyterian Experience In The United States

    $35.00

    This book introduces readers to the Presbyterian movement in the United States as told by those who lived through and contributed to its history. William Yoo has drawn together essential documents from the colonial period to the present that illustrate and illumine U.S. Presbyterianism across diversities of race, ethnicity, geography, gender, age, and theological position. Readers will follow the church’s journey from modest origins as a Scots-Irish immigrant church to prominence on the national stage, from early revivals and tent meetings to large-scale theological debates, from defense of slavery and racial intolerance to the pursuit of social justice and racial reconciliation, and from retreat into theologically narrow enclaves to active engagement with national and international politics and culture. Yoo weaves together a coherent and compelling narrative using the voices of those who sought a faithfully Presbyterian witness to the gospel. Arranged both chronologically and thematically with historical maps and photos, this book provides a lively and accessible vista into the making and shaping of Presbyterianism in the United States.

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  • Pentecost To Present Trilogy Set

    $49.99

    Complete set of Pentecost to the Present. The author has carefully researched what evidence and reports there were in the early Church, and found that far from dying out, the Pentecostal sparks continued to spread through the known world. These three volumes give documented historic evidence of signs, wonders and miracles, leading to a massive expansion of the Church to the present day. Book One: Prophetic and Spiritual Gifts Movements covers the period from the early Church through the Middle Ages when much of northern Europe was converted through miracle-working missionary monks.

    Book Two: Reformations and Awakenings covers the period from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, including the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and how that affected Christianity both in Europe and the new World. Book Three: Worldwide Revivals and Renewal brings us up to the present day, sparked by the Welsh Revival of 1904-5 and Azusa Street in 1906 followed by the charismatic renewal and the global rise of Pentacostalism.

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  • Peril And Promise Of Christian Liberty

    $38.99

    How do Christians determine when to obey God even if that means disobeying other people? In this book W. Bradford Littlejohn addresses that question as he unpacks the magisterial political-theological work of Richard Hooker, a leading figure in the sixteenth-century English Reformation.

    Littlejohn shows how Martin Luther and other Reformers considered Christian liberty to be compatible with considerable civil authority over the church, but he also analyzes the ambiguities and tensions of that relationship and how it helped provoke the Puritan movement. The heart of the book examines how, according to Richard Hooker, certain forms of Puritan legalism posed a much greater threat to Christian liberty than did meddling monarchs. In expounding Hooker’s remarkable attempt to offer a balanced synthesis of liberty and authority in church, state, and conscience, Littlejohn draws out pertinent implications for Christian liberty and politics today.

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  • Theologies Of The American Revivalists

    $35.00

    Abbreviations
    Introduction
    1. Moderate Evangelical Revival Theology In The First Great Awakening
    2. First Great Awakening Alternatives: The Revival Theologies Of Andrew Croswell And Jonathan Edwards
    3. Revival Theology In The New Divinity Movement
    4. Congregationalist And New School Presbyterian Revival Theology In The Second Great Awakening
    5. Methodist Revival Theology In The Second Great Awakening
    6. Revival Theologies Among Early American Baptists
    7. The New Measures Revival Theology Of Charles Finney
    8. Two Responses To Modern Revival Theology: Princeton Seminary And The Restoration Movement

    Conclusion
    Bibliography
    General Index
    Scripture Index

    Additional Info
    For centuries, revivals-and the conversions they inspire-have played a significant role in American evangelicalism. Often unnoticed or unconsidered, however, are the particular theologies underlying these revivals and conversions to faith. With that in mind, church historian Robert Caldwell traces the fascinating story of American revival theologies from the First Great Awakening through the Second Great Awakening, from roughly 1740 to 1840. As he uncovers this aspect of American religious history, Caldwell offers a reconsideration of the theologies of figures such as George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, Joseph Bellamy, Samuel Hopkins, and Charles Finney. His scope also includes movements, such as New Divinity theology, Taylorism, Baptist revival theology, Princeton theology, and the Restorationist movement. With this study, we gain fresh insight into what it meant to become a Christian during the age of America’s great awakenings.

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  • Lovin On Jesus

    $33.99

    Lovin’ on Jesus: A Concise History of Contemporary Worship is a compact-but thorough-history of changes in North American Protestant worship that occurred in the second half of the twentieth century and that came to be known as “contemporary worship.” This scholarly but accessible work reveals a fascinating and complex lineage, which led to the worship forms that are now so common in many Christian worship services across the globe. Authors Lim and Ruth uncover the rise of this term itself in the early 1990s as the pivot point in the phenomenon’s history. They show how “contemporary worship” has multiple points of origin, and how new ways of worship developed along many different lines. The authors trace the rise of the term in the early 1990s, pointing to a new phase in its history: promotion and adoption by mainline congregations. The book documents this phase, as well as the earlier phases, with original source material including personal interviews. Lovin’ on Jesus also tells the story of the ongoing evolution of contemporary worship both within and beyond mainline congregations. It is important to note that the story of contemporary worship includes not only music, but also its other features.

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