Showing titles in History

Divine Providence is one of the major works of the Enlightenment scientist and religious seer Emanuel Swedenborg. It provides a coherent and satisfying solution to what has been called "the problem of evil": How are God's goodness and power reconcilable with evil's presences in the larger world and in the human mind and heart?

Considered by many to be one of G.K. Chesterton’s greatest works, The Everlasting Man (first published in 1925), along with many of Chesterton’s other works, were heavily influenced by his own spiritual journey into Christianity. Published in 1925, The Everlasting Man is said to be a rebuttal of H.G. Wells’ The Outline of History, in which Chesterton delves into the history of religion and the spiritual exploration of Western society while defending any objections to Christianity.

This work is a translation of Celsus' The True Teaching--the very first extensive criticism of Christianity, probably written in the late second century CE. In contrast to the rendition of this work by R. J. Hoffmann, Dr. Litwa offers a literal--though not wooden--translation of Celsus in an attempt to represent its original language and force. Celsus was eloquent, witty, and sharp-witted. There is, accordingly, no need to improve on his language or rhetoric, let alone to add or rearrange material. Litwa simply tries to represent The True Teaching—in all its biting wit and force. The ...

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 in the so-called "burned-over district" of upstate New York, which was producing seers and prophets daily. Most of the new creeds flamed out; Smith's would endure, becoming the most significant homegrown religion in American history. In American Zion Benjamin E. Park presents a fresh, sweeping account of the Latter-day Saints.

Don Richardson, author of the best-selling book Peace Child, has studied cultures throughout the world and found startling evidence of belief in the one true God within hundreds of them. In Eternity in Their Hearts, Richardson gives fascinating, real-life examples of ways people groups have exhibited terms and concepts in their histories that have prepared them for the gospel.

The Council of Nicea was not clerics in a dark and ornate hall. It was brawls in churchyards; it was emperors and governors fighting to save the empire; it was political intrigue as the governments of church and state blended into a volatile stew. It was the way a fringe group of peace-loving communal worshipers of a crucified Palestinian prophet conquered the Roman Empire.

In the 2,000 years that have elapsed since the time of Christ, Christians have been as much divided by their faith as united, as much at odds as in communion. And the contents of Christian confession have developed with astonishing energy. How can believers claim a faith that has been passed down through the ages while recognizing the real historical contingencies that have shaped both their doctrines and their divisions? In this carefully argued essay, David Bentley Hart critiques the concept of "tradition" that has become dominant in Christian thought as fundamentally incoherent.

"The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism's most respected historians.

Renowned as a printer, scientist, and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin also published more works on religious topics than any other 18th-century American layperson. Born to Boston Puritans, by his teenage years Franklin had abandoned the exclusive Christian faith of his family and embraced deism. But Franklin, as a man of faith, was far more complex than the "thorough deist" who emerges in his autobiography.

The preaching of the truth, brother, and the confession of Orthodoxy is more needful for us than everything else, and we must make this confession before all mankind. For this is the foundation of all who believe. On account of this confession Peter was called blessed and was appointed to bear the keys of the kingdom of God. Paul, too, bore the hope of receiving the crown of life, since he kept and preached the faith. Indeed, the whole choir of the saints who did likewise and finished the race well has been glorified. We must also build up our neighbor, as much as we are able.

The earliest Christians believed Jesus was an ancient celestial being who put on a bodysuit of flesh, died at the hands of dark forces, and then rose from the dead and ascended back into the heavens. But the writing we have today from that first generation of Christians never says where they thought he landed, where he lived, or where he died. The idea that Jesus toured Galilee and visited Jerusalem arose only a lifetime later, in unsourced legends written in a foreign land and language. Many sources repeat those legends, but none corroborate them.

How have the crusades contributed to Islamist rage and terrorism today? Were the crusades the Christian equivalent of modern jihad? In this sweeping yet crisp history, Thomas F. Madden offers a brilliant and compelling narrative of the crusades and their contemporary relevance.

In this provocative tell-all, David Gushee gives an insider's look at the frictions and schisms of evangelical Christianity, based on his experiences that began with becoming a born-again Southern Baptist in 1978 to being kicked out of evangelicalism in 2014 for his stance on LGBT inclusion in the church. But Gushee's religious pilgrimage proves even broader than that, as he leads his listener through his childhood experiences in Roman Catholicism, his difficult days at the liberal Union Seminary in New York, his encounters with the Christian Right, and more. In telling his story, Gushee speaks to the cultural divisions of a generation.

As a boy, Jesus was a refugee, an outsider, an immigrant in Galilee in which he grew up, and affected by horrific atrocities by the occupying Roman overlords. All this and more is explored in this scholarly but highly accessible investigation into the world of Jesus, ranging from his birth to his coming of age and beyond. Joan Taylor, a world authority on the history and literature of the first century CE, draws both on the latest archaeological findings and on the historical clues to be found within ancient texts of the period.

In these symbolic prophecies the history of twelve or thirteen centuries is written in advance. Compare them with anything else in the entire circle of literature, and you will realize that they stand apart as a thing unique, like a living man in a gallery of statues. The miracle of the existence of these prophecies in the book, and of their fulfillment in the facts of history, is so great that few minds can grasp it.

Moved by his mother's death and his Irish Catholic family's complicated history with the church, Timothy Egan decided to follow in the footsteps of centuries of seekers to force a reckoning with his own beliefs. He embarked on a thousand-mile pilgrimage through the theological cradle of Christianity, exploring one of the biggest stories of our time: the collapse of religion in the world that it created. The goal: walking to St. Peter's Square, in hopes of meeting the galvanizing pope who is struggling to hold together the church through the worst crisis in half a millennium.

Who was among the last at the cross and the first at the empty tomb? Mary Magdalene. Her role in Jesus's ministry as told in all four Gospels was pivotal in many ways. Yet her story is often overlooked, confused, or scandalized by the church. In The Mary We Forgot, award-winning church historian and theologian Jennifer Powell McNutt unpacks Scripture and church history to reveal the real Mary Magdalene as a model of discipleship for all Christians today—women and men alike.

Imagine sharing your home with the mother of the Messiah. From the cross, Jesus gasped his final instructions: "Woman, behold, your son." Remarkably, Jesus was giving his mother, Mary, to his beloved disciple, John. Then, Jesus declared this to his dear friend: "Behold, your mother." (John 19:26-27) Immediately, this new holy family was thrust into the unknowable, along with the Messiah's closest followers. As they struggle through the vicious trauma of the Lord's crucifixion and death.

This brief, accessibly written volume introduces key figures, texts, and themes of the mystical tradition and shows how and why the mystics can speak to the church today. Jason Baxter, an expert educator and storyteller, explains that the mystical tradition offers a more robust understanding of God than our current shallow conceptions.

Taking America Back for God points to the phenomenon of "Christian nationalism," the belief that the United States is - and should be - a Christian nation. At its heart, Christian nationalism demands that we must preserve a particular kind of social order, an order in which everyone - Christians and non-Christians, native-born and immigrants, whites and minorities, men and women - recognizes their "proper" place in society.