William Bentley, pastor in Salem, Massachusetts from 1783 to his death in 1819, was unlike anyone else in America's founding generation, for he had come to unique conclusions about how best to maintain a traditional understanding of Christianity in a world ever changing by the forces of the Enlightenment.
Studies of religion among our nation's newest immigrants largely focus on how religion serves the immigrant community -- for example by creating job networks and helping retain ethnic identity in the second generation.
The extraordinary changes in world society at the beginning of the 21st century have involved religion to a degree that would have amazed earlier observers of modernity.
The explosive growth of the immigrant population since the 1960s has raised concerns about its impact on public life, but only recently have scholars begun to ask how religion affects the immigrant experience in our society.
Recent years have seen unprecedented attention to faith-based institutions as agents of social change, spurred in part by cuts in public funding for social services and accompanied by controversy about the separation of church and state.
This book examines the debate over the connection between religion and public life in society during the fifty years following the American Revolution.
The common view of the nineteenth-century pastoral relationship--found in both contemporary popular accounts and 20th-century scholarship--was that women and clergymen formed a natural alliance and enjoyed a particular influence over each other.
The growing scholarly attention in recent years to the religious world of late antiquity has focused new attention on the quest for holiness by the strange, compelling, often obscure early Christian monks known as the desert fathers.
Feminization is said to occur when women enter any given occupation in substantial numbers, and ostensibly leads to such dynamics as sex-segregation, reduced opportunities for men, and depressed wages and diminished prestige for the occupation as a whole.
The Fengdao kejie or "e;Rules and Precepts for Worshiping the Dao"e; dates from the early seventh century and is a key text of medieval Daoist priesthood and monasticism, which was first formally organized in the sixth century.
The death of Pope John Paul II and consequent election of Pope Benedict XVI has shed light on a political process that the world has not been privy to for almost twenty-six years.
The clergy today faces mounting challenges in an increasingly secular world, where declining prestige makes it more difficult to attract the best and the brightest young Americans to the ministry.
In this study, based on both historical evidence and ethnographic data, Paula Arai shows that nuns were central agents in the foundation of Buddhism in Japan in the sixth century.
Hope and Hospitality for Migrating People Never have so many people left their homes and migrated to other parts of the world as weve seen in recent years.
A Revolution in Rhyme: Poetic Co-option under the Islamic Republic offers, for the first time, an original, timely examination of the pivotal role poetry plays in policy, power and political legitimacy in modern-day Iran.
A Revolution in Rhyme: Poetic Co-option under the Islamic Republic offers, for the first time, an original, timely examination of the pivotal role poetry plays in policy, power and political legitimacy in modern-day Iran.
The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies represents more than a century of scholarship related to the theology, history, and methodology of the propagation of Christian faith and the engagement of Christians with cultures, religions, and societies worldwide.
The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies represents more than a century of scholarship related to the theology, history, and methodology of the propagation of Christian faith and the engagement of Christians with cultures, religions, and societies worldwide.
This book provides an account and explanation of a fundamental dilemma facing secular states: the 'legitimacy gap' left by the withdrawal of religion as a source of legitimacy.
This book provides an account and explanation of a fundamental dilemma facing secular states: the 'legitimacy gap' left by the withdrawal of religion as a source of legitimacy.
In early medieval Europe, monasticism constituted a significant force in society because the prayers of the religious on behalf of others featured as powerful currency.
In early medieval Europe, monasticism constituted a significant force in society because the prayers of the religious on behalf of others featured as powerful currency.
Bob Tennant presents a history of the missionary work, cultures, and rhetoric of the Church of England in 1760-1870, when it was the predominant organizer of Protestant overseas missions.
This selection of writings from the most important moments in the history of Christianity has become established as a classic reference work, providing insights into 2000 years of Christian theological and political debate.
Conflict and Conversion explores how Catholic missionaries, merchants, and adventurers brought their faith to the strategically and commercially crucial region of Southeast Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Gavin D'Costa breaks new ground in this authoritative study of the Second Vatican Council's doctrines on other religions, with particular attention to Judaism and Islam.
This book identifies the distinguishing features of fundamental theology, as distinct from philosophical theology, natural theology, apologetics, and other similar disciplines.
This book identifies the distinguishing features of fundamental theology, as distinct from philosophical theology, natural theology, apologetics, and other similar disciplines.
This volume proposes a fresh strategy for ecumenical engagement - 'Receptive Ecumenism' - that is fitted to the challenges of the contemporary context and has already been internationally recognised as making a distinctive and important new contribution to ecumenical thought and practice.
Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology provides both a historical and a theological analysis of the achievements of the renowned generation of theologians whose influence pervaded French theology and society in the period 1930 to 1960, and beyond.