The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: how the Evangelical battle over the end times shaped a nation by
A fascinating history of dispensationalism and its influence on popular culture, politics, and religion In The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, Daniel G. Hummel illuminates how dispensationalism, despite often being dismissed as a fringe apocalyptic movement, shaped Anglo-American evangelicalism and the larger American cultural imagination. Hummel locates dispensationalism's origin in the writings of the nineteenth-century Protestant John Nelson Darby, who established many of the hallmarks of the theology, such as premillennialism and belief in the rapture. Though it consistently faced criticism, dispensationalism held populist, and briefly scholarly, appeal--visible in everything from turn-of-the-century revivalism to apocalyptic bestsellers of the 1970s to current internet conspiracy theories. Measured and irenic, Hummel objectively evaluates evangelicalism's most resilient (and contentious) popular theology. As the first comprehensive intellectual-cultural history of its kind, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism is a must-read for students and scholars of American religion.
As Often As You Eat This Bread : communion frequency in English, Scottish, and early American churches by
Why can't Christians agree about communion? Why is it that in some churches all worship services culminate in a holy meal whereas other churches celebrate this "holy supper" only once in a while? Theologian Gregory Soderberg has researched this question, excavating patterns of communion frequency within one of the bigger Christian families: the Reformed tradition. Despite being the sacrament of unity, the eucharist has often been a cause of strife in Christian churches.In his study, Gregory David Soderberg is the first to focus in depth on communion frequency in the Reformed tradition. He concludes that, although the 16th century Reformers desired more frequent communion, this was balanced by their desire to create mature Christian communities. So, preachers and church leaders stressed the priority of moral conduct and the importance of understanding what the eucharist meant for Protestants. The study analyses sources from the very beginnings of this tradition in 16th century Zurich and Geneva, and it follows its trajectories through England and Scotland all the way down to 19th century USA. Ultimately, it is hoped that understanding the polemics of the past will help churches today to celebrate the sacrament of unity more meaningfully.
A Hidden Wisdom: medieval contemplatives on self-knowledge, reason, love, persons, and immortality by
Medieval philosophy is primarily associated today with university-based disputations and the authorities cited in those disputations. In their own time, however, scholastic debates were recognized as just one part of wide-ranging philosophical and theological discussions. A Hidden Wisdom breaks new ground by drawing attention to another crucial component of these conversations: the Christian contemplative tradition. The period from 1200 to 1500, in particular, saw a dramatic increase in the production and consumption of mystical and contemplative literature in the 'Christian West', by laypeople as well as religious scholars, women as well as men. A Hidden Wisdom focuses on five topics of particular interest to both scholastics and contemplatives in this period, namely, self-knowledge, reason and its limits, love and the will, persons, and immortality and the afterlife. This focus centers the (often overlooked) contributions of medieval women and demonstrates that when we re-unite scholasticism with its contemplative counterpart, we gain not only a more accurate understanding of the scope of medieval Christian philosophy and theology but also an increased awareness of a deeply practical tradition that builds up as well as tears down, generates as well as deconstructs. The book's treatment of topics and figures is meant to be representative rather than exhaustive: a tasting menu, rather than a comprehensive study. The choice of topics offers a series of 'hooks' for philosophers to connect their own interests to issues central to medieval contemplative philosophy, while also providing medievalists in other disciplines a fresh lens through which to view these texts.
Learning to Read, Learning Religion: catechism primers in Europe from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries by
Catechism primers are inconspicuous but telling little books for children combining the teaching of reading skills and religious catechesis. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, they have been produced, disseminated and used in huge numbers in many regions of the world, in particular in Europe. Remarkably, similar texts appeared across the continent, spanning confessional traditions that were in other respects highly divergent. In different places, and across the whole period, different denominations used not only similar pedagogical and religious strategies, but also shared the same formats and iconography. This volume, edited by scholars from Finland, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, is the result of a collaborative transnational and interdisciplinary effort including education, language teaching, children's literature, book history, and religious studies. With contributions on seventeen European countries and regions, it sheds new light on a fascinating but largely neglected part of European cultural heritage, and, by establishing a comprehensive and authoritative summary of the field, offers fresh impetus for further transnational research.
Amazing Grace: the life of John Newton and the surprising story behind his song by 
Anselm: a Very Short Introduction by 
The Bible in History : how the texts have shaped the times by
Over 15 years after its original publication The Bible in History remains an essential examination of the symbiotic relationship between Scripture and the social and cultural contexts shaping its interpretation. David W. Kling traces the fascinating story of how specific biblical texts-sometimes a single verse, other times a selection of verses or chapters, even books-have at various times emerged to be the inspiration of movements that have changed the course of history. Episodes range from Anthony's call to the desert and a life of monasticism after hearing Jesus's directive to the "rich young rule" to give up his possessions, to the Anabaptists non-violent ethic in following Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, to the varied applications of the exodus motif in African American history. This revised and expanded second edition adds two new chapters. The first examines the text in Matthew 28:18-20 and considers the multitudinous interpretations before, during, and after the text emerged as the iconic "Great Commission" of missionary motivation in the modern period. The second assesses those biblical texts that encompass the divisive and ongoing issue of male homosexuality. Both chapters engage the question of, "how the texts have shaped the times," but, as Kling argues, the "times" have also exerted an enormous impact on shaping the interpretation of the texts, and hence, on the continuing disputes over the meaning of those texts.
The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: how the FBI aided and abetted the rise of white Christian nationalism by
The shocking untold story of how the FBI partnered with white evangelicals to champion a vision of America as a white Christian nation On a Sunday morning in 1966, a group of white evangelicals dedicated a stained glass window to J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI director was not an evangelical, but his Christian admirers anointed him as their political champion, believing he would lead America back to God. The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover reveals how Hoover and his FBI teamed up with leading white evangelicals and Catholics to bring about a white Christian America by any means necessary. Lerone Martin draws on thousands of newly declassified FBI documents and memos to describe how, under Hoover's leadership, FBI agents attended spiritual retreats and worship services, creating an FBI religious culture that fashioned G-men into soldiers and ministers of Christian America. Martin shows how prominent figures such as Billy Graham, Fulton Sheen, and countless other ministers from across the country partnered with the FBI and laundered bureau intel in their sermons while the faithful crowned Hoover the adjudicator of true evangelical faith and allegiance. These partnerships not only solidified the political norms of modern white evangelicalism, they also contributed to the political rise of white Christian nationalism, establishing religion and race as the bedrock of the modern national security state, and setting the terms for today's domestic terrorism debates. Taking readers from the pulpits and pews of small-town America to the Oval Office, and from the grassroots to denominational boardrooms, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover completely transforms how we understand the FBI, white evangelicalism, and our nation's entangled history of religion and politics.
The Sickness unto Death: a new translation by
The first new translation of Kierkegaard's masterwork in a generation brings to life this impassioned investigation of the self. The "greatest psychologist of the spirit since St. Augustine" (Gregory R. Beabout), Soren Kierkegaard is renowned for such richly imagined philosophical works as Fear and Trembling and The Concept of Anxiety. Yet only The Sickness unto Death condenses his most essential ideas--on aesthetics, ethics, and religion--into a single volume. First published in 1849 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, The Sickness unto Death is as demanding as it is concise, posing fundamental yet complicated questions about human nature and the self. Beginning with the biblical story of Lazarus, whom Jesus miraculously raised from the dead, The Sickness unto Death identifies the titular "sickness" as "despair," a state worse than death because it is "unto" death. As Kierkegaard demonstrates, despair--or, in Christian categories, "sin"--is a sickness not of the body, but of the spirit, and thus, of the self. A dramatic "medical history" of the course of this sickness, The Sickness unto Death culminates, as all medical histories do, in a crisis, a turning point at which the self, the patient, either realizes or abandons itself. Given the choice between eternal salvation and extinction, Kierkegaard calls upon the self to become receptive in faith to God's mercy, "even today, even at this hour, even at this instant." With his "historian's eye" (Vanessa Parks Rumble) and "lucid and informative" (George Pattison) introduction, Bruce H. Kirmmse deftly situates The Sickness unto Death in the historical context of the European revolutions of 1848, reminding us that even Kierkegaard was a product of his time and place. Yet as Kirmmse ultimately shows, The Sickness unto Death is as apt for our times as for mid-nineteenth-century Europe, speaking to the human soul across generations and centuries.
Christology and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century by
Richard Cross explores the largely uncharted territory of seventeenth-century Christology, paying close attention to its metaphysical and semantic presuppositions and consequences. He shows that theologians of all stripes develop and expand theories that are associated respectively with the medieval theologians Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Italian and French Dominicans follow Aquinas closely, read through the lens of Cardinal Cajetan. But most Iberian Dominicans incorporate Suárez's theory of modes into their account, and Suárez, whose account is a modification of Scotus's, is in turn followed by his fellow Jesuits. Lutherans use Cajetan's account to fill explanatory gaps in their own accounts; and Reformed theologians by and large adapt the position associated with Scotus. The study ends with an account of Leibniz's Christology in its historical and conceptual context.
Homer in Wittenberg: rhetoric, scholarship, prayer by
Homer in Wittenberg draws on manuscript and printed materials to demonstrate Homer's foundational significance for educational and theological reform during the Reformation in Wittenberg. In the first study of Melanchthon's Homer annotations from three different periods spanning his career, and the first book-length study of his reading of a classical author, William Weaver offers a new perspective on the liberal arts and textual authority in the Renaissance and Reformation. Melanchthon's significance in the teaching of the liberal arts has long been recognized, but Homer's prominent place in his educational reforms is not widely known. Homer was instrumental in Melanchthon's attempt to transform the university curriculum, and his reforms of the liberal arts are clarified by his engagements with Homeric speech, a subject of interest in recent Homer scholarship. Beginning with his Greek grammar published just as he arrived in Wittenberg in 1518, and proceeding through his 1547 work on dialectic, Homer in Wittenberg shows that teaching Homer decisively shaped Melanchthon's redesign of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Melanchthon embarked on reforming the liberal arts with the ultimate objective of reforming theological education. His teaching of Homer illustrates the philosophical principles behind his use of well-known theological terms including sola scriptura, law and gospel, and loci communes. Homer's significance extended even to a practical theology of prayer, and Wittenberg scholia on Homer from the 1550s illustrate how the Homeric poem could be used to exercise faith as well as literary judgment and eloquence.
Minneapolis: an urban biography (Updated edition) by
Newly updated with reflections on the city at the center of a global social uprising, this concise history of Minneapolis features stories that are familiar, surprising, and sure to change the way you see the City of Lakes. Minneapolis is Minneapolis because of the water--because of the Mississippi River, and St. Anthony Falls, and the beautiful lakes that dot the city's neighborhoods. Energized by the power of a magnificent waterfall that was harnessed with stolen technology, it became a major, even global, city. In this succinct and thought-provoking book, Tom Weber provides an urban biography of the City of Lakes. The confluence of the Mississippi and the Minnesota River is a sacred place for Dakota people, who have lived here for millennia. Since the city's beginnings in the 1850s, Minneapolis has experienced continual collapses and rebuilding. Some collapses were real, as when the Falls were nearly destroyed; some are metaphorical, as when corruption and the mob threatened to overtake the life of the city. Weber also explores the effects of the rebuilding and who was in charge: who was left in, and who was left out. In this updated paperback edition, a new conclusion recounts the context for and the worldwide reaction to the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May of 2020. In the midst of a pandemic, the city was thrust into the global spotlight, and a spotlight was turned once again on the legacies of racism and inequality that brought Minneapolis to the breaking point. Cities, like people, are always changing, and the history of that change is the city's biography. This book illuminates the unique character of Minneapolis, weaving in the hidden stories of place, politics, and identity that continue to shape its residents' lives.
The 1820-1850 Religious Revivals of Hans Nielsen Hauge : a sociological study of the modernization of mentality by 
Luther and Philosophies of the Reformation by 
Martin Luther and the Council of Trent: the battle over scripture and the doctrine of justification by 
Women and the Christian Story: a global history by 
Early Christianity in Athens, Attica, and Adjacent Areas: from Paul to Justinian I (1st-6th cent. AD) by 
Mary Magdalene, la Malinche, and the Ethics of Interpretation by 
In the Image of Her : recovering motherhood in the Christian tradition by Enjoy the latest articles by Luther Sem's own Faculty, from Word & World, most recent issue in 2022, accessed via Luther Library's subscription to ATLA -Religion Database. Here's a few samples:
Looking back to imagine going forward, by Jennie Wojciechowski
Also found in the ATLA Database is the Lutheran Quarterly--- Here are a few examples from their most recent issues: Current Perspectives on Luther’s Biblical Interpretation by Robert Kolb (Lutheran Q); Bonhoeffer's Luther Bible, by Shetler (see PDF below); What womanist theology taught me about God, by Lauren Reliford in Sojourners Magazine, Mar.23, 2023
To Walk the Earth Again: the politics of resurrection in early America by
The Protestant conviction that believers would rise again, in bodily form, after death, shaped their attitudes towards personal and religious identity, community, empire, progress, race, and the environment. In To Walk the Earth Again Christopher Trigg explores the political dimension of Anglo-American Protestant writing about the future resurrection of the dead, examining texts written between the seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. By reading histories, epic poetry, funeral sermons, and scientific tracts alongside works of eschatological exegesis, Trigg challenges the conventional scholarly assumption that Protestantism's rejection of purgatory prepared the way for the individualization and secularization of Western attitudes towards mortality. Puritans, Anglicans, Quakers, and radicals looked to resurrection to understand their communities' prospects in the uncertain terrain of colonial America. Their belief that political identities and religious duties did not expire with their mortal bodies but were carried over into the next life shaped their positions on a wide variety of issues, including the limits of ecclesiastical and civil power, the relationship of humanity to the natural world, and the emerging rhetoric of racial difference. In the early national and antebellum periods, secular and Christian reformers drew on the idea of resurrection to imagine how American republicanism might transform society and politics and ameliorate the human form itself. By taking early modern Protestant beliefs seriously, Trigg unfolds new perspectives on their mutually constitutive visions of earthly and resurrected existence.
War and Peace in the Religious Conflicts of the Long Sixteenth Century by
This collection of essays seeks to analyse historically these influences, connections, and impact from multiple points of view, such as - but not limited to - the links between war and rebellion, the issues of trust and religious violence, early modern university debates on war and peace, the problems engendered by intolerance and the difficult management of tolerance, the delicate matters of politico-religious accommodation and the implementation of peace in towns and contested territories, the reappraisals and changes in the narratives of military prowess and religious fidelity, the role of women in the religious conflicts in the 'long sixteenth century', the porous boundaries (imagined or real) which existed between 'enemies' in times of war and the issues connected to the cohabitation with the 'Other' in times of peace.
Sermon Von Ablass und Gnade = Sermon on indulgences and grace : 95 theses by
The Sermon von Ablass und Gnade (Sermon on Indulgences and Grace) is a seminal text for the Reformation: it is the first vernacular statement of Luther's views on the question which led to his break with Rome; the first printed work of his to reach a mass audience; and the first example of the direct, arresting style which became the hallmark of his German writings. The work hit the market 500 years ago, in the second half of March 1518, five months after the posting of the 95 Theses, and within three years at least 24 editions had been printed in various parts of Germany and Switzerland. The volume is based on two of these editions, copies of which are held in the Taylor Institution Library: Arch. 8° G. 1518 (5), printed by Pamphilus Gengenbach in Basel, and Arch. 8° G. 1518 (6), printed by Valentin Schumann in Leipzig. It presents a guide to the theological, historical, material, linguistic, and stylistic importance of this work. The Sermon rejects scholastic teaching about indulgences and proposes instead a theology of grace. Luther meant the Sermon as an accessible summary of his views, and for the modern reader it is still the most succinct account of Luther's side in the indulgence controversy, serving as an introduction to the more technical 95 Theses which are also included in Latin, a new English translation by Howard Jones, and explanatory footnotes in this edition. The theological and historical context of the Sermon and 95 Theses is complex and dates back centuries before the actual texts. Martin Keßler explains this background and provides an evaluation of both works in 'Theological and Historical Background'. This volume includes a side-by-side facsimile of the two Taylorian copies on facing pages which is complemented by a digital reconstruction of the broadsides from which they were printed, available with all content of the book on editions.mml.ox.ac.uk, prepared by Emma Huber. The printed text is based on the Leipzig edition and a new translation into modern English by Howard Jones. Henrike Lähnemann offers a detailed guide to the book-history in 'The Taylorian Copies' (including an analysis of the woodcuts in the Basel edition and the marginalia added to the Taylorian copy of the Leipzig edition), a preview to the follow-up pamphlets in the debate, and an account of the acquisition history by Christina Ostermann.
American Methodism : a compact history, revised and updated Revised and Updated by
The essential guide to American Methodism revised and updated through 2020.Four of Methodism's most respected teachers give us a vivid picture of 260 years of Methodist experience in America. The revised edition updates the Methodist movement's story through 2020, including the social, political, economic, technological, and global disruptions that cause faith communities and denominations to pull apart.American Methodism Revised and Updated begins with the explosion of evangelical Pietism and revolutionary Methodism, the First Great Awakening, as an independent nation was formed.It then highlights key 19th century themes and Methodist contributions, such as spreading scriptural holiness through missions and literature, planting tens of thousands of Sunday schools and churches by Circuit Riders, the pivotal Methodist schism between abolitionists and enslavers, the innovative building of schools and hospitals into the next century, and the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening.Finally it explores the movements of 20th century Methodism, including the expansion of home and foreign missions, the Methodist drive for Prohibition, the decision for nationwide reunification on the cusp of World War II, reunification with the United Brethren during the Vietnam War, the Methodist ordination of women during the 1950s, Black Methodist leadership in the 1960s Civil Rights movement, and the liturgical renewal or reformation of worship (ancient and future).
The Complete Treatises : with selected letters and prayers and the Meditation on human redemption by
An expanded version of the translator's Anselm: The Basic Writings, The Complete Treatises incorporates new translations of works omitted from that volume (most notably, De grammatico) in addition to selected letters and prayers of philosophical interest. The only such collection translated by a single hand and rendered with attention to terminological consistency across the treatises, it's the ideal choice for use by students of philosophy and theology.
Hellenism, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity : transmission and transformation of ideas by 
The Origins of Judaism: an archaeological-historical reappraisal by 
Religion, Women of Color, and the Suffrage Movement: the journey to holistic freedom by 
We Are Not One: a history of America's fight over Israel by 
Everyday religiosity and the politics of belonging in Ukraine by 
The devotion and promotion of stigmatics in Europe, c. 1800-1950 : between saints and celebrities by 
Sacred rivals : Catholic missions and the making of Islam in nineteenth-century France and Algeria by 
Gods, spirits, and worship in the Greco-Roman world and early Christianity by 
Found Christianities : remaking the world of the second century CE by 
Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain by 
Triadosis: union with the triune God. by 
The Oxford handbook of religion and Europe by 
Martin Luther and the Called Life by 
What Makes a Church Sacred?: legal and ritual perspectives from late antiquity by