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Christianity
Kinds of Christianity Selected AbstractsCONVERSION TO CHRISTIANITY: THE COLONIZATION OF THE MIND?INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF MISSION, Issue 366 2003Brian Stanley First page of article [source] ON GRACE AND RECIPROCITY A FRESH APPROACH TO CONTEXTUALIZATION WITH REFERENCE TO CHRISTIANITY IN MELANESIAINTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF MISSION, Issue 355 2000Theodor Ahrens First page of article [source] CONTESTING THE WORLD AND THE DIVINE: BALTHASAR'S TRINITARIAN "RESPONSE" TO GIANNI VATTIMO'S SECULAR CHRISTIANITYMODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 4 2007ANTHONY C. SCIGLITANO This essay joins the contemporary debate over the proper theological and philosophical hermeneutic for interpreting the phenomenon of secularism. The first part offers a sustained Balthasar-influenced critique of Gianni Vattimo's secular translation of Christianity. I argue that Vattimo's Heideggerian-Hegelian influenced reading of secularism as Christianity's proper telos is both philosophically and theologically problematic. Part Two of this article reads Balthasar's work as a response to the philosophical and theological underpinnings of Vattimo's thought. Balthasar would argue that it is in a more traditional, yet remarkably daring account of the Trinitarian relations that the "secular" finds both its ground and dignity. [source] RADICAL MARTYRDOM AND COSMIC CONFLICT IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY , By Paul MiddletonRELIGIOUS STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2008Michael W. Holmes No abstract is available for this article. [source] Medieval Marriage: Symbolism and Society by David d'Avray Byzantine Women: Varieties of Experience, AD 800,1200 edited by Lynda Garland Household, Women and Christianities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages edited by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Jocelyn Wogan-BrowneGENDER & HISTORY, Issue 2 2007E. M. C. VAN HOUTS First page of article [source] The Cambridge History of Christianity Volume III: Early Medieval Christianities, c. 600,c.HISTORY, Issue 319 2010Edited by Thomas F. X. Noble, Julia H. M. Smith No abstract is available for this article. [source] The Division of Christendom: Christianity in the Sixteenth Century , By Hans HillerbrandCONVERSATIONS IN RELIGION & THEOLOGY, Issue 1 2010Bruce Gordon First page of article [source] Why Christianity Happened: A Sociohistorical Account of Christian Origins (26,50 CE) , By James G. CrossleyCONVERSATIONS IN RELIGION & THEOLOGY, Issue 1 2009Lloyd Pietersen First page of article [source] Book Review: Bodies in Society: Essays on Christianity in Contemporary Culture,by Margaret R. MilesDIALOG, Issue 3 2010Paul O. Myhre No abstract is available for this article. [source] "Demographic Futures for Christianity and the World Religions"DIALOG, Issue 1 2004By Todd M. Johnson Abstract:, Since before 1970 Christian researchers have been tracking the massive demographic shift of Christianity to the Southern Hemisphere and noting the increasingly religious nature of populations around the world. At the same time, writers on the future of religion have been drawn to extreme portrayals of decline or revival of religion. However, the world's religious situation is replete with detailed information, drawn from enormous data collections on religious affiliation and questions about religion in government censuses. Quantitative tools, utilizing this information in the context of demography provide a more nuanced view of humankind's religious future. Demographic trends coupled with conservative estimates of conversions and defections envision over 80% of the world's population will continue to be affiliated with religions 200 years into the future. This religious future will have a profound influence on Christian theology, relations between religions, and the interaction between religion and politics. [source] What is Happening to Global Christianity?DIALOG, Issue 1 2004By Viggo Mortensen Abstract:, Following Philip Jenkins's analysis of "the next Christendom" it is argued that when the centre of Christianity is moving southwards Christianity will change. As a translation movement, Christianity is a religion made to travel. The consequences of this development are dramatic. In the West and North the mainline churches are in decline. The diversification within Christianity will continue in a certain tension to a trend towards uniformity. This leads to new priorities in mission. The discipline, theology of religions, will gain in importance as the churches are confronted with the life and death choice between a "clash of civilisations" or a peaceful multicultural and multireligious co-existence. [source] Ecological Theology: Roots in Tradition, Liturgical and Ethical Practice for TodayDIALOG, Issue 3 2003Rosemary Radford Ruether Abstract Often it is claimed that themes occasionally present in Christianity such as anthropocentrism, ecological alienation, and redemption as a world-escaping disembodied immortality, translated directly into large-scale abuse of nature and subsequent ecological crisis. Such a view is too simplistic, however. Instead the present environmental and ecological crisis may be primarily traced to cultural, economic, and technological developments of the last 500 years. Indeed, within Christian monasticism, ecofeminism, covenantal ethics, and cosmic christology, one finds ample resources for the transformation of human attitudes towards nature and a brighter ecological future. [source] Persecution of Indian ChristiansDIALOG, Issue 2 2002Monica Melanchthon Christians are one among many minority religious groups in India that face "persecution.""Persecution" here relates to the unjust treatment of lower classes in the Hindu caste system; it is not only Christians that are persecuted, but all those who fall in the lower castes. Part of the animosity towards Christians, then, is due to the fact that many Christian schools have been built to educate the masses thereby upsetting the existing caste system; furthermore, Christianity preaches a classless gospel. Persecution of Christians in India takes place under the guise that Christian Missionaries are covertly trying to convert Hindu,Indian society to the western cult of individualism. Government propaganda, laws, and programs designed to thwart Christian efforts, feed off of this mentality. Unfortunately, there are certain Christian groups that feed off of the misery of people in an unjust caste,system, offering salvation through conversion. These groups do not help matters at all; in fact, they add fuel to the fire. [source] Persecution of Indian ChristiansDIALOG, Issue 2 2002Lancy Lobo This article gives an account of the empirical, quantitative, descriptive, and distributive nature of persecutions of Christians in India during the last four years. It outlines some of the contentions of the persecutors and scrutinizes their validity given the character of Indian Christianity, which is not a homogenous entity. It discusses what it means to live and share the Good News in today's multicultural and multi,religious India. It suggests ways in which worldwide Christianity can maintain solidarity with Christians in India. [source] Religious Persecution: And What To Do About ItDIALOG, Issue 2 2002John Hilary Martin Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and other religions can all be found in geographically diverse Indonesia. Adding to this layered society are many different ethnic groups, political groups, and socio,economic groups. The joining of all these factors led to different communities forming adats,religio,customary agreements. When talking about "religious persecution" in Indonesia, all of these factors must be taken into account. Even so, it would be extremely naive to think that religious belief is a peripheral motivation for violence. This article explores a method by which religious scholars, leaders, and communities can curtail religious persecution in Indonesia; the method includes: personal encounter; discussion of the scholarly agenda; a public engagement through dialogue that leads to commitment; and finally, the appeal of prayer and ritual. [source] Inventing paganism in eighth-century BavariaEARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE, Issue 1 2010Jonathan Couser This article examines the hagiographies of Saints Emmeram and Corbinian and the synod of Neuching from eighth-century Bavaria. It argues that the references to pagan survivals in these texts are misleading, in the absence of other evidence of paganism in the region. Rather, since these texts were composed in a narrow window of time from 769,774, this anxiety reflects concerns aroused by pagan uprisings in neighbouring Carantania, which were only suppressed in 772. Thus, the texts' authors ,invented' paganism in their own culture as their perceptions of the dividing lines between Christianity and paganism grew sharper. [source] Defining paganism in the Carolingian worldEARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE, Issue 4 2007James Palmer Generations of scholars have looked for evidence of ,paganism' in continental sources from the eighth and ninth centuries. This paper surveys some of the key problems in defining and conceptualizing the available literary evidence for such a project. Part one argues for a return to the sources to help escape the intellectual baggage created by discussions of ,pan-Germanic paganism', interpretatio Romana and, more recently, folk practices. From the perspective of the sources' producers, paganism needs to be understood as a category of difference employed to provide a better definition of Christianity itself. In part two this line of thought is pursued through a brief study of the ways in which classical learning framed not only Carolingian attitudes to paganism, but also related strategies of moralizing. [source] Paganism in Conversion-Age Anglo-Saxon England: The Evidence of Bede's Ecclesiastical History ReconsideredHISTORY, Issue 310 2008S. D. CHURCH This article argues that the current understanding of English paganism relies too heavily on the belief that, when they wrote of the pre-Christian religion(s) of the English, Pope Gregory I (d. 604), in the letters preserved in his Register, and the Northumbrian monk Bede (d. 735), in his Ecclesiastical History, were describing English religion before conversion to Christianity as it really was. Their purpose in discussing English paganism, it is argued, was to provide succour and support for the process by which the English would be saved from eternal damnation in the face of the coming Day of Judgement. Neither Gregory nor Bede, both of whom came to be revered as Fathers of the Church, were passive observers of the conversion process. On the contrary, both men were active participants in the eradication of error amongst the English; error whose detail they had no interest or incentive to describe empirically. These were men who answered to a greater Truth , the Truth of the Word of God. It was this Truth which, this article argues, actually informed their descriptions of English paganism and should inform our understanding of their words on this subject. [source] The Marketplace of Christianity By Robert B. Ekelund Jr., Robert F. Hébert and Robert D. TollisonHISTORY, Issue 310 2008TOM WEBSTER No abstract is available for this article. [source] The Church of England and the Holocaust: Christianity, Memory and Nazism By Tom LawsonHISTORY, Issue 307 2007KEITH ROBBINS No abstract is available for this article. [source] Reluctant Kings and Christian Conversion in Seventh-Century EnglandHISTORY, Issue 306 2007DAMIAN TYLER This article challenges the generally accepted notion that conversion to Christianity was unambiguously beneficial for early Anglo-Saxon kings. It argues that the behavioural requirements of conversion frequently clashed with the social and political norms of early English kingdoms and thus often made it an unattractive option. The article concentrates on the relationships between kings and politically powerful groups within their kingdoms. It is suggested that Christianity often posed a threat to the positions of these groups and that because kings relied on the support of the elites it was only under exceptional circumstances that a ruler would embrace the new religion. [source] PARADIGMS BEHIND (AND BEFORE) THE MODERN CONCEPT OF RELIGIONHISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 4 2006CATHERINE BELL ABSTRACT This essay identifies five paradigms that are basic to understanding the historical emergence and uses of the generic idea of "religion" in the Christian cultures of Europe and America. The spread of this concept has been sufficiently thorough in recent centuries as to make religion appear to be a "social fact," to use Durkheim's phrase, rather than so many cultural expressions and different social practices. The supremacy of Euro-American culture,and an academy still saturated with Christian ideas,has enjoined other cultures and forms of religiosity to conform to this idea of religion; for these cultures contentment with the status quo can vie with the anxieties of influence, including "modernization." The key paradigms discussed are the following: Christianity as the prototype; religion as the opposite of reason; the modern formulation of "world religions"; the cultural necessity of religion; and critical analysis of the Western "construction" of religion. These paradigms demonstrate the limits on theoretical variety in the field, the difficulty in making real changes in set ways of thinking, and productive foci for interdisciplinary methods of study. [source] The Fate of Jewish Historiography after the Bible: A New InterpretationHISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 2 2004Amram Tropper What caused the eventual decline in later Jewish history of the vibrant historiographical tradition of the biblical period? In contrast to the plethora of historical writings composed during the biblical period, the rabbis of the early common era apparently were not interested in writing history, and when they did relate to historical events they often introduced mythical and unrealistic elements into their writings. Scholars have offered various explanations for this phenomenon; a central goal of this article is to locate these explanations within both the immediate historical setting of Roman Palestine and the overarching cultural atmosphere of the Greco-Roman Near East. In particular, I suggest that the largely ahistorical approach of the rabbis functioned as a local Jewish counterpart to the widespread classicizing tendencies of a contemporary Greek intellectual movement, the Second Sophistic. In both cases, eastern communities, whose political aspirations were stifled under Roman rule, sought to express their cognitive and spiritual identities by focusing on a glorious and idealized past rather than on contemporary history. Interestingly, the apparent lack of rabbinic interest in historiography is not limited to the early rabbinic period. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, Jews essentially did not write their political, diplomatic, or military history. Instead, Jews composed "traditional historiography" which included various types of literary genres among which the rabbinic "chain of transmission" was the most important. The chain of transmission reconstructs (or fabricates) the links that connect later rabbinic sages with their predecessors. Robert Bonfil has noted the similarity between this rabbinic project and contemporary church histories. Adding a diachronic dimension to Bonfil's comparison, I suggest that rabbinic chains of transmission and church histories are not similar though entirely independent phenomena, but rather their shared project actually derives from a common origin, the Hellenistic succession list. The succession list literary genre, which sketches the history of an intellectual discipline, apparently thrived during the Second Sophistic and diffused then into both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. Thus, even though historiography was not terribly important to the early rabbis or to most Second Sophistic intellectuals, the succession list schematic, or the history of an intellectual discipline, was evaluated differently. Rabbis and early Christians absorbed the succession list from Second Sophistic culture and then continued to employ this historiographical genre for many centuries to come. [source] ,The Great Prohibition': The Expansion of Christianity in Colonial Northern NigeriaHISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2010Andrew E. Barnes Historical research on the spread of Christianity in colonial Northern Nigeria has been hampered by a focus on the wrong issues. The population of the colony was predominantly Muslim, but the colonial territory created by the British contained large populations of African traditionalist peoples. During the colonial era the British government prohibited Christian proselytization of Muslims. Historical research had focused on the battle between colonial administrators and missionaries over entry into Muslim areas, a battle missionaries lost. But during the colonial era Christian missions experienced real success in Christianizing traditionalist peoples. The colonial government also sought to impede this development, significantly by using the same rules that prohibited the proselytization of Muslims to prohibit the proselytization of traditionalists. This article makes the case that the government's efforts to halt the spread of Christianity to traditionalists, not Muslims, should become the focus of new research. [source] Assessing Women, Gender, and Empire in Britain's Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missionary MovementHISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2009Elizabeth Prevost Although women constituted the majority of British missionary labor by the turn of the twentieth century, they were largely discounted from the official record of mission work , a silence that until recently has been preserved by women's history, mission history, and imperial history. Over the past two decades, new historical and interpretive frameworks have brought into clearer focus the role of women missionaries and the gendered fabric of the ,civilizing mission' in evangelistic, colonial, and feminist projects. Yet the privileging of race as an analytic category has produced a lopsided historiography, in which Christianity has been marginalized in studies of gender and empire, and in which gender has not been used to full effect in explicating the uneven contours of religion and colonialism. This essay explores how studies of women, gender, and the Protestant missionary movement over the ,long nineteenth century' have responded to and manifested some of the larger tensions of women's and gender history, feminist history, postcolonial studies, the new imperial history, and area studies, and suggests some avenues for addressing lingering questions of recovery and representation, center and periphery. [source] The Christian Religion in Modern European and World History: A Review of The Cambridge History of Christianity, 1815,2000HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2008David Lindenfeld Volumes 8 and 9 of the Cambridge History, representing the work of 72 scholars, reflect two major recent historiographical trends: 1) the increased attention paid to religion in modern European history, and 2) the increasing importance of Christianity in as a topic in world history. While these volumes serve to summarize the work already done in the first field, with articles on a wide variety of European countries, they should significantly move the second field forward by bringing together the work of specialists on many different parts of the world in a single place. Volume 8 summarizes scholarship on the Western religious revivals of the nineteenth century, both Catholic and Protestant. By integrating religion and politics, it also presents a more complex picture of the formation of European national identities than Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities suggests. One third of the volume is devoted to the spread of Christianity to the non-Western world. In Volume 9, the European and world history perspectives are more evenly interspersed. Major themes include the papacy, ecumenism, colonialism, Pentecostalism, and the independent churches of Africa and Asia. The 1960s emerge as a turning point, if for different reasons in different parts of the world. This was the decisive period of secularization in Europe, and the final section documents the social and cultural impact of that shift, particularly on the arts. Although there are inevitable gaps in coverage, these volumes will serve as an invaluable research tool for years to come. [source] Mortuary patterns in burial caves on Mangaia, Cook IslandsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OSTEOARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 3 2003S. C. Antón Abstract The behavioural, cultural, and political implications of archaeological human remains in non-mortuary, possibly culinary, contexts requires that we understand the range of mortuary practices in a particular region. Although several rockshelter sites on Mangaia, Cook Islands have yielded burned, fragmentary human bones in earth ovens that seem to support archaeological models and ethnohistoric accounts of ritual sacrifice and cannibalism, the absence of data on the range of Mangaian mortuary patterns obscures these interpretations. We describe burial patterns based on 40 above-ground interments representing at least 92 individuals in caves of Mangaia, Cook Islands, in order to begin to develop an island-wide perspective on mortuary patterns. Sampling both pre- and post-European contact sites we found that multiple interments dominate probable pre-contact burials (73%, 19 of 26) and single interments dominate post-contact contexts (80%, eight of ten burials), probably reflecting the influence of Christianity on mortuary ritual. Subadults were more frequent in all post-contact contexts suggesting alternative burial places, probably church cemeteries, for adults. Burial cave remains are broadly consistent with ethnohistoric accounts of interment in caves, however, they also illustrate additional burial practices and differences between time periods, such as primary body position and the role of multiple-individual interments, which are not discussed ethnohistorically. The mortuary practices in Mangaian burial caves differ from burials associated with marae and seem completely unrelated to the presence of highly fragmentary and burnt human remains in pre-contact rockshelter middens elsewhere on the island. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Tradition and Sacred TextsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, Issue 1 2004Robert Murray It places a particular stress on the central place of liturgy in this relationship. It then compares Catholic views with those of the Eastern Orthodox, noting particularly what Syrian exegesis has to teach Western readers, and with those of Protestant and Anglican Christianity. It then addresses the claims of the heirs of tradition, believers, to be interpreters of scripture vis-à-vis scientific biblical scholarship, concluding that they have great advantages in sympathy and imagination in entering into dialogue with the texts. [source] Transformative Spirituality for a Transformed World: Contributions from the Indigenous PerspectiveINTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF MISSION, Issue 2 2009María Chávez Quispe A Transformative Spirituality from the perspective of indigenous peoples should be rooted in the life experience, cultural values and spirituality of the indigenous peoples. From the identity and history of the indigenous relationship with Christianity, the article presents some experiences and voices of indigenous peoples and concludes with some suggestions to think about the theme. In this perspective Transformative Spirituality is a proposal of an alternative way of life to the current one which is marked by financial crisis and hopelessness in the face of the future. Pachamama as the Mother Earth, origin and end of life, is the main symbol of this spirituality. [source] A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450,1990: A Documentary Sourcebook by Klaus Koschorke, Frieder Ludwig and Mariano Delgado, edsINTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF MISSION, Issue 2 2009William J. Nottingham First page of article [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||