Christianity and the African Imagination : Essays in Honour of Adrian Hastings /
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During the twentieth-century, Christendom shifted its centre of gravity to the Southern Hemisphere, Africa becoming the most significant area of church growth. This volume explores Christianity's advance across the continent, and its capturing of the African imagination. From the medieval Catholic Kingdom of Kongo to a transnational Pentecostal movement in post-colonial Zimbabwe, the chapters explore how African agents - priests and prophets, martyrs and missionaries, evangelists and catechists - have seized Christianity and made it theirs. Emphasizing popular religion, the book shows how the Christian ideas and texts, practices and symbols, which have been adapted by Africans, help them accept existential passions and empower them through faith to deal with material concerns for health and wealth, and to overcome evil.
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1 online resource :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004245112
9789004116689
China's Christianity : from missionary to indigenous church /
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Among the assumptions interrogated in this volume, edited by Anthony E. Clark, is if Christianity should most accurately be identified as "Chinese" when it displays vestiges of Chinese cultural aesthetics, or whether Chinese Christianity is more indigenous when it is allowed to form its own theological framework. In other words, can theological uniqueness also function as a legitimate Chinese Christian cultural expression in the formation of its own ecclesial identity? Also central to what is explored in this book is how missionary influences, consciously or unconsciously, introduced seeds of independence into the cultural ethos of China's Christian community. Chinese girls who pushed "the limits of proper behaviour," for example, added to the larger sense of confidence as China's Christians began to resist the model of Christianity they had inherited from foreign missionaries. Contributors are: Robert E. Carbonneau, CP, Christie Chui-Shan Chow, Amanda C. R. Clark, Lydia Gerber, Joseph W. Ho, Joseph Tse-hei Lee, Audrey Seah, Jean-Paul Wiest, and Xiaoxin Wu.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004345607 :
0924-9389 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Sinicizing Christianity /
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Chinese people have been instrumental in indigenizing Christianity. Sinizing Christianity examines Christianity's transplantation to and transformation in China by focusing on three key elements: Chinese agents of introduction; Chinese redefinition of Christianity for the local context; and Chinese institutions and practices that emerged and enabled indigenisation. As a matter of fact, Christianity is not an exception, but just one of many foreign ideas and religions, which China has absorbed since the formation of the Middle Kingdom, Buddhism and Islam are great examples. Few scholars of China have analysed and synthesised the process to determine whether there is a pattern to the ways in which Chinese people have redefined foreign imports for local use and what insight Christianity has to offer. Contributors are: Robert Entenmann, Christopher Sneller, Yuqin Huang, Wai Luen Kwok, Thomas Harvey, Monica Romano, Thomas Coomans, Chris White, Dennis Ng, Ruiwen Chen and Richard Madsen.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004330382 :
0924-9389 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Christianity, empire, and the spirit : (re)configuring faith and the cultural /
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In Christianity, Empire and The Spirit , Néstor Medina uncovers the cultural processes that play a crucial role in influencing how people understand reality, express the Christian faith, and think about God. He uses decolonial thinking, Latina/o theology, and Pentecostal theology to show how the cultural dimension is a central feature in the biblical text; was the force that coopted Christianity from the imperial era of Constantine onwards; and undergirded Western European colonialism and the missionary project. He engages with Protestant and Catholic articulations on "culture" and demonstrates how most theologians perpetuate Eurocentric frames for considering the relation between Christianity and the cultural dimension. Alternatively, he offers a theological proposal that recognizes the Spirit at work in the phenomena of cultures.
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Includes index. :
1 online resource (x, 368 pages) :
9789004363090 :
2452-2953 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Crossroad discourses between Christianity and culture /
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Christianity exists in relation to and interacts with its cultural environment in a number of ways. In this volume authors from a wide variety of backgrounds explore various facets of the relationship and interaction of Christianity with its cultural environment: politics, society, esthetics, religion and spirituality, and with itself. Divided into three main sections, Crossroad Discourses between Christianity and Culture looks at the interaction of Christianity with culture in the first section, with other religions and spiritualities in the second, and finally with itself in the third. The contributions engage in a critical examination of not only the culture in which Christianity finds itself but also in a critical examination of Christianity itself and its interaction with that culture. The editors hope that teachers, students, and readers in general will profit greatly from the critical articles contained in this book.
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1 online resource (641 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789042028647 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Heirs of the Apostles : Studies on Arabic Christianity in Honor of Sidney H. Griffith /
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Heirs of the Apostles offers a panoramic survey of Arabic-speaking Christians-descendants of the Christian communities established in the Middle East by the apostles-and their history, religion, and culture in the early Islamic and medieval periods. The subjects range from Arabic translations of the Bible, to the status of Christians in the Muslim-governed lands, Muslim-Christian polemic, and Christian-Muslim and Christian-Jewish relations. The volume is offered as a Festschrift to Sidney H. Griffith, the doyen of Christian Arabic Studies in North America, on his eightieth birthday. Contributors are: David Bertaina, Elie Dannaoui, Stephen Davis, Nathan P. Gibson, Cornelia Horn, Sandra Toenies Keating, Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala, Johannes Pahlitzsch, Andrew Platt, Thomas W. Ricks, Barbara Roggema, Harald Suermann, Mark N. Swanson, Shawqi Talia, Jack Tannous, David Thomas, Jennifer Tobkin, Alexander Treiger, Ronny Vollandt, Clare Wilde, and Jason Zaborowski.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004383869 :
2468-2454 ;
Inculturation as dialogue : Igbo culture and the message of Christ /
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Although Africa is today often seen, because of its large number of Christians, as the future hope of the Church, a closer examination of African Christianity, however, shows that the Christian faith has not taken deep root in Africa. Many Africans today declare themselves to be Christians but still remain followers of their traditional African religions, especially in matters concerning the inner dimensions of their lives. It is evident that, in strictly personal matters relating to such issues as passage rites and crises, most Africans turn to their African traditional religions. As an incarnational faith, part of the history of Christianity has been its encounter with other cultures and its becoming deeply rooted in some of these cultures. The central question remains: Why has the Christian faith not taken deep root in Africa? This volume is concerned with answering this question.
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1 online resource (xvi, 227 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-227). :
9789401204606 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Poetry and exegesis in premodern Latin Christianity : the encounter between classical and Christian strategies of interpretation /
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This volume investigates various exegetical possibilities in Christian Latin poetry during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. In the Latin West poetry was mainly associated with the powerful pagan tradition of writers like Vergil and Ovid, and by many poetry was considered to tell lies and provide mere entertainment potentially corrupting the soul. Therefore, Christians initially had reservations about this genre and believed it to be incompatible with Christian worship, literacy and intellectual activity. In practice, however, forms of specifically Christian poetry developed from the end of the third century onwards; theoretical reconciliations were developed around 400 A.D. This collection examines specimens of Christian poetry from Juvencus (the first biblical epicist shortly after 300) up to the thirteenth century. Its particular usefulness lies in the combination of literary theory and hermeneutics, close readings of the texts and new readings on a sound philological basis.
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1 online resource (xi, 360 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047421320 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Essays in contextual theology /
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Essays in Contextual Theology is a collection of essays that reflect on the doing of contextual theology from several perspectives. After a general introductory essay, subsequent essays reflect on topics such as contextual theology and prophetic dialogue, criteria for orthodoxy, the nature of tradition, the role of culture, the dynamics of conversion, and the way theology is being done in World Christianity. The collection closes with an autobiographical essay tracing the author's journey to becoming a "global theologian."
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004363083 :
2452-2953 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Christian churches in Dahomey-Benin : a study of their socio-political role /
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This book, divided into two broad sections, examines the state in the Republic of Benin and the socio-political role of the Christian churches. The first looks at the remarkable pre-colonial kingdom of Danxomέ and its place in the imagining of the modern contrat social béninois . The second section looks at both the historical role of the mainline churches and the more recent development of a Christianisme béninois . The study concludes that the churches are above all a commentary upon the society in which they find themselves. Rather than an overt challenge to the state, they articulate social distress and the desire for a different future. In times of stress they may prove to be the only viable institutional buttress as well as the arbiter. This study seeks to make a contribution to the understanding of the public role of Christian churches in Africa.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [307]-324) and index. :
9789047419778 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Missionary expatriate effectiveness : how personality, calling, and learned competencies influence the expatriate transitions of Pentecostal missionaries /
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In Missionary Expatriate Effectiveness , John Farquhar Plake examines how Pentecostal missionaries adjust to foreign cultural environments and become proficient at their work abroad. Connecting the disciplines of psychology, human resource management, and missiology, Plake provides unique insights into the predictors of expatriate effectiveness through the experience of 949 missionaries working in 127 nations. Responding to the question, "Are missionaries born, called, or made?", Plake provides evidence that cross-cultural training is a critical component of missionary formation. Here missionaries, educators, mission agency leaders, I-O psychologists, and cross-cultural scholars will find actionable data and a hopeful, nuanced picture of reality, grounded in the lived experiences of Pentecostal missionaries worldwide.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004313835 :
1876-2247 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Christians shaping identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium : studies inspired by Pauline Allen /
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The essays collected in Christians Shaping Identity celebrate Pauline Allen's significant contribution to early Christian, late antique, and Byzantine studies, especially concerning bishops, heresy/orthodoxy and christology. Covering the period from earliest Christianity to middle Byzantium, the first eighteen essays explore the varied ways in which Christians constructed their own identity and that of the society around them. A final four essays explore the same theme within Roman Catholicism and oriental Christianity in the late 19th to 21st centuries, with particular attention to the subtle relationships between the shaping of the early Christian past and the moulding of Christian identity today. Among the many leading scholars represented are Averil Cameron and Elizabeth A. Clark.
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1 online resource (xv, 520 pages) :
"Publications by Pauline Allen"--Pages 13-21.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004301573 :
0920-623X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Corinth in context : comparative studies on religion and society /
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This volume is the product of an interdisciplinary conference held at the University of Texas at Austin. Specialists in the study of inscriptions, architecture, sculpture, coins, tombs, pottery, and texts collaborate to produce new portraits of religion and society in the ancient city of Corinth. The studies focus on groups like the early Roman colonists, the Augustales (priests of Augustus), or the Pauline house churches; on specific cults such as those of Asklepios, Demeter, or the Sacred Spring; on media (e.g., coins, or burial inscriptions); or on the monuments and populations of nearby Kenchreai or Isthmia. The result is a deeper understanding of the religious life of Corinth, contextualized within the socially stratified cultures of the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
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Papers presented at a conference held Jan. 10-14, 2007, at the University of Texas at Austin, under the auspices of the Institute for the Study of Antiquity and Christian Origins along with the Dept. of Religious Studies and the Dept. of Classics. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [477]-509) and index. :
9789004190610 :
0167-9732 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Indigenous peoples and religious change /
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This book explores a range of societies in and around the Pacific and southern Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that encountered religions introduced from elsewhere, or fashioned their own responses to already established religious traditions. These changes observed through the responses of the receiving societies indicate that religious change is a creative dynamic, rather than a passive acceptance of new ideas, beliefs and practices. While change is often triggered by the introduction of new understandings, it can only become entrenched within a community when it takes on meaning for individuals, and becomes embedded within the social and cultural life of the community.
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1 online resource (x, 262 pages) : illustrations, maps. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-251) and index. :
9789047405559 :
0924-9389 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
From Judaism to Christianity : tradition and transition : a festschrift for Thomas H. Tobin, S.J., on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday /
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As a far reaching tribute to the distinguished career of Thomas H. Tobin, S.J., a team of outstanding biblical scholars has joined to offer essays on the religious milieu of the ancient Mediterranean region. Challenged by Hellenistic and Greco-Roman cultural and political domination, the religious struggles of Jewish and, later, Christian communities sought to maintain tradition as well as mitigate transition. Jewish responses to a Hellenistic world are revealed anew in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the works of Artapanus and Philo. Also, Christian views on the transitory world of the early centuries of the Common Era are brought to light in the New Testament literature, apocryphal texts, and Patristic writings. Professors and students alike will benefit from the depth and breadth of this fresh scholarship.
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Includes a biographical note on Thomas H. Tobin and a bibliography of his works (p. [xvii]-xxxii). :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [289]-311) and indexes. :
9789004214859 :
0167-9732 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Christian origins and Greco-Roman culture : social and literary contexts for the New Testament /
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In Christian Origins and Greco-Roman Culture , Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts assemble an international team of scholars whose work has focused on reconstructing the social matrix for earliest Christianity through the use of Greco-Roman materials and literary forms. Each essay moves forward the current understanding of how primitive Christianity situated itself in relation to evolving Hellenistic culture. Some essays focus on configuring the social context for the origins of the Jesus movement and beyond, while others assess the literary relation between early Christian and Greco-Roman texts.
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1 online resource (vii, 751 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004236219 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Christianity and imperial culture : Chinese Christian apologetics in the seventeenth century and their Latin patristic equivalent /
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This book is a study of the writings of a group of Chinese Christian apologists in the seventeenth century, focussing on Xu Guangqi. Eleven of his shorter writings are included in Chinese and in translation. The first part of the book is devoted to a study of Latin Christian apologists within the Roman Empire to provide a comparison for the analysis of Xu Guangqi's work. Minucius Felix, Tertullian and Lactantius are shown to have faced, in regard to imperial power and Graeco-Roman culture, a situation comparable to that of Xu Guangqi, Li Zhizao and Yang Tinqyun in regard to imperial power and culture in the late Ming period. The final chapters of the book reconsider general issues of confrontation and adaptation in the inculturation of Christianity.
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1 online resource (xvii, 259 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 250-259) and index. :
9789004320000 :
0924-9389 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The stolen Bible : from tool of imperialism to African icon /
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The Stolen Bible tells the story of how Southern Africans have interacted with the Bible from its arrival in Dutch imperial ships in the mid-1600s through to contemporary post-apartheid South Africa. The Stolen Bible emphasises African agency and distinguishes between African receptions of the Bible and African receptions of missionary-colonial Christianity. Through a series of detailed historical, geographical, and hermeneutical case-studies the book analyses Southern African receptions of the Bible, including the earliest African encounters with the Bible, the translation of the Bible into an African language, the appropriation of the Bible by African Independent Churches, the use of the Bible in the Black liberation struggle, and the ways in which the Bible is embodied in the lives of ordinary Africans.
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1 online resource (x, 626 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 563-594) and index. :
9789004322783 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.