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Christian Homeland: Episcopalians and the Middle East, 1820-1958
by Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr.Christian Homeland focuses on the involvement of clergy and prominent laity of the Episcopal Church in Middle Eastern affairs, both religious and political, between the Greek War of Independence (1821-1829) and the Second Arab-Israeli War (1956-1957), with a brief epilogue covering additional events up to the present day. As the birthplace of the Christian faith, the Middle East had always been an area of fascination to church people in the West, and with the expansion of American diplomatic and commercial interests into the Mediterranean in the early nineteenth century, Episcopalians and other American Protestants felt called to similarly export their religious values into the region. Beginning in the 1830s, Episcopalians established mission posts in Athens and Constantinople (Istanbul), from which they sought to convert Muslims and Jews to Christianity. Having failed to achieve any appreciable evangelistic success with non-Christians, they soon turned their attention to reforming the ancient churches of the East instead. Later assisted by the Church of England's missionary bishopric in Jerusalem, a small, but influential corps of Episcopalians dedicated themselves to keeping church members informed about the Middle East, particularly the status of the region's Christian population, well into the twentieth century. This book analyses how the theological ideas held by Episcopal church leaders not only guided missionary and religious activities, but also influenced their denomination's response to major social and political questions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries issues such as immigration into the United States, genocide, wartime refugee relief, anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Palestinian Nakba.
Christian Homeland: Episcopalians and the Middle East, 1820-1958
by Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr.Christian Homeland focuses on the involvement of clergy and prominent laity of the Episcopal Church in Middle Eastern affairs, both religious and political, between the Greek War of Independence (1821-1829) and the Second Arab-Israeli War (1956-1957), with a brief epilogue covering additional events up to the present day. As the birthplace of the Christian faith, the Middle East had always been an area of fascination to church people in the West, and with the expansion of American diplomatic and commercial interests into the Mediterranean in the early nineteenth century, Episcopalians and other American Protestants felt called to similarly export their religious values into the region. Beginning in the 1830s, Episcopalians established mission posts in Athens and Constantinople (Istanbul), from which they sought to convert Muslims and Jews to Christianity. Having failed to achieve any appreciable evangelistic success with non-Christians, they soon turned their attention to reforming the ancient churches of the East instead. Later assisted by the Church of England's missionary bishopric in Jerusalem, a small, but influential corps of Episcopalians dedicated themselves to keeping church members informed about the Middle East, particularly the status of the region's Christian population, well into the twentieth century. This book analyses how the theological ideas held by Episcopal church leaders not only guided missionary and religious activities, but also influenced their denomination's response to major social and political questions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries issues such as immigration into the United States, genocide, wartime refugee relief, anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Palestinian Nakba.
Christian Ideals in British Culture: Stories of Belief in the Twentieth Century
by D. NashThis book offers a challenge to conventional histories of secularisation by focusing upon the importance of central religious narratives. These narratives are changed significantly over time, but also to have been invested with importance and meaning by religious individuals and organisations as well as by secular ones.
Christian Missionary Engagement in Central Nigeria, 1857–1891: The Church Missionary Society's All-African Mission on the Upper Niger (African Histories and Modernities)
by Femi J. KolapoIn the decades before colonial partition in Africa, the Church Missionary Society embarked on the first serious effort to evangelize in an independent Muslim state. Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther led an all-African field staff to convert the people of the Upper Niger and Confluence area, whose communities were threatened or already conquered by an expanding jihadist Nupe state. In this book, Femi J. Kolapo examines the significance of the mission as an African—rather than European—undertaking, assessing its impact on missionary practice, local engagement, and Christian conversion prospects. By offering a fuller history of this overlooked mission in the history of Christianity in Nigeria, this book reaffirms indigenous agency and rethinks the mission as an experiment ahead of its time.
Christian-Muslim Relations in Egypt: Politics, Society and Interfaith Encounters (Library of Modern Religion)
by Henrik Lindberg Hansenhe subject of Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle East – and indeed in the West – attracts much academic and media attention. Nowhere is this more the case than in Egypt, which has the largest Christian community in the Middle East, estimated at 6-10 per cent of the national population. Henrik Lindberg Hansen analyses this relationship, offering an examination of the nature and role of religious dialogue in Egyptian society. Taking three main religious organizations and institutions in Egypt (namely the Azhar University, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Coptic Orthodox Church), Hansen argues that religious dialogue involves a close examination of societal relations, and how these are understood and approached. Including analysis of the occasions of violence against Christian communities in 2011 and the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood from power in 2013, Hansen provides a wide-ranging exploration of the importance of religion in Egyptian society and everyday encounters with a religious 'other'. This makes his book vital for researchers of both religious minorities in the Middle East and interfaith dialogue in a wider context.
Christian Politics in Oceania (ASAO Studies in Pacific Anthropology #2)
by Matt Tomlinson Debra McDougallThe phrase “Christian politics” evokes two meanings: political relations between denominations in one direction, and the contributions of Christian churches to debates about the governing of society. The contributors to this volume address Christian politics in both senses and argue that Christianity is always and inevitably political in the Pacific Islands. Drawing on ethnographic and historical research in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji, the authors argue that Christianity and politics have redefined each other in much of Oceania in ways that make the two categories inseparable at any level of analysis. The individual chapters vividly illuminate the ways in which Christian politics operate across a wide scale, from interpersonal relations to national and global interconnections.
Christian responses to Islam: Muslim-Christian relations in the modern world
by Anthony O'Mahony Emma LoosleyIn the aftermath of 9/11 there has been much talk of a need to engage on a meaningful level with Islam, but where do we begin and what is the right approach? This book, available in paperback for the first time, looks at case studies from around the world in order to explore how Christian groups, sometimes as minorities and sometimes as the majority, engage with their Muslim neighbours in the search for a peaceful society. Some of the initiatives are politically motivated, others run by Church authorities and a number are community based, but all offer different approaches to a variety of situations that are encountered in Christian-Islamic dialogue. This is the first time that global strategies for dialogue have been published in one book by a series of leading academics. Whilst previous publications have concentrated on a particular geographical area, usually the Middle East or Europe, this book casts a wider net and considers issues such as the rise of radical Islam in post-Soviet states, Indonesian immigration in Australia and the spread of Islam amongst the Black South Africans after the fall of apartheid. Scholars and all those interested in politics, current affairs, religion or peace studies will find this book essential reading as a guidebook to the state of contemporary Christian-Islamic relations.
The Christian Science Monitor: An Evolving Experiment in Journalism
by Linda K. FullerThis text provides a unique examination of The Christian Science Monitor, a highly respected, venerable news publication that has survived over a century of changes and challenges.The Christian Science Monitor is one of the world's leading journalistic publications, having won multiple Pulitzer prizes for its reporting. CSM is innovative and forward-thinking as well—it was one of the first newspapers to provide an online copy of its daily reporting in 1996, well before the popularization of the Internet. But just like other publications, The Christian Science Monitor will need to continue to reinvent itself in order to stay relevant and solvent in the face of plummeting readership numbers, corporate takeovers, and a widespread assumption that all of today's news sources are biased and inaccurate. This book provides a thorough discussion of CSM's treatment of sensitive topics like terrorism, international crises, gender issues, and sexual orientation. The paper's attitudes toward ethnicity, ethics, economics, philosophy, and racism are also profiled. The conclusion provides readers with an opportunity to draw upon their new knowledge of The Christian Science Monitor's past to project its direction for the future.
Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism
by Magda TeterA panoramic cultural and legal history that traces the roots of antisemitism and racism to early Christian theologySince the earliest days of Christianity, theologians expressed pervasive anxiety about Jews as equal members of society, and, with European expansion in the early modern period, that anxiety extended to people of color. This troubling legacy still haunts us today. Christian Supremacy demonstrates how theological and legal frameworks created by the church centuries ago laid the seeds of antisemitism and anti-Black racism and reveals why Christian identity lies at the heart of the world’s violent white supremacy movements.In a powerful historical narrative spanning nearly two millennia, Magda Teter describes how Christian theology of late antiquity cast Jews as “children born to slavery,” and how the supposed theological inferiority of Jews became inscribed into law, creating tangible structures that reinforced a sense of Christian domination and superiority. With the dawn of European colonialism, a distinct brand of European Christian supremacy found expression in the legally sanctioned enslavement and exploitation of people of color, later taking the form of white Christian supremacy in the New World.Drawing on a wealth of primary evidence ranging from the theological and legal to the philosophical and artistic, Christian Supremacy is a profound reckoning with history that traces the roots of the modern rejection of Jewish and Black equality to an enduring Christian heritage of exclusion, intolerance, and persecution.
Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism
by Magda TeterA panoramic cultural and legal history that traces the roots of antisemitism and racism to early Christian theologySince the earliest days of Christianity, theologians expressed pervasive anxiety about Jews as equal members of society, and, with European expansion in the early modern period, that anxiety extended to people of color. This troubling legacy still haunts us today. Christian Supremacy demonstrates how theological and legal frameworks created by the church centuries ago laid the seeds of antisemitism and anti-Black racism and reveals why Christian identity lies at the heart of the world’s violent white supremacy movements.In a powerful historical narrative spanning nearly two millennia, Magda Teter describes how Christian theology of late antiquity cast Jews as “children born to slavery,” and how the supposed theological inferiority of Jews became inscribed into law, creating tangible structures that reinforced a sense of Christian domination and superiority. With the dawn of European colonialism, a distinct brand of European Christian supremacy found expression in the legally sanctioned enslavement and exploitation of people of color, later taking the form of white Christian supremacy in the New World.Drawing on a wealth of primary evidence ranging from the theological and legal to the philosophical and artistic, Christian Supremacy is a profound reckoning with history that traces the roots of the modern rejection of Jewish and Black equality to an enduring Christian heritage of exclusion, intolerance, and persecution.
The Christian Survivor: How Roman Christianity Defeated Its Early Competitors
by Robert CrottyThe book puts the current interest in historical Jesus research into a proper historical context, highlighting Gnosticism’s lasting influence on early Christianity and making the provocative claim that nearly all Christian Churches are in some way descended from Roman Christianity. Breaking with the accepted wisdom of Christianity’s origins, the revised history it puts forward challenges the assumptions of Church and secular historians, biblical critics and general readers alike, with profound repercussions for scholarship, belief and practice.
Christian Temporalities: Living Between the Already Fulfilled and the Not Yet Completed (Contemporary Anthropology of Religion)
by Simon Coleman Matt Tomlinson Anna-Karina HermkensThis volume explores how different forms of Christianity shape people's visions of pasts and futures, and how the transcendent is brought into human time. Beyond conventional discussions around breaks with the past in Christian conversion and future ruptures announced in prophecy, the volume reveals previously unexplored ways in which Christians work with concepts of time and its articulation with divinity, subjectivity, agency, and personal, social, and political change. By developing Coleman’s argument about “historiopraxy” in novel directions, contributors provide new understandings of religious temporalities and the ritual articulation of immanence and transcendence. While building upon previous scholarly work in the anthropology of Christianity, this volume pushes the debate further and provides original insights into how religion is mobilised to shape and transform people's pasts, presents and futures.
Christian Tourism to the Holy Land: Pilgrimage during Security Crisis (New Directions in Tourism Analysis)
by Noga Collins-Kreiner Nurit Kliot Yoel Mansfeld Keren SagiThe historic phenomenon of pilgrimage is experiencing a resurgence around the world. A journey resulting from religious causes, it not only provides a spiritual experience, but also one of new environments, cultures and peoples, and is often undertaken as a guided tour. Yet pilgrimage as a mode of tourism has been little investigated. This book adds considerably to our knowledge by focusing on one specific pilgrimage voyage - that to the Holy Land during times of security crisis there. In doing so, it examines this tourism journey in relation to constraints and high levels of risk experienced by the pilgrims. It explores both the behavioural aspects of undertaking pilgrimage to such an insecure situation and the impacts of such crisis on the host tourism infrastructure and industry. It therefore not only provides insights into pilgrimage as tourism - and into this particular country's experience - but also offers an integrative approach to tourism crisis management.
Christian Tourism to the Holy Land: Pilgrimage during Security Crisis (New Directions in Tourism Analysis)
by Noga Collins-Kreiner Nurit Kliot Yoel Mansfeld Keren SagiThe historic phenomenon of pilgrimage is experiencing a resurgence around the world. A journey resulting from religious causes, it not only provides a spiritual experience, but also one of new environments, cultures and peoples, and is often undertaken as a guided tour. Yet pilgrimage as a mode of tourism has been little investigated. This book adds considerably to our knowledge by focusing on one specific pilgrimage voyage - that to the Holy Land during times of security crisis there. In doing so, it examines this tourism journey in relation to constraints and high levels of risk experienced by the pilgrims. It explores both the behavioural aspects of undertaking pilgrimage to such an insecure situation and the impacts of such crisis on the host tourism infrastructure and industry. It therefore not only provides insights into pilgrimage as tourism - and into this particular country's experience - but also offers an integrative approach to tourism crisis management.
Christian Tourist Attractions, Mythmaking, and Identity Formation (Critiquing Religion: Discourse, Culture, Power)
by Erin Roberts Jennifer EylChristian Tourist Attractions, Mythmaking, and Identity Formation examines a sampling of contemporary Christian tourist attractions that position visitors as the inheritors of ancient, sacred traditions and make claims about the truth of the historical narratives that they promote. Rather than approaching these attractions as sacred expressions of religious experience or as uncontested accounts of history, the book applies recent work on mythmaking and identity formation to argue that these presentations of the past function as strategic discourses that serve material concerns in the present. From an approach informed by social and materialist theories of religion, the volume draws upon a variety of methodological approaches that enable readers to understand the often-bewildering array of objects, claims, demands, and activities (not to mention the seemingly endless array of gifts and personal items available for purchase) that appear at attractions including Ark Encounter, the Creation Museum, the Holy Land Experience, Bible Walk Museum, Christian Zionist tours of Israel, and the recently opened Museum of the Bible. Discourse analysis, practice theory, rhetorical criticism, and embodied theories of cognition help make sense not only of the Christian tourist attractions under examination but also of the ways that “religion” is entangled with contemporary social, political, and economic interests more broadly.
Christian Tourist Attractions, Mythmaking, and Identity Formation (Critiquing Religion: Discourse, Culture, Power)
by Erin Roberts Jennifer EylChristian Tourist Attractions, Mythmaking, and Identity Formation examines a sampling of contemporary Christian tourist attractions that position visitors as the inheritors of ancient, sacred traditions and make claims about the truth of the historical narratives that they promote. Rather than approaching these attractions as sacred expressions of religious experience or as uncontested accounts of history, the book applies recent work on mythmaking and identity formation to argue that these presentations of the past function as strategic discourses that serve material concerns in the present. From an approach informed by social and materialist theories of religion, the volume draws upon a variety of methodological approaches that enable readers to understand the often-bewildering array of objects, claims, demands, and activities (not to mention the seemingly endless array of gifts and personal items available for purchase) that appear at attractions including Ark Encounter, the Creation Museum, the Holy Land Experience, Bible Walk Museum, Christian Zionist tours of Israel, and the recently opened Museum of the Bible. Discourse analysis, practice theory, rhetorical criticism, and embodied theories of cognition help make sense not only of the Christian tourist attractions under examination but also of the ways that "religion†? is entangled with contemporary social, political, and economic interests more broadly.
Christian Zionism and English National Identity, 1600–1850 (Christianities In The Trans-atlantic World Ser.)
by Andrew CromeThis book explores why English Christians, from the early modern period onwards, believed that their nation had a special mission to restore the Jews to Palestine. It examines English support for Jewish restoration from the Whitehall Conference in 1655 through to public debates on the Jerusalem Bishopric in 1841. Rather than claiming to replace Israel as God’s “elect nation”, England was “chosen” to have a special, but inferior, relationship with the Jews. Believing that God “blessed those who bless” the Jewish people, this national role allowed England to atone for ill-treatment of Jews, read the confusing pathways of providence, and guarantee the nation’s survival until Christ’s return. This book analyses this mode of national identity construction and its implications for understanding Christian views of Jews, the self, and “the other”. It offers a new understanding of national election, and of the relationship between apocalyptic prophecy and political action.
Christian Zionism and English National Identity, 1600–1850 (PDF)
by Andrew CromeThis book explores why English Christians, from the early modern period onwards, believed that their nation had a special mission to restore the Jews to Palestine. It examines English support for Jewish restoration from the Whitehall Conference in 1655 through to public debates on the Jerusalem Bishopric in 1841. Rather than claiming to replace Israel as God’s “elect nation”, England was “chosen” to have a special, but inferior, relationship with the Jews. Believing that God “blessed those who bless” the Jewish people, this national role allowed England to atone for ill-treatment of Jews, read the confusing pathways of providence, and guarantee the nation’s survival until Christ’s return. This book analyses this mode of national identity construction and its implications for understanding Christian views of Jews, the self, and “the other”. It offers a new understanding of national election, and of the relationship between apocalyptic prophecy and political action.
Christianities in the Early Modern Celtic World
by Robert Armstrong Tadhg Ó HAnnracháinRanging from devotional poetry to confessional history, across the span of competing religious traditions, this volume addresses the lived faith of diverse communities during the turmoil of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Together, they provide a textured understanding of the complexities in religious belief, practice and organization.
Christianity After Communism: Social, Political, And Cultural Struggle In Russia
by Niels C. NielsenSpecialists from Europe and the US investigate the current and changing role of religion in post-communist Russia. Drawing upon Eastern Orthodox, Protestant and Roman Catholic points of view, they examine the Russian religious attitudes, activities and institutions, and explore the ways in which religion will significantly impact emerging social and political questions there. The volume should be of use to scholars of Russian politics, society, and religion and for anyone interested in the emerging culture of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Christianity After Communism: Social, Political, And Cultural Struggle In Russia
by Niels C. NielsenSpecialists from Europe and the US investigate the current and changing role of religion in post-communist Russia. Drawing upon Eastern Orthodox, Protestant and Roman Catholic points of view, they examine the Russian religious attitudes, activities and institutions, and explore the ways in which religion will significantly impact emerging social and political questions there. The volume should be of use to scholars of Russian politics, society, and religion and for anyone interested in the emerging culture of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Christianity and Belonging in Shimla, North India: Sacred Entanglements of a Himalayan Landscape (Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion)
by Jonathan Miles-WatsonThis book explores the material religion of contemporary Shimla, a vibrant postcolonial city, famed for its colonial heritage, set against the backdrop of the North-Western Himalayas. Jonathan Miles-Watson demonstrates that this landscape is able to peacefully reconcile the apparent tensions of faith, heritage and identity in a way that unseats traditional theories of religion, politics and heritage. It presents a mystery that is written in space through time; thekey to unlocking this mystery lies in clear view, at the city's heart, in the contemporary material religion that surrounds nominally Christian sacred sites. Although the material religion centres on landscapes that are identifiable as Christian, the book demonstrates that Hindus, atheists and Sikhs all have a role to play in the mutually constitutive relations that lie at the centre of these knots of sacred entanglement.This book builds upon over a decade of research to present an ethnographic account of devotional practices that speaks to contemporary developments in both the anthropology of Christianity and material religion. Through this exploration the book answers the mystery of Shimla's postcolonial harmony, while complicating established theories in the anthropology of religion, postcolonial studies, mythography, heritage studies and material culture.
Christianity and Belonging in Shimla, North India: Sacred Entanglements of a Himalayan Landscape (Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion)
by Jonathan Miles-WatsonThis book explores the material religion of contemporary Shimla, a vibrant postcolonial city, famed for its colonial heritage, set against the backdrop of the North-Western Himalayas. Jonathan Miles-Watson demonstrates that this landscape is able to peacefully reconcile the apparent tensions of faith, heritage and identity in a way that unseats traditional theories of religion, politics and heritage. It presents a mystery that is written in space through time; thekey to unlocking this mystery lies in clear view, at the city's heart, in the contemporary material religion that surrounds nominally Christian sacred sites. Although the material religion centres on landscapes that are identifiable as Christian, the book demonstrates that Hindus, atheists and Sikhs all have a role to play in the mutually constitutive relations that lie at the centre of these knots of sacred entanglement.This book builds upon over a decade of research to present an ethnographic account of devotional practices that speaks to contemporary developments in both the anthropology of Christianity and material religion. Through this exploration the book answers the mystery of Shimla's postcolonial harmony, while complicating established theories in the anthropology of religion, postcolonial studies, mythography, heritage studies and material culture.
Christianity and Capitalism in China: A Case Study from the Diaspora
by Ottavio PalombaroThis book links Calvinist belief in the Perpetual Assurance of Salvation with self-efficacy for economic success. Certain values are at stake for the success of economic behavior. Since the genesis of modern capitalism, a set of beliefs proper of Calvinism (mainly Predestination but also Beruf, Inner-worldly Asceticism, role of Sects…) was said by Max Weber to cause an anxiety about salvation and generate a propensity to economic success as a sign of election. In order to observe this in action today, it is crucial to consider the evolution that the Protestant ethic went through migrating first in north America and lastly through the Protestant revival of China. Wenzhou is called ‘Jerusalem of China’ for its large Protestant community that is also strongly involved in business. Some scholar already pointed out the presence among those entrepreneurs of this Protestant ethic (Yi Xiang, Boss-Christian…). The data presented in this comparative qualitative study pertain to ethnographic observations, job-shadowing and interviews done among Chinese Christian and non-Christian entrepreneurs from Wenzhou living in Milan, Italy. The results show with some adjustments the presence of a Chinese-version of the Protestant ethic overlapping with several values proper to the Chinese context (Confucianism, lineage, social network). The extension of the study to other cases must be done with caution considering the non-causal justificatory role of the belief. Regardless: successful entrepreneurship involves specific social, cultural and even religious aspects that move beyond mere business strategies.
Christianity And Democracy In Global Context
by John WitteIn the past, Christianity has had both positive and negative influences on democracy. Christian churches have served as benevolent agents of welfare and catalysts of political reform. But they have also served as belligerent allies of repression and censors of human rights. Christian theology has helped to cultivate democratic ideas of equality, li