Showing titles in History

Other than the Virgin Mary, no woman has so captivated our attention as Mary from Magdala. From her portrayal as a prostitute to speculation that she was Jesus’ wife in popular fiction like The Da Vinci Code, images of Mary have abounded for centuries. These portrayals, however, often have very little basis in truth. In this fascinating audio course from Fr. Raymond F. Collins, you will explore Mary Magdalene in the Gospels, Gnosticism, and popular culture.

Renowned as a printer, scientist, and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin also published more works on religious topics than any other 18th-century American layperson. Born to Boston Puritans, by his teenage years Franklin had abandoned the exclusive Christian faith of his family and embraced deism. But Franklin, as a man of faith, was far more complex than the "thorough deist" who emerges in his autobiography.

Many Christians today tend to view the story of medieval faith as a cautionary tale. Too often, they dismiss the Middle Ages as a period of corruption and decay in the church. They seem to assume that the church apostatized from true Christianity after it gained cultural influence in the time of Constantine, and that the faith was only later recovered by the 16th-century Reformers or even the 18th-century revivalists. As a result, the riches and wisdom of the medieval period have remained largely inaccessible to modern Protestants.

While most people know the fairly consistent description of Hell that exists today, the description of Hell has evolved countless times over the centuries, including within the Christian faith. During medieval times, many Christian writers described parts or all of Hell as cold and desolate places, going as far back as the 4th century work Apocalypse of Paul. At the same time, the concepts of the Devil and Hell are not unique to Christianity; other major faiths have similar concepts, while ancient religions had an underworld and assorted characters, such as the Greeks' Hades.

In American Gospel (literally meaning the "good news about America"), New York Times best-selling author Jon Meacham sets the record straight on the history of religion in American public life. As Meacham shows, faith, meaning a belief in a higher power, and the sense that we are God's chosen, has always been at the heart of our national experience, from Jamestown to the Constitutional Convention to the Civil Rights Movement to September 11th.

With over two billion adherents, Christianity is the world’s largest religion. However, with a multitude of denominations, and varying opinions on many central tenets, it can be difficult to obtain a balanced overview of this complex faith. Best-selling author Keith Ward provides a unique and authoritative introduction to Christianity that will reward both the curious and those seeking a deeper understanding of their religion.

Many historians in the past have seen Constantine as a secret pagan who used Christianity as a political device or a God-sent Emperor who converted a whole nation to Christianity. Since Constantine's personal beliefs allowed for both paganism and Christianity, he created an Empire of tolerance or a religiously neutral realm (as far as what you wanted to believe).

If forgiveness is possible after genocide, then perhaps there is hope for the comparably smaller rifts that plague our relationships, our communities, and our nation. As We Forgive explores the pain, the mystery, and the hope through seven compelling stories of those who have made this journey toward reconciliation.

In 1683, an Ottoman army that stretched from horizon to horizon set out to seize the "Golden Apple," as Turks referred to Vienna. The ensuing siege pitted battle-hardened Janissaries wielding seventeenth-century grenades against Habsburg armies, widely feared for their savagery. The walls of...

The proclaimed hope of America rings most hollow for Native peoples, people of color, the rural poor, and other communities pressed to the margins. Author Jonathan Walton exposes the cultural myths and misconceptions about America's identity. Focusing on its manipulation of Scripture and the person of Jesus, he redirects us to the true promises found in the gospel. Walton identifies how American ideology and way of life has become a false religion and reveals that orienting our lives around American nationalism is idolatry.

Fundamentalism and American Culture has long been considered a classic in religious history, and to this day remains unsurpassed. Now available in a new edition, this highly regarded analysis takes us through the full history of the origin and direction of one of America's most influential religious movements.

The staggering story of the most important Chinese political dissident of the Mao era, a devout Christian who was imprisoned, tortured, and executed by the regime Blood Letters tells the astonishing tale of Lin Zhao, a poet and journalist arrested by the authorities in 1960 and executed eight...

These audio lectures are a unique learning experience. Unlike a traditional audiobook's direct narration of a book's text, Cultural Christians in the Early Church Audio Lectures includes high quality live-recordings of college-level lectures that cover the important points from each subject as...

The Founding of the American Republic is on trial. Critics say it was a poison pill with a time-release formula; we are its victims. Its principles are responsible for the country's moral and social disintegration because they were based on the Enlightenment falsehood of radical individual autonomy. In this well-researched book, Robert Reilly declares: not guilty. To prove his case, he traces the lineage of the ideas that made the United States, and its ordered liberty, possible. America's decline, he claims, is not to be discovered in the Founding principles, but in their disavowal.

Rich in historical events and colorfully written, this fascinating account of women in the church spans nearly two thousand years of church history. The very fact that listeners may find themselves surprised now and again by the prominent role of women in certain events and movements proves an...

“The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind". So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism’s most respected historians. Unsparing in his indictment, Mark Noll asks why the largest single group of religious Americans—who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence—have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship.

In When A Nation Forgets God, Erwin Lutzer studies seven similarities between Nazi Germany and America today — some of them chilling — and cautions us to respond accordingly. Engaging, well-researched, and easy to understand, Lutzer’s writing is that of a realist, one alarmed but unafraid. Amidst describing the messes of our nation’s government, economy, legal pitfalls, propaganda, and more, Lutzer points to the God who always has a plan.

This work is the result of 25 years' study of the Book of Revelation. Twice within six years the writer gave a four-months' course of Sunday morning sermons to his people on the book.

What is sin? Is it simply wrongdoing? Why do its effects linger over time? In this sensitive, imaginative, and original work, Gary Anderson shows how changing conceptions of sin and forgiveness lay at the very heart of the biblical tradition. Spanning nearly 2,000 years, the book brilliantly demonstrates how sin, once conceived of as a physical burden, becomes, over time, eclipsed by economic metaphors. Transformed from a weight that an individual carried, sin becomes a debt that must be repaid in order to be redeemed in God's eyes.

Clarence Larkin was an important scholar of prophecy. In The Spirit World", published in 1921, he discusses the inhabitants of the spiritual world according to the Bible. Explaining the qualities of angels, he makes a distinction between the “fallen angels” and Satan’s demons and the realms which they inhabit. Larkin’s treatment of Satan and the Underworld, in the form of hell, Gehenna and Tartarus is thorough and vivid, and he explains issues like the state of the soul in death and the principles of resurrection.