Showing titles in History

The first three volumes of Saints tell the story of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Joseph Smith’s First Vision to the dedication of the first temple outside North America. Now, the fourth volume carries the story to the present day, recounting the Church’s astounding growth and inspired development since 1955. As the book opens, the Church has nine temples and more than one million members.

After decades of opposition, the Latter-day Saints have dedicated the Salt Lake Temple, a mighty symbol of their industry and faith. Now, with a new century on the horizon, the Saints are optimistic about the future and ready to spread the Savior's message of peace across the globe. Boldly, Nobly, and Independent is the third book in Saints, a new, four-volume narrative history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Fast-paced and meticulously researched, Saints recounts true stories of Latter-day Saints across the globe.

A History of the Church Through Its Buildings takes the listener to meet people who lived through momentous religious changes in the very spaces where the story of the Church took shape. Buildings are about people, the people who conceived, designed, financed, and used them. Their stories become embedded in the very fabric itself, and as the fabric is changed through time in response to changing use, relationships, and beliefs, the architecture becomes the standing history of passing waves of humanity. 

Already infamous for the arbitrary, paranoid persecution of its own citizens throughout much of the 20th century, the Soviet Union - as is revealed in John Koeher’s revelatory, eye-opening exposé - also waged a vicious espionage campaign against the Catholic Church and its followers. From the persecution of local priests to an assassination order against Pope John Paul II, the KGB viewed Catholicism as a threat to stability in Eastern Europe and treated the church as an enemy of the State. Lifetime journalist and former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer John Koehler has written the definitive book on this startling history.

Following on the questions raised by Brian McLaren in A New Kind of Christian, Tony Jones has written an engaging exploration of what this new kind of Christianity looks like. Writing dispatches about the thinking and practices of adventurous emergent Christians across the country, he offers an in-depth view of this new "third way" of faith - its origins, its theology, its views of truth, Scripture, and interpretation, and its hopeful and life-giving sense of community.

Pagans explores the rise of Christianity from a surprising and unique viewpoint: that of the people who witnessed their ways of life destroyed by what seemed then a powerful religious cult. These "pagans" were actually pious Greeks, Romans, Syrians, and Gauls, who observed the traditions of their ancestors. To these devout polytheists, Christians who worshiped only one deity were immoral atheists who believed that a splash of water on the deathbed could erase a lifetime of sin.

Discover the inspiring story of St. Francis of Assisi, a wealthy young man who left everything behind to embrace a life of radical humility and service. This captivating biography explores his spiritual transformation, his compassionate work with the poor and marginalized, his deep connection with nature, and the profound impact he had on the world.

The conversation about the proper role of religion in American public life often revolves around what kind of polity the Founders of the United States envisioned. In this book, Jerome E. Copulsky complicates this ongoing public argument by examining a collection of thinkers who, on religious grounds, considered the nation's political ideas illegitimate, its institutions flawed, and its church-state arrangement defective.

That Jesus of Nazareth (ca. 4 BC-30 CE) was crucified is the closest to a historical fact anyone can say about him. Biblical scholars have spent centuries debating the details of what Jesus did and said, but this crude fact - that Jesus suffered capital punishment at the hands of the Roman authority by crucifixion - is accepted by the overwhelming majority of scholars. That there once was a cross where Jesus suffered and died is, therefore, the sequential logical affirmation.

This book contains a collection of academic articles ranging from African-American history, Jewish history, early Christian history, the New Testament, Patristic history, medieval history, and the history of the Reformation. This academic work is a bold quest to capture the essence of history and canon as phenomenalized in the human experience. Scholars and students of history, religion, literary criticism, sociology, anthropology, humanities, and theology will surely benefit from reading this book.

We have misunderstood Paul, badly. We have read his words through our own set of assumptions. We need to begin with Paul's world view, to see things the way he saw them. What if "original sin" was never part of Paul's thinking? What if the idea that we are saved by faith in Christ, as Luther argued, was based on a mistranslation of Paul's words and a misunderstanding of Paul's thinking?

This letter of St. John Chrysostom to the Bishop of Rome, deals with Theophilus, the leader of the Church in Alexandria. Theophilus had been commanded to go to Constantinople, to answer to the Emperor for accusations against him. He arrived bringing with him a multitude of Egyptian Bishops, showing from the outset that he came for war and antagonism, argues Chrysostom.

In this provocative tell-all, David Gushee gives an insider's look at the frictions and schisms of evangelical Christianity, based on his experiences that began with becoming a born-again Southern Baptist in 1978 to being kicked out of evangelicalism in 2014 for his stance on LGBT inclusion in the church. But Gushee's religious pilgrimage proves even broader than that, as he leads his listener through his childhood experiences in Roman Catholicism, his difficult days at the liberal Union Seminary in New York, his encounters with the Christian Right, and more. In telling his story, Gushee speaks to the cultural divisions of a generation.

The Bible is the most influential book in Western history. As the foundational text of Judaism and Christianity, the Bible has been interpreted and reinterpreted over millennia, utilized to promote a seemingly endless run of theological and political positions. Adherents and detractors alike point to different passages throughout to justify wildly disparate behaviors and beliefs. Translated and retranslated, these texts lead both to unity and intense conflict.

Know the Theologians is an introduction to the most important thinkers throughout church history and a demonstration of their ongoing relevance for believers today. The Bible describes the church as a kind of family. Those who believe in Christ are sisters and brothers in the faith, whether they...

John W. O'Malley gives us the most comprehensive account ever written of the Society of Jesus in its founding years, one that heightens and transforms our understanding of the Jesuits in history and today. Following the Society from 1540 through 1565, O'Malley shows how this sense of mission evolved. He looks at everything—the Jesuits' teaching, their preaching, their casuistry, their work with orphans and prostitutes, their attitudes toward Jews and "New Christians," and their relationship to the Reformation.

A comprehensive explanation of Martin Luther’s most crucial and controversial beliefs on salvation, The Bondage of the Will is a critical resource in understanding the theology of free will and the gift of faith. Facing criticism even from others who had disagreements with the Catholic church, Luther’s strong and absolute beliefs on the gift of salvation were truly revolutionary. This work contains the full amount of research, discussion, and debate on Luther’s ideas on free will as it pertains to individual Christians and to their understanding of God.

The Jewish sect which ascribed Jesus the title of Messiah was eventually transformed into a non-Jewish movement wholly separated from its Jewish context. The transformation was not instantaneous, and there were deviating or at the least parallel streams of Jesus supporters early on. A critical mistake which has been made, in my opinion, is the assumption that the Jesus movement was uniform even among its early Jewish followers. Analyzing the original movement(s) in the first centuries of the Common Era can reveal how the schism between Judaism and Christianity evolved.

Did Columbus believe that God called him west to undiscovered lands? Does American democracy owe its inception to the handful of Pilgrims that settled at Plymouth? If, indeed, there was a specific, divine call upon this nation, is it still valid today?

Politics are being transformed by religion, namely in China - within the next 30 years, one-third of this potential superpower could be Christian. If this religious transformation occurs, China would be one of the largest Christian nations in the world.