Unveiling Empire PDF Download

Author: Wes Howard-Brook
Publisher: Orbis Books
ISBN: 1608331555
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
Confused by "end of the world" readings or put off by the dense and mysterious imagery, many readers hesitate to explore the Book of Revelation. Unveiling Empire offers a new entree into this troubling and controversial book of the Bible by examining the roots and social purposes of apocalyptic literature and Revelations own use of traditional imagery. In this way the authors provide readers with the tools for deciphering the texts message--and its urgent applications for Christians today living amidst a new kind of "empire."

Author: C. Wess Daniels
Publisher: Barclay Press
ISBN: 9781594980633
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
Revelation speaks to the reality that we are caught in the fray of cosmic conflict. We are guilty. We've already been contaminated. But it's not too late for us to exit empire and enter the kingdom. We are yet both victim and victimizer. We have healing work to do, and we must take responsibility for the ways in which we have benefited from and been complicit with the religion of empire. This is the truth of Revelation. God wants to liberate us in body, heart, soul, and mind.Revelation reveals how scapegoating functions within empire to define its own boundaries and contours as being over and against wicked others.Revelation critiques wealth and shows that even in the first century there was prophetic critique against an economic system that was based on abundance for some, while exploiting the rest.Revelation demonstrates the importance of liturgy as something that forms people into the likeness of either empire or the lamb.Revelation reveals an alternative social order which becomes the center of resistance rooted in a vision of what the book describes as "the multitude."

Author:
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 0857861018
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Book Description
The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

Author: Douglas T. Northrop
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501702963
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Drawing on extensive research in the archives of Russia and Uzbekistan, Douglas Northrop here reconstructs the turbulent history of a Soviet campaign that sought to end the seclusion of Muslim women. In Uzbekistan it focused above all on a massive effort to eliminate the heavy horsehair-and-cotton veils worn by many women and girls. This campaign against the veil was, in Northrop's view, emblematic of the larger Soviet attempt to bring the proletarian revolution to Muslim Central Asia, a region Bolsheviks saw as primitive and backward. The Soviets focused on women and the family in an effort to forge a new, "liberated" social order.This unveiling campaign, however, took place in the context of a half-century of Russian colonization and the long-standing suspicion of rural Muslim peasants toward an urban, colonial state. Widespread resistance to the idea of unveiling quickly appeared and developed into a broader anti-Soviet animosity among Uzbeks of both sexes. Over the next quarter-century a bitter and often violent confrontation ensued, with battles being waged over indigenous practices of veiling and seclusion.New local and national identities coalesced around these very practices that had been placed under attack. Veils became powerful anticolonial symbols for the Uzbek nation as well as important markers of Muslim propriety. Bolshevik leaders, who had seen this campaign as an excellent way to enlist allies while proving their own European credentials as enlightened reformers, thus inadvertently strengthened the seclusion of Uzbek women—precisely the reverse of what they set out to do. Northrop's fascinating and evocative book shows both the fluidity of Central Asian cultural practices and the real limits that existed on Stalinist authority, even during the ostensibly totalitarian 1930s.

Author: Michael J. Gorman
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 162189262X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Reading Revelation Responsibly is for those who are confused by, afraid of, and/or preoccupied with the book of Revelation. In rescuing the Apocalypse from those who either completely misinterpret it or completely ignore it, Michael Gorman has given us both a guide to reading Revelation in a responsible way and a theological engagement with the text itself. He takes interpreting the book as a serious and sacred responsibility, believing how one reads, teaches, and preaches Revelation can have a powerful impact on one's own--and other people's--well-being. Gorman pays careful attention to the book's original historical and literary contexts, its connections to the rest of Scripture, its relationship to Christian doctrine and practice, and its potential to help or harm people in their life of faith. Rather than a script for the end times, Gorman demonstrates how Revelation is a script for Christian worship, witness, and mission that runs counter to culturally embedded civil religion.

Author: Scot McKnight
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310135796
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
See how the Book of Revelation can be read as a book of discipleship, challenging Christ-followers everywhere to live as hopeful agents of resistance and transformation. The last book of the Bible frustrates and frightens many people with its imagery and apocalyptic tone. Popular interpretations rely on fear and politicization and often lead to pride and alienation of others. Is this really how we were intended to read John’s Revelation? In Revelation for the Rest of Us, Scot McKnight with Cody Matchett explore the key message of Revelation and how it: Calls us to be faithful and hopeful witnesses to Jesus. Stimulates our imagination to see the world through the eyes of God and excite our faith. Challenges us to stand against the militarism, economic exploitation, oppression, and injustice of worldly authorities. McKnight addresses the popular misconceptions about the book, explaining what John means in his use of the images of dragons, lambs, and beasts; and how the symbolism of Revelation spoke in the days of Rome and still speaks powerfully to the present day—though not in the way most people think. You’ll learn to see the Book of Revelation in a fresh and hopeful new way. Drawing from the latest scholarship, the authors present an understanding of Revelation for anyone interested in deepening their personal study of the Bible and strengthening their faith as dissident disciples who can discern the presence of "Babylon" in our world and learn to speak up, speak out, and walk in the way of the Lamb.

Author: Ian Boxall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108490921
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
This volume provides an up-to-date introduction to the diverse ways the Bible is being interpreted by scholars in the field.

Author: Joel B. Green
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 144120654X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
There is often an unfortunate division between the technical work of biblical scholars and the practical work of preachers who construct sermons each week. These two fields of study, which ought to be mutually informed and supportive, are more often practically divided by divergent methods, interests, and goals. Narrative Reading, Narrative Preaching aims to bridge that divide. Using narrative as an organizing theme, the contributors work through the New Testament offering examples of how interpretation can rightly inform proclamation. Three pairs of chapters feature an exemplary reading by a New Testament scholar followed by a sermon informed by that reading. Introductory and concluding chapters provide guidance for application of the model. Pastors and seminarians will find here a uniquely practical work that will help them with both the reading and preaching of Scripture.

Author: Wes Howard-Brook
Publisher: Orbis Books
ISBN: 1608331547
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
A compelling view of two competing religious visions---one of "creation" and the other of "empire"---that run throughout the Bible. "A remarkable offering for those who care about the interface of power and faith with all the threats and seductions that go with it. . . As I read, I felt overwhelmed, both by the mass of data and by the cunning of interpretation. I could not put it down, and expect to continue to be instructed by it.---Walter Brueggemann "Howard-Brook undertakes what few dare anymore: an introductory primer for the whole Bible...This book invites disciples to `connect the dots', in order to recover our ancient, anti-imperial identity, and to embrace a radical faith and practice that are personal and politica."---Ched Myers "Howard-Brook illuminates how ancient empires exercised control and manipulation of people not simply by political and military means, but also through the religion of empire. Throughout he makes clear that the core message of the God of creation is to call people out of empire, to refuse to cooperate with the forces of destruction and domination today."---Richard Horsley "Will become a classic for communities that seek first to receive the gracious gift of God's alternative future to Empire."---Jarrod McKenna "If we who sojourn in America are to be a community that can both name and resist the lure of Empire, we need a story more powerful than the story called America. Wes Howard-Brook knows than the Bible tells such a story. May its story be ours as we're set free from our imperial imaginations to dream with our Creator of a new world here and now."---Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Author: John Riches
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316194116
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 871

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Book Description
This volume examines the Bible's role in the modern world - beginning with a treatment of its production and distribution that discusses publishers, printers, text critics, and translators and continuing with a presentation of new methods of studying the text that have emerged, including historical, literary, social-scientific, feminist, postcolonial, liberal, and fundamentalist readings. There is a full discussion of the changes in understandings of and approaches to the Bible in various faith communities. The dissemination of the Bible throughout the globe has also produced a host of new interpretations, and this volume provides a comprehensive geographical survey of its reception. In the final chapters, the authors offer a thematic overview of the Bible in relation to literature, art, film, science, and other disciplines. They demonstrate that, in spite of challenges to the Bible's authority in western Europe, it remains highly relevant and influential, not least in the Americas, Africa, and Asia.