Christianity and Violence in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period PDF Download

Author: Fernanda Alfieri
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110643979
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
The volume explores the relationship between religion and violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Early modern period, involving European and Japanese scholars. It investigates the ideological foundations of the relationship between violence and religion and their development in a varied corpus of sources (political and theological treatises, correspondence of missionaries, pamphlets, and images).

Author: Nick Megoran
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498219608
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
How should Christians respond to war? This age-old question has become more pressing given Western governments' recent overseas military interventions and the rise of extremist Islamist jihadism. Grounded in conservative evangelical theology, this book argues the historic church position that it is inadmissible for Christians to use violence or take part in war. It shows how the church's propensity to support the "just wars," crusades, rebellions, or "humanitarian interventions" of its host nations over time has been disastrous for the reputation of the gospel. Instead, the church's response to war is simply to be the church, by preaching the gospel and making peace in the love and power of God. The book considers challenges to this argument for "gospel peace." What about warfare in the Old Testament and military metaphors in the New? What of church history? And how do we deal with tyrants like Hitler and terrorists like Islamic State? Charting a path between just war theory and liberal pacifism, numerous inspiring examples from the worldwide church are used to demonstrate effective and authentically Christian responses to violence. The author argues that as Christians increasingly drop their unbiblical addiction to war, we may be entering one of the most exciting periods of church history.

Author: Anthony Bale
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 178023001X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
In Feeling Persecuted, Anthony Bale explores the medieval Christian attitude toward Jews, which included a pervasive fear of persecution and an imagined fear of violence enacted against Christians. As a result, Christians retaliated with expulsions, riots, and murders that systematically denied Jews the right to religious freedom and peace. Through close readings of a wide range of sources, Bale exposes the perceived violence enacted by the Jews and how the images of this Christian suffering and persecution were central to medieval ideas of love, community, and home. The images and texts explored by Bale expose a surprising practice of recreational persecution and show that the violence perpetrated against medieval Jews was far from simple anti-Semitism and was in fact a complex part of medieval life and culture. Bale’s comprehensive look at medieval poetry, drama, visual culture, theology, and philosophy makes Feeling Persecuted an important read for anyone interested in the history of Christian-Jewish relations and the impact of this history on modern culture.

Author: Elizabeth Gerhardt
Publisher: IVP Academic
ISBN: 9780830840496
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Violence against women and girls is a pressing global problem. In this groundbreaking study, Elizabeth Gerhardt proposes a holistic theology of the cross as the basis for a prophetic response by the church to a problem that is not only moral and ethical, but also confessional.

Author: Rosalind C. Hughes
Publisher: Upper Room Books
ISBN: 0835819698
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
Churches are not immune to violence, as we have seen from shootings at houses of worship across the nation. The challenge for faith communities is how to respond to potential violence. Whom Shall I Fear? asks congregational leaders to examine whether their operational and security policies are consistent with gospel values. It raises common themes in approaches to church security and looks at them in the light of scripture. Whom Shall I Fear? provides thought-provoking reflections on topics such as locked doors, living faithfully in an unfaithful world, the question of armed security in a church setting, and the duty of Christians to extend hospitality to their neighbor. It includes stories from survivors of gun violence and wisdom on how churches can work to transform an anxious and fear-driven world. Whom Shall I Fear? helps the church thoughtfully wrestle with what it means to be a church of grace, welcome, and love when confronted with acts of cruelty, division, and hate.

Author: James W. Douglass
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1597526088
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
One of the ten best religious books of 1968 . . . a fascinating proposal of revolutionary action through non-violence from the Judeo-Christian faith and the experiments in truth of Gandhi. 'New Book Review' 'The Non-Violent Cross' was a crucial text to push me into becoming a pacifist. It remains as relevant today as it was when first published in 1966. Douglass was in conversation not only with Catholic perspectives but also John Howard Yoder. Indeed he was among the first to show us how the most orthodox Christian claims committed the church to the practice of non-violence. We are in Wipf & Stock's debt for bringing the book back into print. Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University It will be Jim's reflections on nonviolence and just war theory for which he will be remembered best. And it is here that his language stretches, bends, and breaks under the strain of the inexplicable. For he is not just settling arguments. He is trying to convey the meaning of the kingdom of Reality which will be the final victory of Truth in history. If that kingdom is ever to come, it will be people like Jim who blazed the way. Walter Wink Not only is this book the most thoroughgoing treatment to date of non-violence...but in its analyses of the current scene it is also a 'tract for the times.' The Christian Century

Author: Preston M. Sprinkle
Publisher: David C Cook
ISBN: 0830782516
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
In a unique narrative approach, Sprinkle begins by looking at how the story of God as a whole portrays violence and war, drawing conclusions that guide the reader through the rest of the book. With urgency and precision, he navigates hard questions and examines key approaches to violence, driving every answer back to Scripture. Ultimately, Sprinkle challenges the church to "walk in a manner worthy of our calling" and shape our lives on the example of Christ. Nonviolence: The Revolutionary Way of Jesus is biblically rooted, theologically coherent, and prophetically challenging. It is a defining work that will stir discussions for years to come.

Author: Lilian Calles Barger
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190695404
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
On November 16, 2017, Pope Francis tweeted, "Poverty is not an accident. It has causes that must be recognized and removed for the good of so many of our brothers and sisters." With this statement and others like it, the first Latin American pope was associated, in the minds of many, with a stream of theology that swept the Western hemisphere in the 1960s and 70s, the movement known as liberation theology. Born of chaotic cultural crises in Latin America and the United States, liberation theology was a trans-American intellectual movement that sought to speak for those parts of society marginalized by modern politics and religion by virtue of race, class, or sex. Led by such revolutionaries as the Peruvian Catholic priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, the African American theologian James Cone, or the feminists Mary Daly and Rosemary Radford Ruether, the liberation theology movement sought to bridge the gulf between the religious values of justice and equality and political pragmatism. It combined theology with strands of radical politics, social theory, and the history and experience of subordinated groups to challenge the ideas that underwrite the hierarchical structures of an unjust society. Praised by some as a radical return to early Christian ethics and decried by others as a Marxist takeover, liberation theology has a wide-raging, cross-sectional history that has previously gone undocumented. In The World Come of Age, Lilian Calles Barger offers for the first time a systematic retelling of the history of liberation theology, demonstrating how a group of theologians set the stage for a torrent of new religious activism that challenged the religious and political status quo.

Author: Gregory Anderson Love
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1621890783
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Does God use violence to redeem us? What is the relationship between divine love and violence in regard to the saving significance of the cross of Christ? In Love, Violence, and the Cross, Gregory Love dialogues with two responses to this question, while presenting a third alternative in which Jesus's death is simultaneously a crime and an element of God's saving actions. Through familiar stories in history, literature, and film, Love presents five constructive models that cumulatively affirm God's saving act in the person and work of Christ while letting go the myth of redemptive violence. They affirm redemption, but one with a different shape: Instead of exacting the absolute punishment, God redeems by "making good" God's promise to humanity to secure human life. Love argues that God is nonviolent, while retaining the core idea presented in the New Testament witnesses: that reconciliation occurs in the work of Christ, and that the cross plays a role in that divine work.

Author: Scott Cowdell
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268104565
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
In his latest book on the ground-breaking work of René Girard (1923–2015), Scott Cowdell sets out a new perspective on mimetic theory and theology: he develops the proposed connection between Girardian thought and theological dramatic theory in new directions, engaging with issues of evolutionary suffering and divine providence, inclusive Christian uniqueness, God's judgment, nonviolent atonement, and the spiritual life. Cowdell reveals a powerful, illuminating, and life-enhancing synergy between mimetic theory and Christianity at its best. With religion widely seen as increasingly violent and intransigent, the true Christian emphasis on divine solidarity, mercy, and healing is in danger of being lost. René Girard provides a countervailing voice. He emerges from Cowdell's study not only as a necessary dialogue partner for theology today, but as a global prophet offering hope and challenge in equal measure. René Girard was a Catholic cultural theorist whose mimetic theory achieved a powerful symbiosis of social science with scripture and theology, yielding a unique perspective on humanity’s origins, violent history, and future prospects. Cowdell maps this synergy, revealing theological themes present from Girard’s earliest writings to the latest, less-familiar publications. He resolves a number of theological challenges to Girard’s work, engaging mimetic theory in fruitful dialogue with key themes, movements, and thinkers in theology today. Bringing a distinctive Anglican voice to a largely Catholic debate, Cowdell gives an orthodox theological account of Girard’s intellectual achievement, bearing witness to Christianity’s nonviolent God. This book will be of great interest to theologians, seminarians and clergy of all traditions, Girardians, and Christian peace activists.