Protestants

Protestants PDF Author: Alec Ryrie
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735222819
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 528

Get Book Here

Book Description
On the 500th anniversary of Luther’s theses, a landmark history of the revolutionary faith that shaped the modern world. "Ryrie writes that his aim 'is to persuade you that we cannot understand the modern age without understanding the dynamic history of Protestant Christianity.' To which I reply: Mission accomplished." –Jon Meacham, author of American Lion and Thomas Jefferson Five hundred years ago a stubborn German monk challenged the Pope with a radical vision of what Christianity could be. The revolution he set in motion toppled governments, upended social norms and transformed millions of people's understanding of their relationship with God. In this dazzling history, Alec Ryrie makes the case that we owe many of the rights and freedoms we have cause to take for granted--from free speech to limited government--to our Protestant roots. Fired up by their faith, Protestants have embarked on courageous journeys into the unknown like many rebels and refugees who made their way to our shores. Protestants created America and defined its special brand of entrepreneurial diligence. Some turned to their bibles to justify bold acts of political opposition, others to spurn orthodoxies and insight on their God-given rights. Above all Protestants have fought for their beliefs, establishing a tradition of principled opposition and civil disobedience that is as alive today as it was 500 years ago. In this engrossing and magisterial work, Alec Ryrie makes the case that whether or not you are yourself a Protestant, you live in a world shaped by Protestants.

Protestants

Protestants PDF Author: Alec Ryrie
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735222819
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 528

Get Book Here

Book Description
On the 500th anniversary of Luther’s theses, a landmark history of the revolutionary faith that shaped the modern world. "Ryrie writes that his aim 'is to persuade you that we cannot understand the modern age without understanding the dynamic history of Protestant Christianity.' To which I reply: Mission accomplished." –Jon Meacham, author of American Lion and Thomas Jefferson Five hundred years ago a stubborn German monk challenged the Pope with a radical vision of what Christianity could be. The revolution he set in motion toppled governments, upended social norms and transformed millions of people's understanding of their relationship with God. In this dazzling history, Alec Ryrie makes the case that we owe many of the rights and freedoms we have cause to take for granted--from free speech to limited government--to our Protestant roots. Fired up by their faith, Protestants have embarked on courageous journeys into the unknown like many rebels and refugees who made their way to our shores. Protestants created America and defined its special brand of entrepreneurial diligence. Some turned to their bibles to justify bold acts of political opposition, others to spurn orthodoxies and insight on their God-given rights. Above all Protestants have fought for their beliefs, establishing a tradition of principled opposition and civil disobedience that is as alive today as it was 500 years ago. In this engrossing and magisterial work, Alec Ryrie makes the case that whether or not you are yourself a Protestant, you live in a world shaped by Protestants.

Protestantism: A Very Short Introduction

Protestantism: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Mark A. Noll
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191620130
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Get Book Here

Book Description
Mark A. Noll presents a fresh and accessible history of Protestantism from the era of Martin Luther to the present day. Beginning with the founding of Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and Anabaptist churches in the sixteenth-century Reformation, he also considers the rise of other important Christian movements like Methodism and Pentecostalism. Focussing on worldwide developments, rather than just the familiar European and American histories, he considers the recent expansion of Protestant movements in Africa, China, India, and Latin America, emphasising the on-going and rapidly expanding story of Protestants worldwide. Noll examines the contributions from well-known figures including Martin Luther and John Calvin, along with many others, and explores why Protestant energies have flagged recently in the Western world yet expanded so dramatically elsewhere. Highlighting the key points of Protestant commonality including the message of Christian salvation, reliance on the Bible, and organization through personal initiative, he also explores the reasons for Protestantism's extraordinary diversity. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

An Anxious Age

An Anxious Age PDF Author: Joseph Bottum
Publisher: Image
ISBN: 0385521464
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book Here

Book Description
We live in a profoundly spiritual age, but not in any good way. Huge swaths of American culture are driven by manic spiritual anxiety and relentless supernatural worry. Radicals and traditionalists, liberals and conservatives, together with politicians, artists, environmentalists, followers of food fads, and the chattering classes of television commentators: America is filled with people frantically seeking confirmation of their own essential goodness. We are a nation desperate to stand of the side of morality--to know that we are righteous and dwell in the light. In An Anxious Age, Joseph Bottum offers an account of modern America, presented as a morality tale formed by a collision of spiritual disturbances. And the cause, he claims, is the most significant and least noticed historical fact of the last fifty years: the collapse of the mainline Protestant churches that were the source of social consensus and cultural unity. Our dangerous spiritual anxieties, broken loose from the churches that once contained them, now madden everything in American life. Updating The Protestant Ethic and the Sprit of Capitalism, Max Weber's sociological classic, An Anxious Age undertakes two case studies of contemporary social classes adrift in a nation without the religious understandings that gave them meaning. Looking at the college-educated elite he calls "the Poster Children," Bottum sees the post-Protestant heirs of the old mainline Protestant domination of culture: dutiful descendants who claim the high social position of their Christian ancestors even while they reject their ancestors' Christianity. Turning to the Swallows of Capistrano, the Catholics formed by the pontificate of John Paul II, Bottum evaluates the early victories--and later defeats--of the attempt to substitute Catholicism for the dying mainline voice in public life. Sweeping across American intellectual and cultural history, An Anxious Age traces the course of national religion and warns about the strange angels and even stranger demons with which we now wrestle. Insightful and contrarian, wise and unexpected, An Anxious Age ranks among the great modern accounts of American culture.

Protestantism in America

Protestantism in America PDF Author: Randall Balmer
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231507691
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
As America has become more pluralistic, Protestantism, with its long roots in American history and culture, has hardly remained static. This finely crafted portrait of a remarkably complex group of Christian denominations describes Protestantism's history, constituent subgroups and their activities, and the way in which its dialectic with American culture has shaped such facets of the wider society as healthcare, welfare, labor relations, gender roles, and political discourse. Part I provides an introduction to the religion's essential beliefs, a brief history, and a taxonomy of its primary American varieties. Part II shows the diversity of the tradition with vivid accounts of life and worship in a variety of mainline and evangelical churches. Part III explores the vexed relationship Protestantism maintains with critical social issues, including homosexuality, feminism, and social justice. The appendices include biographical sketches of notable Protestant leaders, a chronology, a glossary, and an annotated list of resources for further study.

Practicing Protestants

Practicing Protestants PDF Author: Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801889324
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of essays explores the significance of practice in understanding American Protestant life. The authors are historians of American religion, practical theologians, and pastors and were the twelve principal researchers in a three-year collaborative project sponsored by the Lilly Endowment. Profiling practices that range from Puritan devotional writing to twentieth-century prayer, from missionary tactics to African American ritual performance, these essays provide a unique historical perspective on how Protestants have lived their faith within and outside of the church and how practice has formed their identities and beliefs. Each chapter focuses on a different practice within a particular social and cultural context. The essays explore transformations in American religious culture from Puritan to Evangelical and Enlightenment sensibilities in New England, issues of mission, nationalism, and American empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, devotional practices in the flux of modern intellectual predicaments, and the claims of late-twentieth-century liberal Protestant pluralism. Breaking new ground in ritual studies and cultural history, Practicing Protestants offers a distinctive history of American Protestant practice.

Christian Slavery

Christian Slavery PDF Author: Katharine Gerbner
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812294904
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Get Book Here

Book Description
Could slaves become Christian? If so, did their conversion lead to freedom? If not, then how could perpetual enslavement be justified? In Christian Slavery, Katharine Gerbner contends that religion was fundamental to the development of both slavery and race in the Protestant Atlantic world. Slave owners in the Caribbean and elsewhere established governments and legal codes based on an ideology of "Protestant Supremacy," which excluded the majority of enslaved men and women from Christian communities. For slaveholders, Christianity was a sign of freedom, and most believed that slaves should not be eligible for conversion. When Protestant missionaries arrived in the plantation colonies intending to convert enslaved Africans to Christianity in the 1670s, they were appalled that most slave owners rejected the prospect of slave conversion. Slaveholders regularly attacked missionaries, both verbally and physically, and blamed the evangelizing newcomers for slave rebellions. In response, Quaker, Anglican, and Moravian missionaries articulated a vision of "Christian Slavery," arguing that Christianity would make slaves hardworking and loyal. Over time, missionaries increasingly used the language of race to support their arguments for slave conversion. Enslaved Christians, meanwhile, developed an alternate vision of Protestantism that linked religious conversion to literacy and freedom. Christian Slavery shows how the contentions between slave owners, enslaved people, and missionaries transformed the practice of Protestantism and the language of race in the early modern Atlantic world.

Introducing Protestant Social Ethics

Introducing Protestant Social Ethics PDF Author: Brian Matz
Publisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 1493406647
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
Despite their rich tradition of social concern, Protestants have historically struggled to articulate why, whether, and how to challenge unethical social structures. This book introduces Protestants to the biblical and historical background of Christian social ethics, inviting them to understand the basis for social action and engage with the broader tradition. It embraces and explains long-standing Christian reflection on social ethics and shows how Scripture and Christian history connect to current social justice issues. Each chapter includes learning outcomes and chapter highlights.

The Social Gospel

The Social Gospel PDF Author: Ronald Cedric White
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9780877220848
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book Here

Book Description
Author note: Ronald C. White, Jr. is Chaplain and Assistant Professor of Religion at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington. >P>C. Howard Hopkins is Professor of History Emeritus at Rider College and Director of the John R. Mott Biography Project. He is the author of The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism.

The End of Protestantism

The End of Protestantism PDF Author: Peter J. Leithart
Publisher: Brazos Press
ISBN: 1493405837
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Failure of Denominationalism and the Future of Christian Unity One of the unforeseen results of the Reformation was the shattering fragmentation of the church. Protestant tribalism was and continues to be a major hindrance to any solution to Christian division and its cultural effects. In this book, influential thinker Peter Leithart critiques American denominationalism in the context of global and historic Christianity, calls for an end to Protestant tribalism, and presents a vision for the future church that transcends post-Reformation divisions. Leithart offers pastors and churches a practical agenda, backed by theological arguments, for pursuing local unity now. Unity in the church will not be a matter of drawing all churches into a single, existing denomination, says Leithart. Returning to Catholicism or Orthodoxy is not the solution. But it is possible to move toward church unity without giving up our convictions about truth. This critique and defense of Protestantism urges readers to preserve and celebrate the central truths recovered in the Reformation while working to heal the wounds of the body of Christ.

The Christian Century and the Rise of Mainline Protestantism

The Christian Century and the Rise of Mainline Protestantism PDF Author: Elesha J. Coffman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199938598
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book Here

Book Description
Since the 1972 publication of Dean M. Kelley's Why Conservative Churches Are Growing, discussion of the Protestant mainline has focused on the tradition's decline. Elesha J. Coffman's The Christian Century and the Rise of Mainline Protestantism tells a different story, using the lens of the influential periodical The Christian Century to examine the rise of the mainline to a position of cultural prominence in the first half of the twentieth century.