Empire and the Christian Tradition

Empire and the Christian Tradition PDF Author: Don H. Compier
Publisher:
ISBN: 0800662156
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
The radically altered situation today in religion, politics, and global communication-what can broadly be characterized as postmodern and postcolonial-necessitates close rereading of Christianity's classical sources, especially its theologians. In this groundbreaking textbook anthology, twenty-nine distinguished scholars scrutinize the relationship between empire and Christianity from Paul to the liberation theologians of our time. The contributors discuss how the classical theologians in different historical periods dealt with their own contexts of empire and issues such as center and margin, divine power and social domination, war and violence, gender hierarchy, and displacement and diaspora. Each chapter provides insights and resources drawn from the classical theological tradition to address the current political situation. Book jacket.

Empire and the Christian Tradition

Empire and the Christian Tradition PDF Author: Don H. Compier
Publisher:
ISBN: 0800662156
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 560

Get Book Here

Book Description
The radically altered situation today in religion, politics, and global communication-what can broadly be characterized as postmodern and postcolonial-necessitates close rereading of Christianity's classical sources, especially its theologians. In this groundbreaking textbook anthology, twenty-nine distinguished scholars scrutinize the relationship between empire and Christianity from Paul to the liberation theologians of our time. The contributors discuss how the classical theologians in different historical periods dealt with their own contexts of empire and issues such as center and margin, divine power and social domination, war and violence, gender hierarchy, and displacement and diaspora. Each chapter provides insights and resources drawn from the classical theological tradition to address the current political situation. Book jacket.

Empire Baptized

Empire Baptized PDF Author: Howard-Brook, Wes
Publisher: Orbis Books
ISBN: 1608336581
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Book Description
Through a study of the early church, this book shows how Christianity in effect opted for the religion of empire, shifting the emphasis of Jesus's prophetic message from transforming the world to the aim of saving one's soul.

God and Empire

God and Empire PDF Author: John Dominic Crossan
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006174428X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The bestselling author and prominent New Testament scholar draws parallels between 1st–century Roman Empire and 21st–century United States, showing how the radical messages of Jesus and Paul can lead us to peace today Using the tools of expert biblical scholarship and a keen eye for current events, bestselling author John Dominic Crossan deftly presents the tensions exhibited in the Bible between political power and God’s justice. Through the revolutionary messages of Jesus and Paul, Crossan reveals what the Bible has to say about land and economy, violence and retribution, justice and peace, and ultimately, redemption. He examines the meaning of “kingdom of God” prophesized by Jesus, and the equality recommended to Paul by his churches, contrasting these messages of peace against the misinterpreted apocalyptic vision from the book of Revelations, that has been co-opted by modern right-wing theologians and televangelists to justify the United State’s military actions in the Middle East.

Making Christian History

Making Christian History PDF Author: Michael Hollerich
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520295366
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Known as the “Father of Church History,” Eusebius was bishop of Caesarea in Palestine and the leading Christian scholar of his day. His Ecclesiastical History is an irreplaceable chronicle of Christianity’s early development, from its origin in Judaism, through two and a half centuries of illegality and occasional persecution, to a new era of tolerance and favor under the Emperor Constantine. In this book, Michael J. Hollerich recovers the reception of this text across time. As he shows, Eusebius adapted classical historical writing for a new “nation,” the Christians, with a distinctive theo-political vision. Eusebius’s text left its mark on Christian historical writing from late antiquity to the early modern period—across linguistic, cultural, political, and religious boundaries—until its encounter with modern historicism and postmodernism. Making Christian History demonstrates Eusebius’s vast influence throughout history, not simply in shaping Christian culture but also when falling under scrutiny as that culture has been reevaluated, reformed, and resisted over the past 1,700 years.

Christ and Caesar

Christ and Caesar PDF Author: Seyoon Kim
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802860087
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
This title looks at what kind of responses Paul made to the Roman Empire. The author subjects the methods of current interpreters to critical scrutiny and discusses what makes an anti-imperial interpretation of Pauline writings difficult.

The Art of Empire

The Art of Empire PDF Author: Lee M. Jefferson
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506402844
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
In recent years, art historians such as Johannes Deckers (Picturing the Bible, 2009) have argued for a significant transition in fourth- and fifth-century images of Jesus following the conversion of Constantine. Broadly speaking, they perceive the image of a peaceful, benevolent shepherd transformed into a powerful, enthroned Jesus, mimicking and mirroring the dominance and authority of the emperor. The powers of church and state are thus conveniently synthesized in such a potent image. This deeply rooted position assumes that ante-pacem images of Jesus were uniformly humble while post-Constantinian images exuded the grandeur of power and glory. The Art of Empire contends that the art and imagery of Late Antiquity merits a more nuanced understanding of the context of the imperial period before and after Constantine. The chapters in this collection each treat an aspect of the relationship between early Christian art and the rituals, practices, or imagery of the Empire, and offer a new and fresh perspective on the development of Christian art in its imperial background.

Church and Empire

Church and Empire PDF Author: Maria E. Doerfler
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506416934
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
The history of the church’s relationship with governing authorities unfolds from its beginnings at the intersection of apprehension and acceptance, collaboration and separation. This volume is dedicated to helping students chart this complex narrative through early Christian writings from the first six centuries of the Common Era. Church and Empire is part of Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources, a series designed to present ancient Christian texts essential to an understanding of Christian theology, ecclesiology, and practice. The books in the series will make the wealth of early Christian thought available to new generations of students of theology and provide a valuable resource for the church. Developed in light of recent patristic scholarship, the volumes will provide a representative sampling of theological contributions from both East and West. The series provides volumes that are relevant for a variety of courses: from introduction to theology to classes on doctrine and the development of Christian thought. The goal of each volume is not to be exhaustive, but rather representative enough to denote for a nonspecialist audience the multivalent character of early Christian thought, allowing readers to see how and why early Christian doctrine and practice developed the way it did.

Church, Gospel, and Empire

Church, Gospel, and Empire PDF Author: Roger Haydon Mitchell
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1630879150
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
This book addresses the apparent dislocation of the church and theology from the socio-cultural mainstream and attempts to recover its counterpolitical voice. It argues that early in ecclesiastical history, the tradition's founding and constituent principles were betrayed by a complicity with the prevailing politics of sovereignty that has continued to this day. Following the contours of contemporary theologians who explain the dislocation in terms of a fall in early modernity, an initial subsumption of transcendence by sovereignty is proposed. The genealogy of this fall is then explored in four historical studies focusing on the theopolitical transformations of law, violence, and appeasement from their beginnings in the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea to their culmination in the commodification of life itself. The trajectory is traced through seminal soteriological developments such as the crusade theology of Pope Innocent III, the inversion of the corpus verum and the corpus mysticum, and the conjunction of sovereignty and capital in the mysterious currency of the Bank of England. The narrative culminates in the seemingly paradoxical concurrence of the politics of biopower and the so-called century of the Holy Spirit. Drawing on a radical substratum intimated in the case studies, the final section develops an innovative christological configuration of kenosis or what is termed 'kenarchy.' This provides a re-imagining of the divine distinct from its implication with imperial sovereignty, which could allow theology to make a more effective contemporary political intervention.

Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance

Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance PDF 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."

Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity

Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Jeremy M. Schott
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812203461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
In Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity, Jeremy M. Schott examines the ways in which conflicts between Christian and pagan intellectuals over religious, ethnic, and cultural identity contributed to the transformation of Roman imperial rhetoric and ideology in the early fourth century C.E. During this turbulent period, which began with Diocletian's persecution of the Christians and ended with Constantine's assumption of sole rule and the consolidation of a new Christian empire, Christian apologists and anti-Christian polemicists launched a number of literary salvos in a battle for the minds and souls of the empire. Schott focuses on the works of the Platonist philosopher and anti- Christian polemicist Porphyry of Tyre and his Christian respondents: the Latin rhetorician Lactantius, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, and the emperor Constantine. Previous scholarship has tended to narrate the Christianization of the empire in terms of a new religion's penetration and conquest of classical culture and society. The present work, in contrast, seeks to suspend the static, essentializing conceptualizations of religious identity that lie behind many studies of social and political change in late antiquity in order to investigate the processes through which Christian and pagan identities were constructed. Drawing on the insights of postcolonial discourse analysis, Schott argues that the production of Christian identity and, in turn, the construction of a Christian imperial discourse were intimately and inseparably linked to the broader politics of Roman imperialism.