In this thrilling narrative, Phillip Campbell, author of the best-selling Story of Civilization series, takes children on a journey through Church history, beginning at Pentecost when Peter and the other apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit and preached in the streets of Jerusalem, all the way through the pontificate of John Paul II and into modern times. Campbell's storybook style brings the narrative to life for young readers, taking them back in time and awakening a love and appreciation for history.
The last decade has seen the emergence of a whole new generation of church designs. Covering buildings across the world, Contemporary Church Architecture aims to appeal not only to architects and clergy involved directly in ecclesiastical architecture but also other practitioners and those with a broader interest in cutting-edge design. This book covers the development of contemporary church design by looking at how the rational and the sacred can be reconciled and can inform one another. It also outlines the main trends and approaches: the conflict between self-expression and expression of the sacred, between sculptural signification and functionalism. Beautifully illustrated with around 350 photographs.
Engagingly written with introductory-level students in mind, The Modern Church brings the history of theological and spiritual developments, social and cultural phenomena, noteworthy leaders and ordinary Christians, long-standing institutions and spontaneous mass movements together into a single, fascinating narrative.
In this sweeping history, Alexander Kitroeff shows how the Greek Orthodox Church in America has functioned as much more than a religious institution, becoming the focal point in the lives of the country's million-plus Greek immigrants and their descendants. Assuming the responsibility of running Greek-language schools and encouraging local parishes to engage in cultural and social activities, the church became the most important Greek American institution and shaped the identity of Greeks in the United States. Kitroeff digs into these traditional activities, highlighting the American church's dependency on the "mother church," the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the use of Greek language in the Sunday liturgy. Today, as this rich biography of the church shows us, Greek Orthodoxy remains in between the Old World and the New, both Greek and American.
Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, marked fundamental shifts in ethical methodology, in how we do ethics in the Catholic tradition, and in how we think about ethical and ecclesial issues in the Catholic Church in the modern world. On the document’s fiftieth anniversary, this book explores the historical origins of Gaudium et Spes, its impact on the Church’s ecclesial self-understanding, and its implications for doing Catholic theological ethics for the specific ethical issues of marriage, social justice, politics, and peacebuilding.The book engages in the ongoing communal discernment of the aggiornamento sought by the council’s convener, Pope John XXIII, seeking to bring the Church up to date in the twenty-first century.
Catholic antimodern, 1920-1929 -- Anti-communism and paternal Catholicism, 1929-1944 -- Anti-fascism and fraternal Catholicism, 1929-1944 -- Rebuilding Christian Europe, 1944-1950 -- Christian democracy and Catholic innovation in the long 1950s -- The return of heresy in the global 1960s
A lively examination of the heretics who helped Christianity become the world’s most powerful religion. From Arius, a fourth-century Libyan cleric who doubted the very divinity of Christ, to more successful heretics like Martin Luther and John Calvin, this book charts the history of dissent in the Christian Church. As the author traces the Church’s attempts at enforcing orthodoxy, from the days of Constantine to the modern Catholic Church’s lingering conflicts, he argues that heresy—by forcing the Church to continually refine and impose its beliefs—actually helped Christianity to blossom into one of the world’s most formidable religions. Today, all believers owe it to themselves to grapple with the questions raised by heresy. Can you be a Christian without denouncing heretics? Is it possible that new ideas challenging Church doctrine are destined to become as popular as Luther’s once-outrageous suggestions of clerical marriage and a priesthood of all believers? A delightfully readable and deeply learned new history, Heretics overturns our assumptions about the role of heresy in a faith that still shapes the world. “Wright emphasizes the ‘extraordinarily creative role’ that heresy has played in the evolution of Christianity by helping to ‘define, enliven, and complicate’ it in dialectical fashion. Among the world’s great religions, Christianity has been uniquely rich in dissent, Wright argues—especially in its early days, when there was so little agreement among its adherents that one critic compared them to a marsh full of frogs croaking in discord.” —The New Yorker
Fifty years after the Second Vatican Council, architectural historian Robert Proctor examines the transformations in British Roman Catholic church architecture that took place in the two decades surrounding this crucial event. Inspired by new thinking in theology and changing practices of worship, and by a growing acceptance of modern art and architecture, architects designed radical new forms of church building in a campaign of new buildings for new urban contexts. A focussed study of mid-twentieth century church architecture, Building the Modern Church considers how architects and clergy constructed the image and reality of the Church as an institution through its buildings. The author examines changing conceptions of tradition and modernity, and the development of a modern church architecture that drew from the ideas of the liturgical movement. The role of Catholic clergy as patrons of modern architecture and art and the changing attitudes of the Church and its architects to modernity are examined, explaining how different strands of post-war architecture were adopted in the field of ecclesiastical buildings. The church building’s social role in defining communities through rituals and symbols is also considered, together with the relationships between churches and modernist urban planning in new towns and suburbs. Case studies analysed in detail include significant buildings and architects that have remained little known until now. Based on meticulous historical research in primary sources, theoretically informed, fully referenced, and thoroughly illustrated, this book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the church architecture, art and theology of this period.
This is the SCM Core Text: "Modern Church History" provides an introduction to global Christianity from 1700 to the mid 20th C. The book aims to help students understand the processes, movements and individuals who have contributed to making the contemporary Christian landscape the shape it is in the 21st century. Theologically it takes a wide and inclusive approach to provide a balanced survey of Christianity in all its forms - Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox. Geographically it focuses on the Christian church in the UK, continental Europe and North America, and examines in each location the social movements, campaigns and campaigners, scientific and political challenges that have shaped the Christian Church throughout the period.Beginning with the reaction to Lutherism, it charts the rise of Pietism in Europe throughout the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the influence of John Wesley and the Methodists, in the UK and the 'Great Awakening' in North America. The early chapters summarize the developments within the Christian Church in the UK, with detailed coverage of the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish situations, throughout the 19th Century. This is followed by a summary of the various schools of thought to have developed through the 20th C, including the church's reaction to the 2 world wars in Europe, fundamentalism in the USA. The book also provides specific coverage of the religious situation in North America throughout the modern period covering the development of separate black churches, the 'New Evangelicalism'. It is suitable for level two as well as introductory courses in modern church history or courses concerned with religion, culture and society in the 18th - 20th centuries
First published in 1930, A History of the Modern Church is a scholarly and readable account of the church from the beginning of the Reformation to modern times. It traces the rise of many attitudes towards life, many conceptions of the faith, and many ecclesiastical systems. This book will be of interest to students of religion and history.
