In the New York Times bestseller An Altar in the World, acclaimed author Barbara Brown Taylor continues her spiritual journey by building upon where she left off in Leaving Church. With the honesty of Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) and the spiritual depth of Anne Lamott (Grace, Eventually), Taylor shares how she learned to find God beyond the church walls by embracing the sacred as a natural part of everyday life. In An Altar in the World, Taylor shows us how to discover altars everywhere we go and in nearly everything we do as we learn to live with purpose, pay attention, slow down, and revere the world we live in. The eBook includes a special excerpt from Barbara Brown Taylor's Learning to Walk in the Dark.
This prize-winning account of the pre-Reformation church recreates lay people’s experience of religion, showing that late-medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed, but a strong and vigorous tradition. For this edition, Duffy has written a new introduction reflecting on recent developments in our understanding of the period. “A mighty and momentous book: a book to be read and re-read, pondered and revered; a subtle, profound book written with passion and eloquence, and with masterly control.”—J. J. Scarisbrick, The Tablet “Revisionist history at its most imaginative and exciting. . . . [An] astonishing and magnificent piece of work.”—Edward T. Oakes, Commonweal “A magnificent scholarly achievement, a compelling read, and not a page too long to defend a thesis which will provoke passionate debate.”—Patricia Morison, Financial Times “Deeply imaginative, movingly written, and splendidly illustrated.”—Maurice Keen, New York Review of Books Winner of the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Award
Altars are powerful symbols, fraught with meaning, but during the early modern period they became a religious battleground. Attacked by reformers in the mid-sixteenth century because of their allegedly idolatrous associations with the Catholic sacrifice of the mass, a hundred years later they served to divide Protestants due to their re-introduction by Archbishop Laud and his associates as part of a counter-reforming programme. Moreover, having subsequently been removed by the victorious puritans, they gradually came back after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. This book explores these developments, over a 150 year period, and recaptures the experience of the ordinary parishioner in this crucial period of religious change. Far from being the passive recipients of changes imposed from above, the laity are revealed as actively engaged from the early days of the Reformation, as zealous iconoclasts or their Catholic opponents - a division later translated into competing protestant views. Altars Restored integrates the worlds of theological debate, church politics and government, and parish practice and belief, which are often studied in isolation from one another. It draws from hitherto largely untapped sources, notably the surviving artefactual evidence comprising communion tables and rails, fonts, images in stained glass, paintings and plates, and examines the riches of local parish records - especially churchwardens' accounts. The result is a richly textured study of religious change at both local and national level.
Oxbow says: The six essays featured in this study originated as papers given at the 36th International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo. The contributors survey the ornate altars produced from the early 8th to 13th century in Europe, with specific examples taken from Italy, Germany and Scandinavia.
"The first part of the book reviews the main features of religious belief and practice up to 1536. Duffy examines the factors that contributed to the close lay engagement with the structures of late medieval Catholicism: the liturgy that was widely understood even though it was in Latin; the impact of literacy and printing on lay religious knowledge; the conventions and contents of lay prayer; the relation of orthodox religious practice and magic; the Mass and the cult of the saints; and lay belief about death and the afterlife. In the second part of the book Duffy explores the impact of Protestant reforms on this traditional religion, providing new evidence of popular discontent from medieval wills and parish records. He documents the widespread opposition to Protestantism during the reigns of Henry and Edward, discusses Mary's success in reestablishing Catholicism, and describes the public resistance to Elizabeth's dismantling of parochial Catholicism that did not wane until the late 1570s. A major revision to accepted thinking about the spread of the Reformation, this book will be essential reading for students of British history and religion."--BOOK JACKET.
In this comprehensive history, Fr. Charles Connor details the life of Catholics in the American Colonies. It’s a tale that begins with the flight of English Catholics to religious freedom in Maryland in 1634, and continues through the post-Revolutionary period, by which time the constitutions of all but four of the first 13 states contained harsh anti-Catholic provisions. Catholic readers will be proud to learn from these pages that despite almost two centuries of ever-more-intense religious persecutions and even harsher legal prohibitions, American Catholics in the colonies simply refused not to be Catholic. These pages show that from the Jesuit manor houses that planted the seeds of faith in Maryland to the solitary missionary priests who evangelized the New York regions, Catholics kept the faith . . . even unto death. Pioneer Priests and Makeshift Altars is indispensable reading for souls interested in the deep roots of Catholicism in America, and in the holy courage of scores of Catholics who kept remorseless forces from snuffing their faith out. Among other things, you’ll learn here: Why Catholics left the old world for America: their reasons were often not religiousThe tale of The Ark and The Dove that carried the first settlers to MarylandThe Puritan ascendancy that too soon outlawed Catholicism in MarylandThe sole Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence: Can you name him?The surprisingly powerful anti-Catholic sentiments of most of the Founding FathersThe friend of George Washington who became the first Bishop of BaltimoreThe great Catholic post-Revolutionary War migration from Maryland to KentuckyThe cosmopolitan colony whose robust religious liberty was more favorable that Maryland to CatholicismThe Quaker/Catholic alliance that promoted both religionsThe role of persecuted Catholics in the Revolutionary WarWhy, in that War, many Catholics favored the anti-Catholic BritishThe French Jesuits who evangelized New York and its frontier areas, and the saints who were martyred thereThe Iroquois maiden who converted and became a saintThe years in which, throughout the colonies, Catholics became an endangered speciesPlus: much more to acquaint you with the proud heritage of Catholics in the earliest years of our nation!
Rashi's commentary and the Glossa Ordinaria both developed in the late eleventh and early twelfth century with no known contact between them. Nevertheless, they shared a way of reading text that shaped their interpretations of the near-sacrifice of Isaac. This work compares them both with each other and their respective sources to show their similarity.
From one of the leading historians of Christianity comes this sweeping reassessment of religious freedom, from the church fathers to John Locke In the ancient world Christian apologists wrote in defense of their right to practice their faith in the cities of the Roman Empire. They argued that religious faith is an inward disposition of the mind and heart and cannot be coerced by external force, laying a foundation on which later generations would build. Chronicling the history of the struggle for religious freedom from the early Christian movement through the seventeenth century, Robert Louis Wilken shows that the origins of religious freedom and liberty of conscience are religious, not political, in origin. They took form before the Enlightenment through the labors of men and women of faith who believed there could be no justice in society without liberty in the things of God. This provocative book, drawing on writings from the early Church as well as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reminds us of how "the meditations of the past were fitted to affairs of a later day."
"The perfect Christmas gift for anyone interested in the historical background behind the birth of Jesus of Nazareth." — Robert J. Hutchinson, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible, The Dawn of Christianity, and Searching for Jesus. "Utterly refreshing and encouraging." — Eric Metaxas, New York Times bestselling author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy and Martin Luther "The best book I know about the Magi." — Sir Colin John Humphreys, Ph.D., author of The Mystery of the Last Supper Modern biblical scholars tend to dismiss the Christmas story of the “wise men from the East” as pious legend. Matthew’s gospel offers few details, but imaginative Christians filled out the story early on, giving us the three kings guided by a magical star who join the adoring shepherds in every Christmas crèche. For many scholars, then, there is no reason to take the gospel story seriously. But are they right? Are the wise men no more than a poetic fancy? In an astonishing feat of detective work, Dwight Longenecker makes a powerful case that the visit of the Magi to Bethlehem really happened. Piecing together the evidence from biblical studies, history, archeology, and astronomy, he goes further, uncovering where they came from, why they came, and what might have happened to them after eluding the murderous King Herod. In the process, he provides a new and fascinating view of the time and place in which Jesus Christ chose to enter the world. The evidence is clear and compelling. The mysterious Magi from the East were in all likelihood astrologers and counselors from the court of the Nabatean king at Petra, where the Hebrew messianic prophecies were well known. The “star” that inspired their journey was a particular planetary alignment—confirmed by computer models—that in the astrological lore of the time portended the birth of a Jewish king. The visitors whose arrival troubled Herod “and all Jerusalem with him” may not have been the turbaned oriental kings of the Christmas carol, but they were real, and by demonstrating that the wise men were no fairy tale, Mystery of the Magi demands a new level of respect for the historical claims of the gospel.
