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While religious forces are powerful in numerous societies, they have little or no significance for wide swaths of public or private life in other places. This book considers the classical roots of ideas about religion that dominated sociological ways of thinking about it for most of the twentieth century. Each chapter offers sound reasons for continuing to find theoretical inspiration and challenge in the sociological classics while also seeking ways of enhancing and extending their relevance to religion today.
The Bible and the Business of Life is an anthology of essays by a variety of authors celebrating the 65th birthday of Robert Banks Robert. Banks was an Baptist who worked and taught in the USA, in Pasadena and in Melbourne.
UK church attendance hemorrhaging and one course is hailed as the most effective tool for "turning back the tide." From small beginnings in the early 1970s, Alpha has grown to become a global success. Churches from across the denominational spectrum have enthusiastically seized upon the course, seeing it as the remedy for declining church attendance. Inside Alpha explores such claims through richly grounded qualitative research on six Alpha courses. It assesses Alpha's primary aim of converting non-churchgoers and its longer-term goal of spiritual maturity (Colossians 1:28-29). It questions whether the Alpha program is as successful as it claims at uniting evangelism and discipleship, mission and spiritual formation. This is an invaluable study for those--in the academy and the church--who have an interest in ecclesiology and mission. How exactly is one to understand conversion? What is it to "be Christian"? How does ambiguity and doubt fit within one's journey of faith? The importance of this work is in discovering--through an engagement with Alpha--how people might appropriately be initiated into and discipled within the Christian faith in contemporary culture.
At a time when Christianity is flourishing in the Southern hemisphere but declining in much of the West, thisVery Short Introduction offers an important new overview of the world's largest religion. Exploring the cultural and institutional dimensions of Christianity, and tracing its course over two millennia, this book provides a fresh, lively, and candid portrait of its past and present. Addressing topics that other studies neglect, including the competition for power between different forms of Christianity, the churches' uses of power, and their struggles with modernity, Linda Woodhead concludes by showing the ways in which those who previously had the least power in Christianity--women and non-Europeans--have become increasingly central to its unfolding story. 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.
Monthly current affairs magazine from a Christian perspective with a focus on politics, society, economics and culture.
"Choice and Religion provides a detailed critique of 'rational choice' to demonstrate that industrialisation has secularised the western world and that diversity, far from making religion more popular by allowing individuals to maximize their returns, undermines it. The claim that competition promotes religion is refuted with evidence from a wide variety of western societies. Bruce also examines the Nordic countries and the ex-communist states of eastern Europe to explore the consequences of different sorts of state regulation, and to show that ethnicity is a more powerful determinate of religious change than market structures. Where religion matters, it is not because individuals are maximising their returns but because it defines group identity and is deeply implicated in social conflict."--BOOK JACKET.
What impact does the experience of university have on Christian students? Are universities a force for secularisation? Is student faith enduring, or a passing phase? Universities are often associated with a sceptical attitude towards religion. Many assume that academic study leads students away from any existing religious convictions, heightening the appeal of a rationalist secularism increasingly dominant in wider society. And yet Christianity remains highly visible on university campuses and continues to be a prominent identity marker in the lives of many students. Analysing over 4,000 responses to a national survey of students and nearly 100 interviews with students and those working with...
Does God really care about His servants? Yes Do we care for our people who are serving the Lord in cross-cultural ministry? The Reducing Missionary Attrition Project (ReMAP), launched by World Evangelical Fellowship Missions Commission, seeks to answer that question in this important study. This book utilizes the findings of a 14-nation study done by ReMAP and will help supply some very encouraging answers. This book was published in partnership with the World Evangelical Alliance.
Provides a broad and deep survey of Roman Catholic life and thought, updated and expanded throughout The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism provides an authoritative overview of the history, doctrine, practices, and expansion of Catholicism. Written by a group of distinguished scholars, this comprehensive reference work offers an illuminating account of the global, historical, and cultural phenomena of Catholicism. Accessible chapters address central topics in the practice of Catholic theology and the development of doctrine, including God and Jesus Christ, creation and Church, the Virgin Mary, the sacraments, moral theology, eschatology, and more. Throughout the text, the authors illu...