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303 books match the query 'Church history' and 3 start with a non-letter

cover of "For the Good of Their Souls": Performing Christianity in Eighteenth-Century Mohawk Country

"For the Good of Their Souls"

Performing Christianity in Eighteenth-Century Mohawk Country

William B. Hart

University of Massachusetts Press, 2020

In 1712, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts opened its mission near present-day Albany, New York, and began baptizing residents of the nearby Mohawk village Tiononderoge, the easternmost nation of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy. Within three years, about one-fifth of the Mohawks in the area began attending services. They even adapted versions of the service for use in private spaces, which potentially opened a door to an imagined faith community with the Protestants.

Using the lens of performance theory to explain the ways in which the Mohawks considered converting and participating in Christian rituals, historian William B. Hart contends that Mohawks who prayed, sang hymns, submitted to baptism, took communion, and acquired literacy did so to protect their nation's sovereignty, fulfill their responsibility of reciprocity, serve their communities, and reinvent themselves. Performing Christianity was a means of "survivance," a strategy for sustaining Mohawk life and culture on their terms in a changing world.
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cover of "Other Sheep I Have" The Autobiography of Father Paul M. Washington

"Other Sheep I Have" The Autobiography of Father Paul M. Washington

Paul Washington

Temple University Press, 1994

Father Paul M. Washington rose to local and nation prominence as an unflagging supporter of civil and women's rights. One of a handful of black priests in a traditionally white church, he fought for understanding among all people, eventually serving twenty-five years as the Rector of the Episcopal Church of the Advocate in an inner-city Philadelphia neighborhood. Though his ideas about equality often went against the views of the Episcopal church leadership, he rejected threats of withdrawn funding or retaliation to follow his heart and his theology.

Father Washington's story is a window of insight into the struggles for justice and dignity in the latter half of the twentieth century. In the tumultuous 1960s he supported the Black Power movement, the Black Panther Party, and many other groups working for peace and justice, providing meeting places and guidance. He often found himself in the midst of racial disturbances—the riots on Susquehanna Avenue in 1963 and on Columbia Avenue in 1964, in front of the Board of Education where high school students protested the Eurocentric curriculum, and outside the walls of Girard College where citizens and civic leaders demonstrated against the school's exclusion of black children. In the 1980s, he helped Philadelphia city officials negotiate with MOVE members and was a vocal supporter of Ramona Africa, fighting for her release from prison. It was in his church on the corner of 18th and Diamond Streets that women were first ordained a priests in the Episcopal church. And it was one of his congregation, Barbara Harris, who became the first female Episcopal bishop.

In his evocative voice, Father Washington describes the pivotal events of his life and how each impacted upon his evolving ideas of the relationship between religion and justice. Spanning seven decades, his account is at once an insightful and unique historical account of political action, of the reformation of the church, of the changing urban landscape, and of a life graced by leadership and spiritual enlightenment.

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cover of 1 Clement: A Reader's Edition

1 Clement

A Reader's Edition

Theodore A. Bergren

Catholic University of America Press, 2020

The present volume is a "reader's edition" of 1 Clement, an important early Christian epistolary writing in Greek that probably dates from the late first century CE. The volume is designed for rapid reading and for classroom use. On each left-facing page is printed a running, sequential section of the Greek text. Next to that, on each right-facing page, are recorded all of the more unusual words in that section of Greek text, with dictionary form, part of speech, and definition(s). All of the more common words in that same section of Greek text are included in a comprehensive glossary at the end of the book. This system, then, is designed so that the reader of the Greek text will not have to stop to look up every unusual Greek word in a printed or online dictionary. He or she will simply have to look to the facing page. Such constant lookups in a printed or online dictionary are tedious and time-consuming, and have little pedagogical value. Since in the present edition the words recorded on the right-facing page are not parsed, the reader is still faced with the challenge of parsing the word and determining its place in the overall structure of the sentence. It is this process that does serve a useful pedagogical purpose, and the present system preserves the challenge of this process. The introduction to the volume covers (1) 1 Clement’s genre, date, setting in life, purpose, sources, and main themes; (2) the compositional outline of the book; (3) the book’s authorship, history of reception, and textual attestation; (4) discussion of the present “reader’s edition”; (5) a list of scriptural quotations and allusions; and (6) a comprehensive bibliography on the text of 1 Clement.
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