The Rise of Network Christianity

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190635673
Total Pages : 201 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rise of Network Christianity by : Brad Christerson

Download or read book The Rise of Network Christianity written by Brad Christerson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why, when traditionally organized religious groups are seeing declining membership and participation, are networks of independent churches growing so explosively? Drawing on in-depth interviews with leaders and participants, The Rise of Network Christianity explains the social forces behind the fastest-growing form of Christianity in the U.S., which Brad Christerson and Richard Flory have labeled "Independent Network Charismatic." This form of Christianity emphasizes aggressive engagement with the supernatural-including healing, direct prophecies from God, engaging in "spiritual warfare" against demonic spirits--and social transformation. Christerson and Flory argue that macro-level social changes since the 1970s, including globalization and the digital revolution, have given competitive advantages to religious groups organized as networks rather than traditionally organized congregations and denominations. Network forms of governance allow for experimentation with controversial supernatural practices, innovative finances and marketing, and a highly participatory, unorthodox, and experiential faith, which is attractive in today's unstable religious marketplace. Christerson and Flory hypothesize that as more religious groups imitate this type of governance, religious belief and practice will become more experimental, more orientated around practice than theology, more shaped by the individual religious "consumer," and authority will become more highly concentrated in the hands of individuals rather than institutions. Network Christianity, they argue, is the future of Christianity in America.

The Rise of Network Christianity

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780190635701
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (357 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rise of Network Christianity by : Professor of Sociology Brad Christerson

Download or read book The Rise of Network Christianity written by Professor of Sociology Brad Christerson and published by . This book was released on 2017-02-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Founding Myth

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Publisher : Sterling
ISBN 13 : 9781454943914
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (439 download)

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Book Synopsis The Founding Myth by : Andrew L. Seidel

Download or read book The Founding Myth written by Andrew L. Seidel and published by Sterling. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was America founded on Judeo-Christian principles? Are the Ten Commandments the basis for American law? In the paperback edition of this critically acclaimed book, a constitutional attorney settles the debate about religion's role in America's founding. In today's contentious political climate, understanding religion's role in American government is more important than ever. Christian nationalists assert that our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, and advocate an agenda based on this popular historical claim. But is this belief true? The Founding Myth answers the question once and for all. Andrew L. Seidel builds his case by comparing the Ten Commandments to the Constitution and contrasting biblical doctrine with America's founding philosophy, showing that the Declaration of Independence contradicts the Bible. Thoroughly researched, this persuasively argued and fascinating book proves that America was not built on the Bible and that Christian nationalism is un-American. Includes a new epilogue reflecting on the role Christian nationalism played in fomenting the January 6, 2021, insurrection in DC and the warnings the nation missed.

If God Meant to Interfere

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501703528
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis If God Meant to Interfere by : Christopher Douglas

Download or read book If God Meant to Interfere written by Christopher Douglas and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-12 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of the Christian Right took many writers and literary critics by surprise, trained as we were to think that religions waned as societies became modern. In If God Meant to Interfere, Christopher Douglas shows that American writers struggled to understand and respond to this new social and political force. Religiously inflected literature since the 1970s must be understood in the context of this unforeseen resurgence of conservative Christianity, he argues, a resurgence that realigned the literary and cultural fields. Among the writers Douglas considers are Marilynne Robinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, N. Scott Momaday, Gloria Anzaldúa, Philip Roth, Carl Sagan, and Dan Brown. Their fictions engaged a wide range of topics: religious conspiracies, faith and wonder, slavery and imperialism, evolution and extraterrestrial contact, alternate histories and ancestral spiritualities. But this is only part of the story. Liberal-leaning literary writers responding to the resurgence were sometimes confused by the Christian Right’s strange entanglement with the contemporary paradigms of multiculturalism and postmodernism —leading to complex emergent phenomena that Douglas terms "Christian multiculturalism" and "Christian postmodernism." Ultimately, If God Meant to Interfere shows the value of listening to our literature for its sometimes subterranean attention to the religious and social upheavals going on around it.

To Serve God and Wal-Mart

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674256468
Total Pages : 396 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis To Serve God and Wal-Mart by : Bethany Moreton

Download or read book To Serve God and Wal-Mart written by Bethany Moreton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades after World War II, evangelical Christianity nourished America’s devotion to free markets, free trade, and free enterprise. The history of Wal-Mart uncovers a complex network that united Sun Belt entrepreneurs, evangelical employees, Christian business students, overseas missionaries, and free-market activists. Through the stories of people linked by the world’s largest corporation, Bethany Moreton shows how a Christian service ethos powered capitalism at home and abroad. While industrial America was built by and for the urban North, rural Southerners comprised much of the labor, management, and consumers in the postwar service sector that raised the Sun Belt to national influence. These newcomers to the economic stage put down the plough to take up the bar-code scanner without ever passing through the assembly line. Industrial culture had been urban, modernist, sometimes radical, often Catholic and Jewish, and self-consciously international. Post-industrial culture, in contrast, spoke of Jesus with a drawl and of unions with a sneer, sang about Momma and the flag, and preached salvation in this world and the next. This extraordinary biography of Wal-Mart’s world shows how a Christian pro-business movement grew from the bottom up as well as the top down, bolstering an economic vision that sanctifies corporate globalization. The author has assigned her royalties and subsidiary earnings to Interfaith Worker Justice (www.iwj.org) and its local affiliate in Athens, GA, the Economic Justice Coalition (www.econjustice.org).

The Rise of Christianity

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Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0060677015
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (66 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rise of Christianity by : Rodney Stark

Download or read book The Rise of Christianity written by Rodney Stark and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1997-05-09 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This "fresh, blunt, and highly persuasive account of how the West was won—for Jesus" (Newsweek) is now available in paperback. Stark's provocative report challenges conventional wisdom and finds that Christianity's astounding dominance of the Western world arose from its offer of a better, more secure way of life. "Compelling reading" (Library Journal) that is sure to "generate spirited argument" (Publishers Weekly), this account of Christianity's remarkable growth within the Roman Empire is the subject of much fanfare. "Anyone who has puzzled over Christianity's rise to dominance...must read it." says Yale University's Wayne A. Meeks, for The Rise of Christianity makes a compelling case for startling conclusions. Combining his expertise in social science with historical evidence, and his insight into contemporary religion's appeal, Stark finds that early Christianity attracted the privileged rather than the poor, that most early converts were women or marginalized Jews—and ultimately "that Christianity was a success because it proved those who joined it with a more appealing, more assuring, happier, and perhaps longer life" (Andrew M. Greeley, University of Chicago).

Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures

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Publisher : Ignatius Press
ISBN 13 : 168149096X
Total Pages : 132 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (814 download)

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Book Synopsis Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures by : Joseph Ratzinger

Download or read book Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures written by Joseph Ratzinger and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2009-09-03 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreword by Marcello Pera Written by Joseph Ratzinger shortly before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures looks at the growing conflict of cultures evident in the Western world. The West faces a deadly contradiction of its own making, he contends. Terrorism is on the rise. Technological advances of the West, employed by people who have cut themselves off from the moral wisdom of the past, threaten to abolish man (as C.S. Lewis put it)whether through genetic manipulation or physical annihilation. In short, the West is at war-with itself. Its scientific outlook has brought material progress. The Enlightenment's appeal to reason has achieved a measure of freedom. But contrary to what many people suppose, both of these accomplishments depend on Judeo-Christian foundations, including the moral worldview that created Western culture. More than anything else, argues Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, the important contributions of the West are threatened today by an exaggerated scientific outlook and by moral relativism-what Benedict XVI calls "the dictatorship of relativism"-in the name of freedom. Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures is no mere tirade against the moral decline of the West. Razinger challenges the West to return to its roots by finding a place for God in modern culture. He argues that both Christian culture and the Enlightenment formed the West, and that both hold the keys to human life and freedom as well as to domination and destruction. Ratzinger challenges non-believer and believer alike. "Both parties," he writes, "must reflect on their own selves and be ready to accept correction." He challenges secularized, unbelieving people to open themselves to God as the ground of true rationality and freedom. He calls on believers to "make God credible in this world by means of the enlightened faith they live." Topics include: Reflections on the Cultures in Conflict Today The Significance and Limits of Today's Rationalistic Culture The Permanent Significance of the Christian Faith Why We Must Not Give Up the Fight The Law of the Jungle, the Rule of Law We Must Use Our Eyes! Faith and Everyday Life Can Agnosticism Be a Solution? The Natural Knowledge of God "Supernatural" Faith and Its Origins

The Power Worshippers

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1635573459
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (355 download)

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Book Synopsis The Power Worshippers by : Katherine Stewart

Download or read book The Power Worshippers written by Katherine Stewart and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For readers of Democracy in Chains and Dark Money, a revelatory investigation of the Religious Right's rise to political power. For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America's religious nationalists aren't just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy. Stewart pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and leading personalities of a movement that has turned religion into a tool for domination. She exposes a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances and united not by any central command but by a shared, anti-democratic vision and a common will to power. She follows the money that fuels this movement, tracing much of it to a cadre of super-wealthy, ultraconservative donors and family foundations. She shows that today's Christian nationalism is the fruit of a longstanding antidemocratic, reactionary strain of American thought that draws on some of the most troubling episodes in America's past. It forms common cause with a globe-spanning movement that seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with nationalist, theocratic and autocratic forms of government around the world. Religious nationalism is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals. The Power Worshippers is a brilliantly reported book of warning and a wake-up call. Stewart's probing examination demands that Christian nationalism be taken seriously as a significant threat to the American republic and our democratic freedoms.

The Rise of Western Christendom

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Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1118301269
Total Pages : 741 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (183 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rise of Western Christendom by : Peter Brown

Download or read book The Rise of Western Christendom written by Peter Brown and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-02-04 with total page 741 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This tenth anniversary revised edition of the authoritative text on Christianity's first thousand years of history features a new preface, additional color images, and an updated bibliography. The essential general survey of medieval European Christendom, Brown's vivid prose charts the compelling and tumultuous rise of an institution that came to wield enormous religious and secular power. Clear and vivid history of Christianity's rise and its pivotal role in the making of Europe Written by the celebrated Princeton scholar who originated of the field of study known as 'late antiquity' Includes a fully updated bibliography and index

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

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Publisher : Liveright Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1631495747
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (314 download)

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Book Synopsis Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by : Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Download or read book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation written by Kristin Kobes Du Mez and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.

Too Many to Jail

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Publisher : Monarch Books
ISBN 13 : 0857215973
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (572 download)

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Book Synopsis Too Many to Jail by : Mark Bradley

Download or read book Too Many to Jail written by Mark Bradley and published by Monarch Books. This book was released on 2014-11-21 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1979, there were fewer than 500 known Christians from a Muslim background in Iran. Today there are at least 100,000 believers . Church leaders believe that millions can be added to the church in the next few years ' such is the spiritual hunger that exists. The religious violence that accompanied the reign of President Ahmadinejad drained its perpetrators of political and religious legitimacy, and has opened the door to other faiths. This book sets the rapid church growth in Iran in the context of the deteriorating relationship between Iranians and their national religion. There is a major focus on the Ahmadinejad years, but the author also covers the history of the church before 1979, picking up on the central idea that the spark may have become buried in the ashes but has never been extinguished. The book is careful, proportionate, well-informed and accurate. Throughout the text there will be boxes with stories of faith, persecution, and encouragement.

When Our World Became Christian

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Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745683371
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (456 download)

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Book Synopsis When Our World Became Christian by : Paul Veyne

Download or read book When Our World Became Christian written by Paul Veyne and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This short book by one of France's leading historians deals with a big question: how was it that Christianity, that masterpiece of religious invention, managed, between 300 and 400 AD, to impose itself upon the whole of the Western world? In his erudite and inimitable way, Paul Veyne suggests three possible explanations. Was it because a Roman emperor, Constantine, who was master of the Western world at the time, became a sincere convert to Christianity and set out to Christianize the whole world in order to save it? Or was it because, as a great emperor, Constantine needed a great religion, and in comparison to the pagan gods, Christianity, despite being a minority sect, was an avant-garde religion unlike anything seen before? Or was it because Constantine limited himself to helping the Christians set up their Church, a network of bishoprics that covered the vast Roman Empire, and that gradually and with little overt resistance the pagan masses embraced Christianity as their own religion? In the course of deciding between these explanations Paul Veyne sheds fresh light on one of the most profound transformations that shaped the modern world - the Christianization of the West. A bestseller in France, this book will appeal to a wide readership interested in history, religion and the rise of the modern world.

Church as Network

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1538135817
Total Pages : 175 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (381 download)

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Book Synopsis Church as Network by : Jeffrey H. Mahan

Download or read book Church as Network written by Jeffrey H. Mahan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-12-15 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just as the emergence of print and literacy created conditions for vast religious change at the time of the Reformation, the emergence of a digital culture shaped by computers and the internet has led to radically different assumptions about religious identity, how people connect and maintain transformative relationships, and how people follow and give authority to leaders. The central issues concerning this digital culture are not technological but theological and anthropological. Old models of stable religious identity and community seem irrelevant in a culture in which everyone is in motion. The book identifies three profound changes produced by digital culture which challenge existing understandings of church: 1) a shift to seeing Christian identity as an ongoing constructive project, 2) the development of fluid networked forms of community, and 3) the emergence of less hierarchical more conversational forms of leadership.

Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by : Richard Henry Tawney

Download or read book Religion and the Rise of Capitalism written by Richard Henry Tawney and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Pagans

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Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0062370715
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Pagans by : James J. O'Donnell

Download or read book Pagans written by James J. O'Donnell and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Trenchantly interprets how an oddball religious cult became the official faith of Rome. . . . It makes for a thoughtful tour of Rome.” —New York Times Book Review Pagans explores the rise of Christianity from a surprising and unique viewpoint: that of the people who witnessed their ways of life destroyed by what seemed then a powerful religious cult. These “pagans” were actually pious Greeks, Romans, Syrians, and Gauls who observed the traditions of their ancestors. Religious scholar James J. O’Donnell takes us on a lively tour of the Ancient Roman world through the fourth century CE, when Romans of every nationality, social class, and religious preference found their world suddenly constrained by rulers who preferred a strange new god. Some joined this new cult, while others denied its power, erroneously believing it was little more than a passing fad. In Pagans, O’Donnell brings to life Roman religion and life, offers fresh portraits of iconic historical figures, including Constantine, Julian, and Augustine, and explores important themes—Rome versus the east, civilization versus barbarism, plurality versus unity, rich versus poor, and tradition versus innovation—in this startling account. “Mr. O’Donnell tells the familiar story of Christianity’s heroic age of expansion, from Constantine to Theodosius, with verve and wit.” —Wall Street Journal “Multilayered, erudite and dense.” —Cleveland Plain-Dealer “An engaging view of antiquity few of us have seen. —Booklist “O'Donnell offers an iconoclastic history of religion that tells an exciting new story that is deeply relevant to the way we think about religion in our own time.” —Washington Book Review

The Triumph of Christianity

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1786073021
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (86 download)

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Book Synopsis The Triumph of Christianity by : Bart D. Ehrman

Download or read book The Triumph of Christianity written by Bart D. Ehrman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Christianity become the dominant religion in the West? In the early first century, a small group of peasants from the backwaters of the Roman Empire proclaimed that an executed enemy of the state was God’s messiah. Less than four hundred years later it had become the official religion of Rome with some thirty million followers. It could so easily have been a forgotten sect of Judaism. Through meticulous research, Bart Ehrman, an expert on Christian history, texts and traditions, explores the way we think about one of the most important cultural transformations the world has ever seen, one that has shaped the art, music, literature, philosophy, ethics and economics of modern Western civilisation.

A Star in the East

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Publisher : Templeton Foundation Press
ISBN 13 : 1599474883
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (994 download)

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Book Synopsis A Star in the East by : Rodney Stark

Download or read book A Star in the East written by Rodney Stark and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2015-05-02 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the state of Christianity in China, really? Some scholars say that China is invulnerable to religion. Some say that past efforts of missionaries have failed, writing off those who were converted as nothing more than “rice Christians,” or cynical souls who had frequented the missions for the benefits they provided. Some wonder if the Cultural Revolution extinguished any chances of Christianity in China. Rodney Stark and Xiuhua Wang offer a different perspective, arguing that Christianity is alive, well, and even on the rise. Stark approaches the topic from an extensive research background in both Christianity and Chinese history, and Wang provides an inside look at Christianity and its place in her home country of China. Both authors cover the history of religion in China, disproving older theories concerning not only the number of Christians, but the kinds of Christians that have emerged in the past 155 years. Stark and Wang claim that when just considering the visible Christians, those not part of underground churches, there are still thousands of Chinese being converted to Christianity each day, and forty new churches opening each week. A Star in the East draws on two major national surveys to sketch a close-up of religion in China. A reliable estimate is that by 2007 there were approximately 60 million Christians in China. If the current rate of growth were to hold until 2030, there would be more Christians in China—about 295 million—than in any other nation on earth. This has significant implications, not just for China but for the greater world order. It is probable that Chinese Christianity will splinter into denominations, likely leading to the same kinds of political, social, and economic ramifications seen in the West today. Whether you’re new to studying Christianity in China, or whether this has been your area of interest for years, A Star in the East provides a reliable, thought-provoking, and engaging account of the resilience of the Christian faith in China and the implications it has for the future.