Showing titles in History

Once a year at Thanksgiving, we encounter Pilgrims as folksy people in funny hats before promptly forgetting them. In the centuries since America began, the Pilgrims have been relegated to folklore and children's stories, fairy-tale mascots for holiday parties and greeting cards. The true story of the Pilgrim fathers could not be more different.

Randall Balmer's Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory is an insightful and engaging journey into the world of conservative Christians in America. Originally published 25 years ago and the basis for an award-winning PBS documentary, this timely new edition arrives just as recent elections have left an ever-growing number of secular Americans wondering exactly how the other half thinks.

While most people know the fairly consistent description of Hell that exists today, the description of Hell has evolved countless times over the centuries, including within the Christian faith. During medieval times, many Christian writers described parts or all of Hell as cold and desolate places, going as far back as the 4th century work Apocalypse of Paul. At the same time, the concepts of the Devil and Hell are not unique to Christianity; other major faiths have similar concepts, while ancient religions had an underworld and assorted characters, such as the Greeks' Hades.

Jesus' words in John 12 are sobering: unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it will bear little fruit. The history of Christianity's expansion proves that God's strategy for reaching unreached peoples with the gospel includes the sufferings of his frontline heralds - the missionaries who willingly die a thousand daily deaths to advance God's kingdom. For William Tyndale, Adoniram Judson, and John Paton, the price they paid to translate the Word of God, to pave the way for missionary mobilization around the world, and to lead the hostile to Christ was great.

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For the hermits and communal monks of antiquity, the desert was a place to flee the cacophony of ordinary life in order to hear and contemplate the voice of God. But these monks discovered something surprising in their harsh desert surroundings: far from empty and silent, the desert is richly reverberant. Sonorous Desert shares the stories and sayings of these ancient spiritual seekers, tracing how the ambient sounds of wind, thunder, water, and animals shaped the emergence and development of early Christian monasticism.

“The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind". So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism’s most respected historians. Unsparing in his indictment, Mark Noll asks why the largest single group of religious Americans—who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence—have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship.

This work is the result of 25 years' study of the Book of Revelation. Twice within six years the writer gave a four-months' course of Sunday morning sermons to his people on the book.

C T.’S LIFE stands as some rugged Gibraltar — a sign to all succeeding generations that it is worthwhile to lose all this world can offer and stake everything on the world to come. His life will be an eternal rebuke to easy-going Christianity. He has demonstrated what it means to follow Christ without counting the cost and without looking back. His simple life alone has affected missionary history, and through it C. T. forwarded evangelization to an extent that we cannot properly gauge.

As a reminder of God's role in the history and future of America, Newt and Callista Gingrich give listeners a look into the architecture and beauty of the nation's capital in Rediscovering God in America. Listeners will take a walk through Washington, DC, to view the nation's monuments and memorials, including the National Archives, where Thomas Jefferson's immortal words jump off the page. But this is not simply a walking tour of the city; this is a tour of American history.

For too long, the history of Christianity has been told as the triumph of orthodox doctrine imposed through power and hierarchy. In A People's History of Christianity, historian and religion expert Diana Butler Bass reveals an alternate history that includes a deep social ethic and far-reaching inclusivity: "the other side of the story" is not a modern phenomenon, but has always been practiced within the church. Butler Bass persuasively argues that corrective - even subversive - beliefs and practices have always been hallmarks of Christianity and are necessary to nourish communities of faith.

These homilies by Chrysostom are great examples of his discourses. St. Ignatius was the Bishop of Antioch who suffered martyrdom at Rome in the reign of Trajan about the year 110 CE. St. Babylas was Bishop of Antioch from about 237 to 250. He was martyred in the persecution under Decius.

While not every Founding Father was a Christian, a Bible-believer, or a paragon of virtue and not every leader has honored the Bible nor appreciated its influence, there is an undeniable history of leaders who’ve been intimately acquainted with the contents of the Bible, who’ve studied its scriptures and respected its teachings. Journey with Robert J. Morgan as he teaches about the Bible’s role in the defining moments and impact on the people of our nation’s history, reminding us of the beauty at the intersection of faith and country.

Martin Luther strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment of sin could be purchased with money, known as indulgences, and he confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his 95 Theses in 1517, one of the most important religious writings of all time. John Calvin (1509-1564) was one of the most important religious figures of the last millennium and an instantly recognizable name across the globe. Calvin was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation.

Jesus was a real person, right? You might be surprised at what data science has to say. Christ Before Jesus presents a first-of-its-kind analysis using proven, peer-reviewed mathematics and software which reveals a second-century origin for the books of the New Testament.

The findings here—in this strange volume—bring the listener into a large inland sea, cut off from the traffic and the tempest that have sprung up in the West, and untouched by the crosscurrents of dogmas and presumptions that have cluttered historic centuries. Here is the virgin water that gushes, troubled by abysmal forces only, out of the very Earth itself.

Foxe: Voices of the Martyrs unites past Christians with believers today. Building on over fifty years of ministry to persecuted Christians, The Voice of the Martyrs organization shares sixty-seven stories of Christians who have stood faithfully to the death since 2000. Their courage in the face of ISIS and the Taliban, brutal dictatorships, and government crackdowns will inspire you to boldness and remind you that the same Spirit of Christ who strengthened Stephen, Peter, and Paul is at work in you today.

Women comprise at least half the world, and usually more than half the church, but so often Christian teaching to women either fails to move beyond a discussion of roles or assumes a particular economic situation or stage of life. This all but shuts women out from contributing to God's kingdom as they were designed to do.

This oldest of the extant Apocryphal Gospels claims to have been written by James (the Just) in Jerusalem. It was first published in the Latin version of Postellus in 1552. It exists in numerous Greek mss., the best of which is said to be one of the 10th century. The Syriac versions are older, and, with occasional abbreviations, agree fairly with the Greek text, and with one another. The fragment translated by Dr. Wright is supposed to belong to the sixth century; the text on the palimpsest of Mrs. Lewis is referred to the fifth or sixth century.

The Ancient Church Fathers reveals the disciples of the 12 apostles and what they taught, from their own writings. It documents that the same doctrine was faithfully transmitted to their descendants in the first few centuries. It also describes where, when, and by whom, the doctrines began to change.