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Introduction ‘“Post-Christian Era”? Nonsense!’ declared one of Europe’s foremost theologians, Karl Barth, in August 1948, at the first assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam. How do we come to adopt as self-evident the phrase first used by a German National Socialist, that we are today living in an ‘un-Christian’ or even ‘post-Christian’ era? … How indeed do we come to the fantastic opinion that secularism and godlessness are inventions of our time
In which respects did Christianity, or some Christians, or the Christian Church, support a kind of militarisation in the early Middle Ages? One phenomenon could partially answer this question and exemplify this development, namely the so-called ‘Schwertmission’: the forced conversion to Christianity through the use of violence and the threat of war. 1 This is a new phenomenon of the early Middle Ages, as neither waging a missionary war nor organising mass baptism is known in late antique
Publication of The Death of Adam in 1998 changed Robinson's public identity. For the first time, as demonstrated by the essay “The Tyranny of Petty Coercion”, she presents herself as explicitly religious: I am a Christian. This ought not to startle anyone. It is likely to be demographically true of an American of European ancestry. I have a strong attachment to the Scriptures, and to the theology, music, and art Christianity has inspired. My most inward thoughts and ponderings are formed by the
poverty that was sometimes aggravated to epidemic proportions by specific economic crises. Undergirding the relief programmes of most of these charities was an evangelical Christian commitment to offer both practical and spiritual help to needy individuals – a commitment that was increasingly reinforced by a eugenic confidence that the future of Britain and the empire could best be secured by the judicious transfer of suitable recruits from the debilitating environment of the mother country’s city slums before their
What is Christian liberty? 1 And is it compatible with female rule? This essay considers both of these questions as they were debated in early modern Europe, but particularly in the work of a number of English and Scottish Protestant political theologians during the 1550s. I argue that, on the one hand, writers like John Ponet, John Knox and Christopher
rule. Nonetheless, many writers have made a connection between Christian thought and democratic ideals. In De Gruchy’s words: western Christendom undoubtedly provided the womb within which the democratic system, as we now know it, gestated, and it also contributed decisively to the shaping of the democratic vision through its witness, albeit ambiguous and severely compromised, to the message of the Hebrew prophets. 1 And for De Gruchy it was the Old Testament critique of injustice and the New Testament promise of
for four beds. The building work was completed in the summer of 1905, just before the rain came. 33 Birkett’s initial medical assistant, Reuben, was replaced in August 1905 by an Indian Christian called John Brand. He was to work with her in Lusadiya for nearly two decades. Writing in January 1906, Jane Birkett reported that Brand had been a success from the start. He had at once gained the confidence
white youth were being pulled into evil cults that indulged in murder, drug dealing, pornography, paedophilia and even cannibalism. 5 These imaginary Satanists were scapegoated by anxious whites, performing the role of what Stanley Cohen calls folk devils ( 1972 ). Fearful rhetoric around violent African nationalist revolution as well as dangerous communists, corrupting foreigners and unruly youth were all pulled into its narrative axis, creating fears of a supernatural enemy that threatened the social fabric of the white Christian
Christian Aid: the new face of Christian responsibility Religion does not figure strongly in histories of British decolonisation. While scholarship does assess how Christian churches overseas adapted and adjusted to the declining empire, little attention has been paid to the changing relationship between religion and empire within Britain at this time. Sarah Stockwell's work on Archbishop Fisher has reinstated the upper Anglican Church hierarchy in our wider understanding of the political discussions and processes through