We must recognize and address the root causes of religious persecution, fostering a culture of respect, understanding, and religious freedom.
We must recognize and address the root causes of religious persecution, fostering a culture of respect, understanding, and religious freedom.
In some versions of the Bible/Hebrew mythology, Lilith is Adam’s first wife. She was made from clay at the same time as Adam and was his equal (not made from …
The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume I traces the emergence of Anglophone Protestant Dissent in the post-Reformation era between the Act of Uniformity (1559) and the Act of Toleration (1689). It reassesses the relationship between establishment and Dissent, emphasising that Presbyterians and Congregationalists were serious contenders in the struggle for religious hegemony. Under Elizabeth I and the early Stuarts, separatists were few in number, and Dissent was largely contained within the Church of England, as nonconformists sought to reform the national Church from within. During the English Revolution (1640-60), Puritan reformers seized control of the state but splintered into rival factions with competing programmes of ecclesiastical reform. Only after the Restoration, following the ejection of two thousand Puritan clergy from the Church, did most Puritans become Dissenters, often with great reluctance. Dissent was not the inevitable terminus of Puritanism, but the contingent and unintended consequence of the Puritan drive for further reformation. The story of Dissent is thus bound up with the contest for the established Church, not simply a heroic tale of persecuted minorities contending for religious toleration. Nevertheless, in the half century after 1640, religious pluralism became a fact of English life, as denominations formed and toleration was widely advocated. The volume explores how Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers began to forge distinct identities as the four major denominational traditions of English Dissent. It tracks the proliferation of Anglophone Protestant Dissent beyond England—in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Dutch Republic, New England, Pennsylvania, and the Caribbean. And it presents the latest research on the culture of Dissenting congregations, including their relations with the parish, their worship, preaching, gender relations, and lay experience.
This book represents a fresh approach to the study of 2 Corinthians. In the first chapter of the epistle, Paul recounts how he had been faced suddenly with the prospect of imminent death. Either he had succumbed to a severe illness or he was suffering the effects of savage persecution. In either case, Dr. Harvey believes that some of the profound but difficult language in the central chapters may best be explained by reference to this traumatic event. He begins by exploring the social, economic and religious consequences of the illness or disability in antiquity and the radically new understanding of suffering to which Paul was led by his near death experience. The remainder of the book takes the form of a running commentary, bringing out the implications of this biographical approach for understanding the text of 2 Corinthians.
