Download or read book The Imperial Church written by Katherine D. Moran and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a fascinating discussion of religion's role in the rhetoric of American civilizing empire, The Imperial Church undertakes an exploration of how Catholic mission histories served as a useful reference for Americans narrating US settler colonialism on the North American continent and seeking to extend military, political, and cultural power around the world. Katherine D. Moran traces historical celebrations of Catholic missionary histories in the upper Midwest, Southern California, and the US colonial Philippines to demonstrate the improbable centrality of the Catholic missions to ostensibly Protestant imperial endeavors. Moran shows that, as the United States built its continental and global dominion and an empire of production and commerce in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Protestant and Catholic Americans began to celebrate Catholic imperial pasts. She demonstrates that American Protestants joined their Catholic compatriots in speaking with admiration about historical Catholic missionaries: the Jesuit Jacques Marquette in the Midwest, the Franciscan Junípero Serra in Southern California, and the Spanish friars in the Philippines. Comparing them favorably to the Puritans, Pilgrims, and the American Revolutionary generation, commemorators drew these missionaries into a cross-confessional pantheon of US national and imperial founding fathers. In the process, they cast Catholic missionaries as gentle and effective agents of conquest, uplift, and economic growth, arguing that they could serve as both origins and models for an American civilizing empire. The Imperial Church connects Catholic history and the history of US empire by demonstrating that the religious dimensions of American imperial rhetoric have been as cross-confessional as the imperial nation itself.

Download or read book Church and Empire written by Maria E. Doerfler and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the church’s relationship with governing authorities unfolds from its beginnings at the intersection of apprehension and acceptance, collaboration and separation. This volume is dedicated to helping students chart this complex narrative through early Christian writings from the first six centuries of the Common Era. Church and Empire is part of Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources, a series designed to present ancient Christian texts essential to an understanding of Christian theology, ecclesiology, and practice. The books in the series will make the wealth of early Christian thought available to new generations of students of theology and provide a valuable resource for the church. Developed in light of recent patristic scholarship, the volumes will provide a representative sampling of theological contributions from both East and West. The series provides volumes that are relevant for a variety of courses: from introduction to theology to classes on doctrine and the development of Christian thought. The goal of each volume is not to be exhaustive, but rather representative enough to denote for a nonspecialist audience the multivalent character of early Christian thought, allowing readers to see how and why early Christian doctrine and practice developed the way it did.

Download or read book Resisting Empire The Book of Revelation as Resistance written by C. Wess Daniels and published by Barclay Press. This book was released on 2019-10-07 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revelation speaks to the reality that we are caught in the fray of cosmic conflict. We are guilty. We've already been contaminated. But it's not too late for us to exit empire and enter the kingdom. We are yet both victim and victimizer. We have healing work to do, and we must take responsibility for the ways in which we have benefited from and been complicit with the religion of empire. This is the truth of Revelation. God wants to liberate us in body, heart, soul, and mind.Revelation reveals how scapegoating functions within empire to define its own boundaries and contours as being over and against wicked others.Revelation critiques wealth and shows that even in the first century there was prophetic critique against an economic system that was based on abundance for some, while exploiting the rest.Revelation demonstrates the importance of liturgy as something that forms people into the likeness of either empire or the lamb.Revelation reveals an alternative social order which becomes the center of resistance rooted in a vision of what the book describes as "the multitude."

Download or read book Empire and the Christian Tradition written by Don H. Compier and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The radically altered situation today in religion, politics, and global communication-what can broadly be characterized as postmodern and postcolonial-necessitates close rereading of Christianity's classical sources, especially its theologians. In this groundbreaking textbook anthology, twenty-nine distinguished scholars scrutinize the relationship between empire and Christianity from Paul to the liberation theologians of our time. The contributors discuss how the classical theologians in different historical periods dealt with their own contexts of empire and issues such as center and margin, divine power and social domination, war and violence, gender hierarchy, and displacement and diaspora. Each chapter provides insights and resources drawn from the classical theological tradition to address the current political situation. Book jacket.

Download or read book The Art of Empire written by Lee M. Jefferson and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, art historians such as Johannes Deckers (Picturing the Bible, 2009) have argued for a significant transition in fourth- and fifth-century images of Jesus following the conversion of Constantine. Broadly speaking, they perceive the image of a peaceful, benevolent shepherd transformed into a powerful, enthroned Jesus, mimicking and mirroring the dominance and authority of the emperor. The powers of church and state are thus conveniently synthesized in such a potent image. This deeply rooted position assumes that ante-pacem images of Jesus were uniformly humble while post-Constantinian images exuded the grandeur of power and glory. The Art of Empire contends that the art and imagery of Late Antiquity merits a more nuanced understanding of the context of the imperial period before and after Constantine. The chapters in this collection each treat an aspect of the relationship between early Christian art and the rituals, practices, or imagery of the Empire, and offer a new and fresh perspective on the development of Christian art in its imperial background.

Download or read book Making Christian History written by Michael Hollerich and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known as the “Father of Church History,” Eusebius was bishop of Caesarea in Palestine and the leading Christian scholar of his day. His Ecclesiastical History is an irreplaceable chronicle of Christianity’s early development, from its origin in Judaism, through two and a half centuries of illegality and occasional persecution, to a new era of tolerance and favor under the Emperor Constantine. In this book, Michael J. Hollerich recovers the reception of this text across time. As he shows, Eusebius adapted classical historical writing for a new “nation,” the Christians, with a distinctive theo-political vision. Eusebius’s text left its mark on Christian historical writing from late antiquity to the early modern period—across linguistic, cultural, political, and religious boundaries—until its encounter with modern historicism and postmodernism. Making Christian History demonstrates Eusebius’s vast influence throughout history, not simply in shaping Christian culture but also when falling under scrutiny as that culture has been reevaluated, reformed, and resisted over the past 1,700 years.

Download or read book Eusebius and Empire written by James Corke-Webster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-10 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, written in the early fourth century, continues to serve as our primary gateway to a crucial three hundred year period: the rise of early Christianity under the Roman Empire. In this volume, James Corke-Webster undertakes the first systematic study considering the History in the light of its fourth-century circumstances as well as its author's personal history, intellectual commitments, and literary abilities. He argues that the Ecclesiastical History is not simply an attempt to record the past history of Christianity, but a sophisticated mission statement that uses events and individuals from that past to mould a new vision of Christianity tailored to Eusebius' fourth-century context. He presents elite Graeco-Roman Christians with a picture of their faith that smooths off its rough edges and misrepresents its size, extent, nature, and relationship to Rome. Ultimately, Eusebius suggests that Christianity was - and always had been - the Empire's natural heir.

Download or read book Faith in Empire written by Elizabeth A. Foster and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-20 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faith in Empire is an innovative exploration of French colonial rule in West Africa, conducted through the prism of religion and religious policy. Elizabeth Foster examines the relationships among French Catholic missionaries, colonial administrators, and Muslim, animist, and Christian Africans in colonial Senegal between 1880 and 1940. In doing so she illuminates the nature of the relationship between the French Third Republic and its colonies, reveals competing French visions of how to approach Africans, and demonstrates how disparate groups of French and African actors, many of whom were unconnected with the colonial state, shaped French colonial rule. Among other topics, the book provides historical perspective on current French controversies over the place of Islam in the Fifth Republic by exploring how Third Republic officials wrestled with whether to apply the legal separation of church and state to West African Muslims.

Download or read book Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire written by Marianne Sághy and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do the terms 'pagan' and 'Christian,' 'transition from paganism to Christianity' still hold as explanatory devices to apply to the political, religious and cultural transformation experienced Empire-wise? Revisiting 'pagans' and 'Christians' in Late Antiquity has been a fertile site of scholarship in recent years: the paradigm shift in the interpretation of the relations between 'pagans' and 'Christians' replaced the old 'conflict model' with a subtler, complex approach and triggered the upsurge of new explanatory models such as multiculturalism, cohabitation, cooperation, identity, or group cohesion. This collection of essays, inscribes itself into the revisionist discussion of pagan-Christian relations over a broad territory and time-span, the Roman Empire from the fourth to the eighth century. A set of papers argues that if 'paganism' had never been fully extirpated or denied by the multiethnic educated elite that managed the Roman Empire, 'Christianity' came to be presented by the same elite as providing a way for a wider group of people to combine true philosophy and right religion. The speed with which this happened is just as remarkable as the long persistence of paganism after the sea-change of the fourth century that made Christianity the official religion of the State. For a long time afterwards, 'pagans' and 'Christians' lived 'in between' polytheistic and monotheist traditions and disputed Classical and non-Classical legacies.

Download or read book Christianity Empire and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity written by Jeremy M. Schott and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity, Jeremy M. Schott examines the ways in which conflicts between Christian and pagan intellectuals over religious, ethnic, and cultural identity contributed to the transformation of Roman imperial rhetoric and ideology in the early fourth century C.E. During this turbulent period, which began with Diocletian's persecution of the Christians and ended with Constantine's assumption of sole rule and the consolidation of a new Christian empire, Christian apologists and anti-Christian polemicists launched a number of literary salvos in a battle for the minds and souls of the empire. Schott focuses on the works of the Platonist philosopher and anti- Christian polemicist Porphyry of Tyre and his Christian respondents: the Latin rhetorician Lactantius, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, and the emperor Constantine. Previous scholarship has tended to narrate the Christianization of the empire in terms of a new religion's penetration and conquest of classical culture and society. The present work, in contrast, seeks to suspend the static, essentializing conceptualizations of religious identity that lie behind many studies of social and political change in late antiquity in order to investigate the processes through which Christian and pagan identities were constructed. Drawing on the insights of postcolonial discourse analysis, Schott argues that the production of Christian identity and, in turn, the construction of a Christian imperial discourse were intimately and inseparably linked to the broader politics of Roman imperialism.

Download or read book Empire and Religion in the Roman World written by Harriet I. Flower and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-19 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiration for this volume comes from the work of its dedicatee, Brent D. Shaw, who is one of the most original and wide-ranging historians of the ancient world of the last half-century and continues to open up exciting new fields for exploration. Each of the distinguished contributors has produced a cutting-edge exploration of a topic in the history and culture of the Roman Empire dealing with a subject on which Professor Shaw has contributed valuable work. Three major themes extend across the volume as a whole. First, the ways in which the Roman world represented an intricate web of connections even while many people's lives remained fragmented and local. Second, the ways in which the peculiar Roman space promoted religious competition in a sophisticated marketplace for practices and beliefs, with Christianity being a major benefactor. Finally, the varying forms of violence which were endemic within and between communities.

Download or read book The Church and the Roman Empire 301 490 written by Mike Aquilina and published by Ave Maria Press. This book was released on 2019-09-13 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of a 2020 Catholic Press Association book award (first place, best new religious book series). Suspense, politics, sin, death, sex, and redemption: Not the plot of the latest crime novel, but elements of the true history of the Catholic Church. Larger-than-life figures such as Athanasius of Alexandria, Augustine, and Constantine played an important part in the history of the Christianity. In The Church and the Roman Empire (AD 301–490): Constantine, Councils, and the Fall of Rome, popular Catholic author Mike Aquilina gives readers a vivid and engaging account of how Christianity developed and expanded as the Roman Empire declined. Aquilina explores the dramatic backstory of the Council of Nicaea and why Christian unity and belief are still expressed by the Nicene Creed. He also sets the record straight about commonly held misconceptions about the Catholic Church. In this book, you will learn: The Edict of Milan didn’t just legalize Christianity; it also established religious tolerance for all faiths for the first time in history. The growth of Christianity inspired a more merciful society: crucifixion was abolished; the practice of throwing prisoners to wild beasts for entertainment was outlawed; and slave owners were punished for killing their slaves. Controversy between Arians and Catholics may have resulted in building more hospitals and other networks of charitable assistance to the poor. When Rome fell, not many people at the time noticed. Books in the Reclaiming Catholic History series, edited by Mike Aquilina and written by leading authors and historians, bring Church history to life, debunking the myths one era at a time.

Download or read book Constantine and the Christian Empire written by Charles Odahl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-10-04 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on over a quarter of a century of the author's research and experience, this book, illustrated with ninety-two photographs and eight maps, is the standard work on the man and his life for scholars, students, and all those interested in Roman imperial, early Christian, and Byzantine imperial history.

Download or read book Constantine and the Christian Empire written by Charles Odahl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-07-02 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This biographical narrative is a detailed portrayal of the life and career of the first Christian emperor Constantine the Great (273 – 337). Combining vivid narrative and historical analysis, Charles Odahl relates the rise of Constantine amid the crises of the late Roman world, his dramatic conversion to and public patronage of Christianity, and his church building programs in Rome, Jerusalem and Constantinople which transformed the pagan state of Roman antiquity into the Christian empire medieval Byzantium. The author’s comprehensive knowledge of the literary sources and his extensive research into the material remains of the period mean that this volume provides a more rounded and accurate portrait of Constantine than previously available. This revised second edition includes: An expanded and revised final chapter A new Genealogy and an expanded Chronology New illustrations Revised and updated Notes and Bibliography A landmark publication in Roman Imperial, early Christian, and Byzantine history, Constantine and the Christian Empire will remain the standard account of the subject for years to come.

Download or read book God s Empire written by Hilary M. Carey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-06 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In God's Empire, Hilary M. Carey charts Britain's nineteenth-century transformation from Protestant nation to free Christian empire through the history of the colonial missionary movement. This wide-ranging reassessment of the religious character of the second British empire provides a clear account of the promotional strategies of the major churches and church parties which worked to plant settler Christianity in British domains. Based on extensive use of original archival and rare published sources, the author explores major debates such as the relationship between religion and colonization, church-state relations, Irish Catholics in the empire, the impact of the Scottish Disruption on colonial Presbyterianism, competition between Evangelicals and other Anglicans in the colonies, and between British and American strands of Methodism in British North America.

Download or read book Paul and Empire written by Richard A. Horsley and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1997-11-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the centuries, Paul has been understood as the prototypical convert from Judaism to Christianity. At the time of Pauls conversion, however, Christianity did not yet exist. Moreover, Paul says nothing to indicate that he was abandoning Judaism or Israel. He, in fact, understood his mission as the fulfillment of the promises to Israel and of Israels own destiny. In brief, Pauls gospel and mission were set over against the Roman Empire, not Judaism.

Download or read book Empire Baptized written by Howard-Brook, Wes and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a study of the early church, this book shows how Christianity in effect opted for the religion of empire, shifting the emphasis of Jesus's prophetic message from transforming the world to the aim of saving one's soul.