LITMIR.BIZ

Employing studies in population ecology as a framework for understanding the growth of religious movements, Disfellowshiped traces the growth of the Pentecostal movement. The author explores how the Pentecostal movement developed in relationship to Fundamentalism from its roots in the Holiness movement to the formation of the National Association of Evangelicals. Particular attention is given to the various critiques and rebuttals exchanged between Fundamentalists and Pentecostals, exploring how these two movements influenced and shaped one another. This book shows how, despite their mutual antagonism, these two movements held far more in common than in contrast. This book will be of great importance to all those interested in the history of Fundamentalism and the rise of Pentecostalism.

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Since its inception in 1968, the brain-death criterion for human death has enjoyed the status of one of the few relatively well-settled issues in bioethics. However, over the last fifteen years or so, a growing number of experts in medicine, philosophy, and religion have come to regard brain death as an untenable criterion for the determination of death. Given that the debate about brain death has occupied a relatively small group of professionals, few are aware that brain death fails to correspond to any coherent biological or philosophical conception of death. This is significant, for if the brain-dead are not dead, then the removal of their vital organs for transplantation is the direct cause of their deaths, and a violation of the Dead Donor Rule.
This unique monograph synthesizes the social, legal, medical, religious, and philosophical problems inherent in current social policy allowing for organ donation under the brain-death criterion. In so doing, this bioethical appraisal offers a provocative investigation of the ethical quandaries inherent in the way transplantable organs are currently procured. Drawing together these multidisciplinary threads, this book advocates the abandonment of the brain-death criterion in light of its adverse failures, and concludes by laying the groundwork for a new policy of death in an effort to further the good of organ donation and transplantation.

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Though Soren Kierkegaard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer both made considerable contributions to twentieth-century thought, they are rarely considered together. Against Kierkegaard's melancholic individual, Bonhoeffer stands as the champion of the church and community. In Attacks on Christendom, Matthew D. Kirkpatrick challenges these stereotypical readings of these two vital thinkers. Through an analysis of such concepts as epistemology, ethics, Christology, and ecclesiology, Kirkpatrick reveals Kierkegaard's significant influence on Bonhoeffer throughout his work. Kirkpatrick shows that Kierkegaard underlies not only Bonhoeffer's spirituality but also his concepts of knowledge, being, and community. So important is this relationship that it was through Kierkegaard's powerful representation of Abraham and Isaac that Bonhoeffer came to adhere to an ethic that led to his involvement in the assassination attempts against Hitler.
However, this relationship is by no means one-sided. Attacks on Christendom argues for the importance of Bonhoeffer as an interpreter of Kierkegaard, drawing Kierkegaard's thought into his own unique context, forcing Kierkegaard to answer very different questions. Bonhoeffer helps in converting the obscure, obdurate Dane into a thinker for his own, unique age.
Both Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer have been criticized and misunderstood for their final works that lay bare the religious climates of their nations. In the final analysis, Attacks on Christendom argues that these works are not unfortunate endings to their careers, but rather their fulfilment, drawing together the themes that had been brewing throughout their work.

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Liberating Biblical Study is a unique collaboration of pioneering biblical scholars, social-change activists, and movement-based artists. Well known and unknown, veterans and newcomers, these diverse practitioners of justice engage in a lively and critical conversation at the intersection of seminary, sanctuary, and street. The book is divided into eight sections; in each, a scholar, activist, and artist explore the justice issues related to a biblical text or idea, such as exodus, creation, jubilee, and sanctuary. Beyond the emerging themes (e.g., empire, resistance movements, identity, race, gender, and economics), the book raises essential questions at another level: What is the role of art in social-change movements? How can scholars be accountable beyond the academy, and activists encouraged to study? How are resistance movements nurtured and sustained? This volume is an accessible invitation to action that will appeal to all who love and strive for justice–whatever their discipline, and whatever their familiarity with the Bible, scholarship, art, and activist communities.

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The development of modern medicine is on a very steep trajectory upward–a rise that began only about a hundred years ago. This rise is certainly quantitative, but it is accompanied by qualitative changes in the way we understand and deliver healthcare. This book begins with a look at three recognized periods of medical development–from 1900 until World War II, from the war until about 1980, and the period since 1980.
While the common response is to celebrate these developments, this book suggests that perhaps we should also be wary, especially of the qualitative changes. Since World War II, these medical developments have entered more and more areas of our lives. It is precisely this process of medicalization that should be critically examined. Since 1980 we have medicalized life itself. Drawing from medical sociology, the book examines four characteristics of contemporary Western health care: health as a system, risk as a means of understanding health, health as a commodity, and individual responsibility for health. Critical examination of these four tendencies in contemporary health care forms the core of the argument of this important book about the essence of biohealth and medical practice.

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The genius of Paul is evident in chapter 2 of his Letter to the Ephesians. However, more importantly, two truths are revealed through a closer examination of his presentation. First is the realization that Paul listens, contemplates, and abides by the words of his Savior, and ours, in presenting the truths revealed to him. This was the result of Paul relinquishing the mantle of self-centeredness and replacing it with the crown of Christ-centeredness. This became his guiding light through the tests, trials, and tribulations of walking with Jesus. Second, there is the recognition of Paul's love for, and commitment to, professing Christians, whether they be babes in the faith, adolescents, or maturing adults. He realized they had been, or would be, confronted by the desires of the flesh and of the mind during their life's journey. He wanted them to know the living Christ. This chapter is pivotal to understanding God's mercy and grace, as well as our need for His spiritual blessings. When we accept the Lord Jesus' invitation to follow Him in His commands and teachings, we will know the joy of a right relationship with the glorious Father, reconciliation through Christ, praying through the Holy Spirit, and God's Foundation built on the apostles and prophets.

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Learning in a Musical Key examines the multidimensional problem of the relationship between music and theological education. Lisa Hess argues that, in a delightful and baffling way, musical learning has the potential to significantly alter and inform our conception of the nature and process of theological learning. In exploring this exciting intersection of musical learning and theological training, Hess asks two probing questions. First, What does learning from music in a performative mode require? Classical modes of theological education often founder on a dichotomy between theologically musical and educational discourses. It is extremely difficult for many to see how the perceivedly nonmusical learn from music. Is musicality a universally human potential? In exploring this question Hess turns to the music-learning theory of Edwin Gordon, which explores music's unique mode of teaching/learning, its primarily aural-oral mode.
This challenge leads to the study's second question: How does a theologian, in the disciplinary sense, integrate a performative mode into critical discourse? Tracking the critical movements of this problem, Hess provides an inherited, transformational logic as a feasible path for integrating a performative mode into multidimensional learning. This approach emerges as a distinctly relational, embodied, multidimensional, and non-correlational performative-mode theology that breaks new ground in the contemporary theological landscape. As an implicitly trinitarian method, rooted in the relationality of God, this non-correlational method offers a practical theological contribution to the discipline of Christian spirituality, newly claimed here as a discipline of transformative teaching/learning through the highly contextualized and self-implicated scholar into relationally formed communities, and ultimately into the world.

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Karl Barth's 1922 The Epistle to the Romans is one of the most famous, notorious, and influential works in twentieth-century theology and biblical studies. It is also a famously and notoriously difficult and enigmatic work, especially as its historical context becomes more and more foreign. In this book, Kenneth Oakes provides historical background to the writing of The Epistle to the Romans, an introduction and analysis of its main themes and terms, a running commentary on the text itself, and suggestions for further readings from Barth on some of the issues it raises. The volume not only offers orientation and assistance for those reading The Epistle to the Romans for the first time, it also deals with contemporary problems in current Barth scholarship regarding liberalism, dialectics, and analogy.

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Creating Women's Theology engages women's questions: – Can women from different religious traditions engage one theological approach? – Can one philosophical approach support feminist religious thought? – What kind of belief follows women's criticism of traditional Christianity?
Creating Women's Theology offers a portrait of how some women have found room for faith and feminism. For the last twenty-five years, women religion scholars have synthesized process philosophy with their feminist sensibilities and faith commitments to highlight the value of experience, the importance of freedom, and the interdependence of humanity, God, and all creation. Cutting across cultural and religious traditions, process relational feminist thought represents a theology that women have created. This volume offers an introduction to process and feminist theologies before presenting selections from canonical works in the field with study questions. This volume includes voices from Christianity, Judaism, goddess religion, the Black church, and indigenous religions. Creating Women's Theology invites new generations of undergraduate, seminary, and university graduate students to the methods and insights of process relational feminist theology.

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Maybe the only thing new about sexual abuse is quality discussion from several professions (psychology, theology, and pastoral care). Here are the insights of over two dozen psychologists, theologians, and those in pastoral care, all targeting the issue of sexual abuse. Designed as a resource for Christian educators, therapists, pastors, social workers, group leaders, and survivors, The Long Journey Home combines current research in mental health with rich theological reflection, global concern with fervent pastoral wisdom for the local faith community. Whether you are a counselor, professor, pastor, or spouse of a survivor, you hold in your hand a fresh resource of information and advocacy for those suffering from the devastating effects of sexual abuse and rape. The breadth of material, biblical insight, discussion questions, and helpful resources gathered here just may be the tool of a generation.

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