Christian Denominations Sects

By Valerie A. Kivelson, Robert H. Greene

Orthodox Christianity got here to Russia from Byzantium in 988, and within the resulting centuries it has turn into this sort of fixture of the Russian cultural panorama that any dialogue of Russian personality or background necessarily needs to take its impact under consideration. Orthodox Russia is a well timed quantity that brings jointly the very best modern scholarship on Russian Orthodox ideals and practices overlaying a wide historic period-from the Muscovite period in the course of the speedy aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. reviews of Russian Orthodoxy have regularly involved in doctrinal contro-versies or institutional advancements. Orthodox Russia concentrates on lived spiritual experience-how Orthodoxy touched the lives of a large choice of topics of the Russian nation, from clerics waiting for the Apocalypse within the 15th century and nuns adapting to the assaults on equipped faith less than the Soviets to unlettered army servitors on the court docket of Ivan the poor and staff, peasants, and squaddies within the final years of the imperial regime. Melding characteristically specific ways, the quantity permits us to determine Orthodoxy no longer as a static set of rigidly utilized ideas and dictates yet as a lived, adaptive, and versatile method. Orthodox Russia deals a much-needed, up to date basic survey of the topic, one made attainable by way of the outlet of information in Russia after 1991. members comprise Laura Engelstein, Michael S. Flier, Daniel H. Kaiser, Nadieszda Kizenko, Eve Levin, Gary Marker, Daniel Rowland, Vera Shevzov, Thomas N. Tentler, Isolde Thyret, William G. Wagner, and Paul W. Werth.

By Ron Rhodes

Do you ever ask yourself what the adaptation is among one denomination and one other? Why are there such a lot of varieties of Baptist or Presbyterian or Lutheran church buildings? the place do these names come from, anyway?

You can locate solutions during this concise yet finished advisor. find out about the leaders, teachings, and background of lots of the church households in the USA. as well as club data, you are going to find...

* a quick rationalization of ways the denomination began.
* a brief precis of its instructing on God, the Bible, the church, and different very important topics.
* a short assessment of a few of its distinct characteristics.

Whether you are looking for a brand new church or enriching your fellowship with believers from different traditions, you may be far better ready with this revised and extended variation of the whole consultant to Christian Denominations.

By Jane Myers Perrine

By Jack B. Worthy

Scrutinizing the event of starting to be up Mormon, this own narrative tells the tale of 1 man's disillusionment along with his religion and next excommunication from the Church. This account reveals what's posited as inherent racism and sexism in the church and seeks to show the controlling tools of indoctrination and the tough technique of excommunication. The basic tenets of the faith are defined, own tales and analyses are shared, and church professionals are pointed out to help the claims of maximum gender and racial discrimination. From unknowing follower to offended insurgent, and eventually to a content material, worldly man, this e-book recounts the event of a survivor who feels the obligation to give an explanation for his fact.

By Martha S. Bradley-Evans

Escaping imprisonment in Missouri in 1839, the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith speedy settled with kinfolk and fans at the Illinois banks of the Mississippi River. lower than Smith’s path, the small village of trade quickly mushroomed into the boomtown of Nauvoo, domestic to 12,000 and extra participants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

For Smith, Nauvoo used to be the hot epicenter of the Mormon universe: the collection position for Latter-day Saints all over the world; the positioning of a modern day Zion; the degree upon which his esoteric teachings, together with plural marriage and mystery temple ceremonies, performed out; and the locus of a theocracy whose criminal underpinnings will be condemned by means of outsiders as an assault on American pluralism.

In Nauvoo, Smith created a proto-utopian society equipped upon carrying on with revelation; confirmed a civil executive that blurred the traces between government, legislative, and felony branches; brought doctrines that promised glimpses of heaven on the earth; centralized secular and non secular authority in fiercely unswerving teams of fellows and ladies; insulated himself opposed to criminal harassment via artistic interpretations of Nauvoo’s founding constitution; embarked upon a bold run on the U.S. presidency; and pursued a vendetta opposed to dissidents that lead ultimately to his violent loss of life in 1844.

The universal thread operating during the ultimate years of Smith’s tumultuous existence, in keeping with prize-winning historian and biographer, Martha Bradley-Evans, is his tale of prophethood and persecution. Smith’s repeated battles with the forces of evil–past controversies remodeled into mythic narratives of successful in addition to current skirmishes with courts, politicians, and apostates–informed Smith’s building of self and chronicle of blameless suffering.

“Joseph stumbled on non secular and apocalyptic value in each offense and persecution–actual or imagined,” writes Bradley-Evans, “and wove those slights into his prophet-narrative. Insults grew to become badges of honor, affirmation that his existence used to be taking part in out on a mythic degree of competition. by the point Joseph led his humans to Illinois, he had lived with the adulation of fans and the vilification of enemies for greater than a decade. Joseph’s worst demanding situations usually proved to be his maximum triumphs. He cast devotion via catastrophe, religion via melancholy. Joseph interpreted every one new occasion as God’s will set opposed to manifestations of evil against the recovery of all things.”

Bradley-Evan’s ground-breaking portrait of Smith is going farther than any past biography in explaining the Mormon prophet and the secret of his allure.

By Hugh Nibley

Hugh Nibley is among the most sensible identified and so much hugely respected of Latter-day Saint students. For greater than 40 years this near-legendary instructor enthralled readers and listeners together with his encyclopedic wisdom, his wit, and his untiring study in safety of Latter-day Saint ideals. you can now research the transcripts of Dr. Nibley’s Honors publication of Mormon periods that he taught at BYU from 1988 to 1990. Semester 4 includes twenty-seven lectures targeting three Nephi 6 via Moroni 10. it really is classic Nibley, together with his insights, humor, and passionate convictions, discussing a publication that he enjoyed and knew so well.

By John G. Turner

Brigham younger was once a rough-hewn craftsman from manhattan whose impoverished and imprecise lifestyles used to be electrified by way of the Mormon religion. He trudged round the usa and England to realize converts for Mormonism, spoke in religious tongues, married greater than fifty ladies, and finally remodeled a barren barren region into his imaginative and prescient of the dominion of God. whereas earlier debts of his existence were distorted via hagiography or polemical exposé, John Turner offers a completely learned portrait of a mammoth determine in American faith, politics, and westward expansion.

After the 1844 homicide of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, younger amassed these Latter-day Saints who could keep on with him and led them over the Rocky Mountains. In Utah, he styled himself after the patriarchs, judges, and prophets of historic Israel. As charismatic as he was once autocratic, he was once seen through his fans as an imperative protector and by way of his competitors as a theocratic, treasonous heretic.

Under his fiery tutelage, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints defended plural marriage, limited where of African americans in the church, fought the U.S. military in 1857, and obstructed federal efforts to prosecute perpetrators of the Mountain Meadows bloodbath. while, Young’s tenacity and religion introduced tens of millions of Mormons to the yank West, imbued their daily lives with sacred goal, and sustained his church opposed to adversity. Turner finds the complexity of this religious prophet, whose dedication made a deep imprint on his church and the yankee Mountain West.

By Thomas M. Spencer

By Christopher C.H. Cook

The Philokalia, a suite of religious texts by way of fathers of the jap Church spanning the fourth to the 15th centuries, was once first released in Venice in 1782. major in bringing a few renaissance of Orthodox spirituality for the reason that then, it indicates deep mental in addition to religious knowledge. The Philokalia and the interior existence significantly examines the character of psychological and non secular health as understood within the Philokalia. It identifies the passions as 'hostile pleasures', with a seductive and addictive caliber, that are dangerous to human future health, and explores the treatments for the passions that the Philokalia prescribes. just like the Philokalia, modern psychotherapies search to interpret human ideas and fix health and wellbeing, even supposing the 'talking medication' of secular psychotherapy contrasts considerably with the 'praying treatment' of the Philokalia.This publication is for all who're drawn to spirituality, theology and the lifetime of prayer, in addition to scholars of the Philokalia. it's also for clinicians, counselors and psychotherapists, specifically those that desire to discover the connection among mental and religious wellbeing and fitness.

By Hugh Nibley

Dr. Hugh W. Nibley, professor emeritus of historical scriptures at Brigham younger collage, gave the subsequent twenty-six lectures in an honors category at the Pearl of serious expense. This classification was once videotaped within the Maesar construction in the course of iciness semester 1986 and the textual content was once then transcribed and is incorporated right here during this e-book.