News, VOLUME 11

Ten Theology Books to Watch For – May 2018

Here are a some excellent theology* books that will be released this month:

* broadly interpreted, including ethics, church history, biblical studies, and other areas that intersect with theology

See a book here that you’d like to review for us?
Contact us, and we’ll talk about the possibility of a review.

   [easyazon_image align=”center” height=”500″ identifier=”0830852077″ locale=”US” src=”https://englewoodreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/513Jz5feWDL.jpg” tag=”douloschristo-20″ width=”333″]

[easyazon_link identifier=”0830852077″ locale=”US” tag=”douloschristo-20″]The Morals of the Story: Good News About a Good God[/easyazon_link] 

David Baggett /
MaryBeth Baggett

IVP Academic

 

What arguments best affirm the existence of God? Do our moral obligations and choices support a belief in God? For centuries, the moral argument―the affirmation that morality is best explained by the existence of God―has been a powerful apologetic tool. In this volume, husband and wife duo David Baggett and Marybeth Baggett offer a dramatic, refreshing, and even playful reconsideration of the moral argument. Tracing both its historical importance and its ongoing relevance, they contend that the moral argument helps to explain the existence of a good God and contributes to our own ongoing spiritual transformation.

 

 

[easyazon_image align=”center” height=”500″ identifier=”0198810202″ locale=”US” src=”https://englewoodreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/51JCcf99PL.jpg” tag=”douloschristo-20″ width=”331″]

[easyazon_link identifier=”0198810202″ locale=”US” tag=”douloschristo-20″]Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe: A Ritual Interpretation[/easyazon_link] 

Nathan J. Ristuccia

Oxford UP

Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe re-examines the alterations in Western European life that followed widespread conversion to Christianity-the phenomena traditionally termed “Christianization”. It refocuses scholarly paradigms for Christianization around the development of mandatory rituals. One prominent ritual, Rogationtide supplies an ideal case study demonstrating a new paradigm of “Christianization without religion.”

Christianization in the Middle Ages was not a slow process through which a Christian system of religious beliefs and practices replaced an earlier pagan system. In the Middle Ages, religion did not exist in the sense of a fixed system of belief bounded off from other spheres of life. Rather, Christianization was
primarily ritual performance. Being a Christian meant joining a local church community.

After the fall of Rome, mandatory rituals such as Rogationtide arose to separate a Christian commonwealth from the pagans, heretics, and Jews outside it. A Latin West between the polis and the parish had its own institution-the Rogation procession-for organizing local communities. For medieval people, sectarian borders were often flexible and rituals served to demarcate these borders. Rogationtide is an ideal case study of this demarcation, because it was an emotionally powerful feast, which combined pageantry with doctrinal instruction, community formation, social ranking, devotional exercises, and bodily mortification. As a result, rival groups quarrelled over the holiday’s meaning and procedure, sometimes violently, in order to reshape the local order and ban people and practices as
non-Christian.

<<<<< PREV. PAGE | BACK TO TOP >>>>>
PAGE 5 of 5

—–
 






C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com


 
RFTCG
FREE EBOOK!
Reading for the Common Good
From ERB Editor Christopher Smith


"This book will inspire, motivate and challenge anyone who cares a whit about the written word, the world of ideas, the shape of our communities and the life of the church."
-Karen Swallow Prior


Enter your email below to sign up for our weekly newsletter & download your FREE copy of this ebook!
We respect your email privacy


In the News...
Christian Nationalism Understanding Christian Nationalism [A Reading Guide]
Most AnticipatedMost Anticipated Books of the Fall for Christian Readers!
Funny Bible ReviewsHilarious One-Star Customer Reviews of Bibles


Comments are closed.