Product Description: What did the word “Christ” mean in the first century, and how did it resonate with the politics and religion of the time? And beyond that, how was Jesus seen in the New Testament, and then onto the time of the Desert Fathers? This book traces the history of Christ through the militant leader of the Crusaders, via the multi-faceted Christ of the Middle Ages, and the opposing views of Him formed during the Reformation and the wars that followed...read more

The surprising tale of the first American Protestant missionaries to proselytize in the Muslim worldIn American Apostles, the Bancroft Prize-winning historian Christine Leigh Heyrman brilliantly chronicles the first fateful collision between American missionaries and the diverse religious cultures of the Levant. Pliny Fisk, Levi Parsons, Jonas King: though virtually unknown today, these three young New Englanders commanded attention across the United States two hundred years ago. Poor boys steeped in the biblical prophecies of evangelical Protestantism, they became the founding members of the Palestine mission and ventured to Ottoman Turkey, Egypt, and Syria, where they sought to expose the falsity of Muhammad's creed and to restore these bastions of Islam to true Christianity. Not only among the first Americans to travel throughout the Middle East, the Palestine missionaries also played a crucial role in shaping their compatriots' understanding of the Muslim world.As Heyrman shows, the missionaries thrilled their American readers with tales of crossing the Sinai on camel, sailing a canal boat up the Nile, and exploring the ancient city of Jerusalem. But their private journals and letters often tell a story far removed from the tales they spun for home consumption, revealing that their missions did not go according to plan. Instead of converting the Middle East, the members of the Palestine mission themselves experienced unforeseen spiritual challenges as they debated with Muslims, Jews, and Eastern Christians and pursued an elusive Bostonian convert to Islam. As events confounded their expectations, some of the missionaries developed a cosmopolitan curiosity about-even an appreciation of-Islam. But others devised images of Muslims for their American audiences that would both fuel the first wave of Islamophobia in the United States and forge the future character of evangelical Protestantism itself.American Apostles brings to life evangelicals' first encounters with the Middle East and uncovers their complicated legacy. The Palestine mission held the promise of acquainting Americans with a fuller and more accurate understanding of Islam, but ultimately it bolstered a more militant Christianity, one that became the unofficial creed of the United States over the course of the nineteenth century. The political and religious consequences of that outcome endure to this day.

Product Description: The first part of this volume contains a series of Latin and Greek creeds (symbols) from antiquity and the Early Middle Ages along with contemporary symbolic interpretations. The second part includes studies on the origins and history of creeds as well as their use in different historical contexts (history of piety, liturgy, and law)...read more

Journey with Adam Hamilton as he travels from Nazareth to Bethlehem in this fascinating look at the birth of Jesus Christ. As he did with Jesus's crucifixion in 24 Hours That Changed the World, Hamilton once again approaches a world-changing event with thoughtfulness. Historical information and archaeology enhance readers' experience as they walk along this road. Read The Journey on your own or, for a more in-depth study, enjoy it with a small group. Also available: The Journey: A Season of Reflections The Journey: DVD with Leader Guide The Journey: Youth Edition The Journey: Children's Edition

Product Description: The profiles of more than forty European Reformation cities from Spain to Estonia are presented in this book. Their reformers (along with five female reformers) come alive in texts and pictures as do the cities with their buildings and historical sources from Reformation times...read more

Product Description: Understandings of the Church explores the ways imagery is used by biblical writers and early Christian teachers such as Cyprian, Ignatius of Antioch, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen to describe the concept of church...read more

Product Description: This volume offers a critical edition accompanied by introductory studies of a previously unresearched Moscow manuscript from the Strasbourg Convent of St. Magdalena: a legend of St. Catherine, a legend of St. Barbara, and treatises by the Alsatian Dominican Johannes Kreutzer (approx...read more