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    • Trusted Partner
      History of religion
      November 2015

      Faith in the family

      A lived religious history of English Catholicism, 1945–82

      by Alana Harris

      Drawing upon a multi-disciplinary methodology employing diverse written sources, material practices and vivid life histories, Faith in the family seeks to assess the impact of the Second Vatican Council on the ordinary believer, alongside contemporaneous shifts in British society relating to social mobility, the sixties, sexual morality and secularisation. Chapters examine the changes in the Roman Catholic liturgy and Christology; devotion to Mary, the rosary and the place of women in the family and church, as well as the enduring (but shifting) popularity of Saints Bernadette and Thérèse. Appealing to students of modern British gender and cultural history, as well as a general readership interested in religious life in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century, Faith in the family illustrates that despite unmistakable differences in their cultural accoutrements and interpretations of Catholicism, English Catholics continued to identify with and practise the 'Faith of Our Fathers' before and after Vatican II.

    • Trusted Partner
      History of religion
      November 2015

      Faith in the family

      A lived religious history of English Catholicism, 1945–82

      by Alana Harris

      Drawing upon a multi-disciplinary methodology employing diverse written sources, material practices and vivid life histories, Faith in the family seeks to assess the impact of the Second Vatican Council on the ordinary believer, alongside contemporaneous shifts in British society relating to social mobility, the sixties, sexual morality and secularisation. Chapters examine the changes in the Roman Catholic liturgy and Christology; devotion to Mary, the rosary and the place of women in the family and church, as well as the enduring (but shifting) popularity of Saints Bernadette and Thérèse. Appealing to students of modern British gender and cultural history, as well as a general readership interested in religious life in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century, Faith in the family illustrates that despite unmistakable differences in their cultural accoutrements and interpretations of Catholicism, English Catholics continued to identify with and practise the 'Faith of Our Fathers' before and after Vatican II.

    • Trusted Partner
      Witchcraft
      January 2013

      The Malleus Maleficarum

      by Maxwell-Stuart (P. G.)

      The Malleus Maleficarum is one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches. It was written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris, following his failure to prosecute a number of women for witchcraft, it is in many ways a highly personal document, full of frustration at official complacency in the face of a spiritual threat, as well as being a practical guide for law-officers who have to deal with a cunning, dangerous enemy. Combining theological discussion, illustrative anecdotes, and useful advice for those involved in suppressing witchcraft, its influence on witchcraft studies has been extensive. The only previous translation into English, that by Montague Summers produced in 1928, is full of inaccuracies. It is written in a style almost unreadable nowadays, and is unfortunately coloured by his personal agenda. This new edited translation, with an introductory essay setting witchcraft, Institoris, and the Malleus into clear, readable English, corrects Summers' mistakes and offers a lean, unvarnished version of what Institoris actually wrote. It will undoubtedly become the standard translation of this important and controversial late-medieval text.

    • Trusted Partner
      Witchcraft
      January 2013

      The Malleus Maleficarum

      by Maxwell-Stuart (P. G.)

      The Malleus Maleficarum is one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches. It was written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris, following his failure to prosecute a number of women for witchcraft, it is in many ways a highly personal document, full of frustration at official complacency in the face of a spiritual threat, as well as being a practical guide for law-officers who have to deal with a cunning, dangerous enemy. Combining theological discussion, illustrative anecdotes, and useful advice for those involved in suppressing witchcraft, its influence on witchcraft studies has been extensive. The only previous translation into English, that by Montague Summers produced in 1928, is full of inaccuracies. It is written in a style almost unreadable nowadays, and is unfortunately coloured by his personal agenda. This new edited translation, with an introductory essay setting witchcraft, Institoris, and the Malleus into clear, readable English, corrects Summers' mistakes and offers a lean, unvarnished version of what Institoris actually wrote. It will undoubtedly become the standard translation of this important and controversial late-medieval text.

    • Trusted Partner
      History of religion
      February 2013

      Creating a Scottish church

      Catholicism, gender and ethnicity in nineteenth-century Scotland

      by S. Karly Kehoe

      This book highlights how the Catholic population participated in the extension of citizenship in Scotland and considers Catholicism's transition from an underground and isolated church to a multi-faceted institution by taking a critical look at gender, ethnicity and class. It prioritises the role of women in the transformation and modernization of Catholic culture and represents a radical departure from the traditional perception of the church as an institution on the fringes of Scotland's religious and civic landscape. It examines how Catholicism participated in constructions of national identity and civic society. Industrialisation, urbanisation, and Irish migration forced Catholics and non-Catholics to reappraise Catholicism's position in Scotland and in turn Scotland's position in England. Using previously unseen archival material from private church and convent collections, it reveals how the construction of a Catholic social welfare system and associational culture helped to secure a civil society and national identity that was distinctively Scottish.

    • Trusted Partner
      History of religion
      May 2013

      Death, life, and religious change in Scottish towns c. 1350–1560

      by Mairi Cowan

      Death, life, and religious change in Scottish towns c. 1350-1560 examines lay religious culture in Scottish towns between the Black Death and the Protestant Reformation. It looks at what the living did to influence the dead and how the dead were believed to influence the living in turn; it explores the ways in which townspeople asserted their individual desires in the midst of overlapping communities; and it considers both continuities and changes, highlighting the Catholic Reform movement that reached Scottish towns before the Protestant Reformation took hold. Students and scholars of Scottish history and of medieval and early modern history more broadly will find in this book a new approach to the religious culture of Scottish towns between 1350 and 1560, one that interprets the evidence in the context of a time when Europe experienced first a flourishing of medieval religious devotion and then the sterner discipline of early modern Reform.

    • Trusted Partner
      Christianity
      July 2013

      Republican learning

      John Toland and the crisis of Christian culture, 1696–1722

      by Justin Champion

      This book explores the life, thought and political commitments of the free-thinker John Toland (1670-1722). Studying both his private archive and published works, it illustrates how Toland moved in both subversive and elite political circles in England and abroad. It explores the connections between his republican political thought and his irreligious belief about Christian doctrine, the ecclesiastical establishment and divine revelation, arguing that far from being a marginal and insignificant figure, Toland counted queens, princes and government ministers as his friends and political associates. The book argues that Toland shaped the republican tradition after the Glorious Revolution into a practical and politically viable programme, focused not on destroying the monarchy, but on reforming public religion and the Church of England. It explores the connections between Toland's erudition and print culture, arguing that his intellectual project was aimed at compromising the authority of Christian 'knowledge' as much as the political power of the Church.

    • Trusted Partner
      Christianity
      July 2013

      Republican learning

      John Toland and the crisis of Christian culture, 1696–1722

      by Justin Champion

      This book explores the life, thought and political commitments of the free-thinker John Toland (1670-1722). Studying both his private archive and published works, it illustrates how Toland moved in both subversive and elite political circles in England and abroad. It explores the connections between his republican political thought and his irreligious belief about Christian doctrine, the ecclesiastical establishment and divine revelation, arguing that far from being a marginal and insignificant figure, Toland counted queens, princes and government ministers as his friends and political associates. The book argues that Toland shaped the republican tradition after the Glorious Revolution into a practical and politically viable programme, focused not on destroying the monarchy, but on reforming public religion and the Church of England. It explores the connections between Toland's erudition and print culture, arguing that his intellectual project was aimed at compromising the authority of Christian 'knowledge' as much as the political power of the Church.

    • Trusted Partner
      Christianity
      July 2012

      Republican learning

      John Toland and the crisis of Christian culture, 1696–1722

      by Justin Champion

    • Trusted Partner
      Religion & beliefs
      January 2013

      Religion and Rights

      The Oxford Amnesty Lectures

      by Edited by Wes Williams

      Rights were once thought to derive from the God-given nature of man. But today human rights and religion are sometimes in conflict. The universal claims made for rights can put them at odds with the revealed truths from which religions derive their authority. Many people's sense of human worth and dignity nevertheless depends on recognising the divine in each of us. Where rights and revelation diverge, how can the differences be negotiated? How should we measure individual claims to freedom against the demands of religious traditions? In this volume, eminent theologians and anthropologists set out the terms of religion's holds on its own truths, while historians, philosophers, and activists set out their vision for a society in which the competing truths must be accommodated not peacefully but without violence. Their respondents join the debate with fierce conviction, indicating their doubts and concerns in relation to the often compatible but sometimes competing claims of religion and rights.

    • Trusted Partner
      History of religion
      May 2013

      Infidel feminism

      Secularism, religion and women's emancipation, England 1830–1914

      by Laura Schwartz

      Infidel feminism is the first in-depth study of a distinctive brand of women's rights that emerged out of the Victorian Secularist movement. It looks at the lives and work of a number of female activists, whose renunciation of religion shaped their struggle for emancipation. Anti-religious or secular ideas were fundamental to the development of feminist thought, but have, until now, been almost entirely passed over in the historiography of the Victorian and Edwardian women's movement. In uncovering an important tradition of Freethinking feminism, this book reveals an ongoing radical and free love current connecting Owenite feminism with the more 'respectable' post-1850 women's movement and the 'New Women' of the early twentieth century. This book will be invaluable to both scholars and students of social and cultural history and feminist thought, and to interdisciplinary studies of religion and secularisation, as well as those interested in the history of women's movements more broadly.

    • Trusted Partner
      Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700
      May 2013

      Insular Christianity

      Alternative models of the Church in Britain and Ireland, c.1570–c.1700

      by Edited by Robert Armstrong and Tadhg Hannrachain

      This collection of essays on the alternative establishments which both Presbyterians and Catholics attempted to create in Britain and Ireland offers a dynamic new perspective on the evolution of post-reformation religious communities. Deriving from the Insular Christianity project in Dublin, the book combines essays by some of the leading scholars in the field with work by brilliant and upcoming researchers. The contributions, all of which were commissioned, range from synoptic essays which fill in gaps in the existing historiography to tightly coherent research essays that break new ground with regard to a series of central institutional and intellectual issues and problems. This is a book which will appeal to all those interested in the religious history of early modern Britain and Ireland.

    • Trusted Partner
      Christian leaders & leadership
      July 2013

      Luther's lives

      Two contemporary accounts of Martin Luther

      by Elizabeth Vandiver, Ralph Keen, Thomas D. Frazel

      This volume brings together two important contemporary accounts of the life of Martin Luther in a confrontation that had been postponed for more than four hundred and fifty years. The first of these is written after Luther's death, when it was rumoured that demons had seized the Reformer on his deathbed and dragged him off to Hell. In response to these rumours, Luther's friend and colleague, Philip Melanchthon wrote and published a brief encomium of the Reformer in 1548. A completely new translation of this text appears in this book. It was in response to Melanchthon's work that Johannes Cochlaeus completed and published his own monumental life of Luther in 1549, which is translated and made available in English for the first time in this volume. Such is the detail and importance of Cochlaeus's life of Luther that for an eyewitness account of the Reformation - and the beginnings of the Catholic Counter-Reformation - there is simply no other historical document to compare.

    • Trusted Partner
      Christian leaders & leadership
      July 2013

      Luther's lives

      Two contemporary accounts of Martin Luther

      by Elizabeth Vandiver, Ralph Keen, Thomas D. Frazel

      This volume brings together two important contemporary accounts of the life of Martin Luther in a confrontation that had been postponed for more than four hundred and fifty years. The first of these is written after Luther's death, when it was rumoured that demons had seized the Reformer on his deathbed and dragged him off to Hell. In response to these rumours, Luther's friend and colleague, Philip Melanchthon wrote and published a brief encomium of the Reformer in 1548. A completely new translation of this text appears in this book. It was in response to Melanchthon's work that Johannes Cochlaeus completed and published his own monumental life of Luther in 1549, which is translated and made available in English for the first time in this volume. Such is the detail and importance of Cochlaeus's life of Luther that for an eyewitness account of the Reformation - and the beginnings of the Catholic Counter-Reformation - there is simply no other historical document to compare.

    • Trusted Partner
      Christian leaders & leadership
      July 2012

      Luther's lives

      Two contemporary accounts of Martin Luther

      by Elizabeth Vandiver, Ralph Keen, Thomas D. Frazel

    • Trusted Partner
      History of religion
      July 2013

      George Fox and Early Quaker Culture

      by Hilary Hinds

      What was distinctive about the founding principles and practices of Quakerism? In George Fox and Early Quaker Culture, Hilary Hinds explores how the Light Within became the organizing principle of this seventeenth-century movement, inaugurating an influential dissolution of the boundary between the human and the divine. Taking an original perspective on this most enduring of radical religious groups, Hinds combines literary and historical approaches to produce a fresh study of Quaker cultural practice. Close readings of Fox's Journal are put in dialogue with the voices of other early Friends and their critics to argue that the Light Within set the terms for the unique Quaker mode of embodying spirituality and inhabiting the world. In this important study of the cultural consequences of a bedrock belief, Hinds shows how the Quaker spiritual self was premised on a profound continuity between sinful subjects and godly omnipotence. This study will be of interest not only to scholars and students of seventeenth-century literature and history, but also to those concerned with the Quaker movement, spirituality and the changing meanings of religious practice in the early modern period.

    • Trusted Partner
      History of religion
      July 2013

      George Fox and Early Quaker Culture

      by Hilary Hinds

      What was distinctive about the founding principles and practices of Quakerism? In George Fox and Early Quaker Culture, Hilary Hinds explores how the Light Within became the organizing principle of this seventeenth-century movement, inaugurating an influential dissolution of the boundary between the human and the divine. Taking an original perspective on this most enduring of radical religious groups, Hinds combines literary and historical approaches to produce a fresh study of Quaker cultural practice. Close readings of Fox's Journal are put in dialogue with the voices of other early Friends and their critics to argue that the Light Within set the terms for the unique Quaker mode of embodying spirituality and inhabiting the world. In this important study of the cultural consequences of a bedrock belief, Hinds shows how the Quaker spiritual self was premised on a profound continuity between sinful subjects and godly omnipotence. This study will be of interest not only to scholars and students of seventeenth-century literature and history, but also to those concerned with the Quaker movement, spirituality and the changing meanings of religious practice in the early modern period.

    • Trusted Partner
      History of religion
      July 2012

      George Fox and Early Quaker Culture

      by Hilary Hinds

      What was distinctive about the founding principles and practices of Quakerism? In George Fox and Early Quaker Culture, Hilary Hinds explores how the Light Within became the organizing principle of this seventeenth-century movement, inaugurating an influential dissolution of the boundary between the human and the divine. Taking an original perspective on this most enduring of radical religious groups, Hinds combines literary and historical approaches to produce a fresh study of Quaker cultural practice. Close readings of Fox's Journal are put in dialogue with the voices of other early Friends and their critics to argue that the Light Within set the terms for the unique Quaker mode of embodying spirituality and inhabiting the world. In this important study of the cultural consequences of a bedrock belief, Hinds shows how the Quaker spiritual self was premised on a profound continuity between sinful subjects and godly omnipotence. This study will be of interest not only to scholars and students of seventeenth-century literature and history, but also to those concerned with the Quaker movement, spirituality and the changing meanings of religious practice in the early modern period.

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