Religion

The early Salvation Army professed its commitment to sexual equality in ministry and leadership. In fact, its founding constitution proclaimed women had the right to preach and hold any office in the organization. But did they?
Women in God’s Army is the first study of its kind devoted to the critical analysis of this central claim. It traces the extent to which this egalitarian ideal was realized in the private and public lives of first- and second-generation female Salvationists in Britain and argues that the Salvation Army was found wanting in its overall commitment to women’s equality with men. Bold pronouncements were not matched by actual practice in the home or in public ministry.
Andrew Mark Eason traces the nature of these discrepancies, as well as the Victorian and evangelical factors that lay behind them. He demonstrates how Salvationists often assigned roles and responsibilities on the basis of gender rather than equality, and the ways in which these discriminatory practices were supported by a male-defined theology and authority. He views this story from a number of angles, including historical, gender and feminist theology, ensuring it will be of interest to a wide spectrum of readers. Salvationists themselves will appreciate the light it sheds on recent debates. Ultimately, however, anyone who wants to learn more about the human struggle for equality will find this book enlightening.

Did the evangelist Mark write two versions of his gospel? According to a letter ascribed to Clement of Alexandria, Mark created a second, more spiritual edition of his gospel for theologically advanced Christians in Alexandria. Clement’s letter contains two excerpts from this lost gospel, including a remarkably different account of the raising of Lazarus.

Forty-five years of cursory investigation have yielded five mutually exclusive paradigms, abundant confusion, and rumours of forgery. Strangely, one of the few things upon which most investigators agree is that the letter’s own explanation of the origin and purpose of this longer gospel need not be taken seriously.

Mark’s Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith’s Controversial Discovery calls this pervasive bias into question. After thoroughly critiquing the five main paradigms, Scott G. Brown demonstrates that the gospel excerpts not only sound like Mark, but also employ Mark’s distinctive literary techniques, deepening this gospels theology and elucidating puzzling aspects of its narrative. This mystic gospel represents Mark’s own response to the Alexandrian predilection to discover the essential truths of a philosophy beneath the literal level of revered texts.

In this innovative and comprehensive collection of essays Jack Lightstone and Frederick Bird document and interpret ritual practice among contemporary Canadian Jews. They particularly focus on the character and meaning of the public performance of the Sabbath liturgy in six urban Canadian synagogues, ranging from Orthodox to Reform, and from large congregations to a small house synagogue-yeshiva (rabbinic academy). Their examination of synagogue ritual is complemented with accounts of the ritual life of contemporary Canadian Jews outside the synagogue — amongst their families, within their homes and beyond.
In contrast with other studies of Jewish observance, Lightstone and Bird document not simply which rituals are practised and how often; rather they stress the meaning, including the social meaning, of these rituals and treat them as complex symbolic systems. Their multidisciplinary approach together with their openness to include a wide variety of phenomena in their study (for example, the organization of the physical setting of the Sabbath, dress codes and patterns of greeting and handshaking) place this work at the very forefront of current research.
Ritual and Ethnic Identity will be of great value to historians and sociologists of religion, anthropologists and all those concerned with religion, ritual and Canadian Jewish and ethnic studies.

Based on exhaustive reference to primary source material, this volume explores the relationships between religious mythologies and religious philosophical system within the theistic traditions in India. Not content merely to explore these relationships, the author further examines the relevance of mythology and philosophy in a discussion of salvation—salvation understood in its sociological, eschatological, and philosophical senses. The treatment of myth and philosophy is comprehensive in scope, pulling together a great variety of sources and commentary, and illuminating them for the Western reader.

This study will be of interest both to students of Indian religions and to students of comparative religion interested in creating a context for the discussion of Eastern and Western religions.

Where do the origins of the rabbinic movement lie, and how might evidence from the early rabbinic literature be made to reveal those origins?
In order to shed light on the early social formation of the rabbinic guild of masters, Lightstone brings the theoretical and methodological insights of socio-rhetorical analysis to examine Mishnah, the first document authored by the early rabbinic movement and its principal object of study for several centuries.
He argues that the enshrinement of Mishnah served to model, via its pervasive rhetoric, the principal authoritative guild expertise that qualified and marked one as a member of the rabbinic guild. Furthermore, he establishes the social and historical venue in late second- and early third-century Galilee.
The author concludes that the social formation of the early rabbinic guild coalesced around the institution of the Jewish Patriarchy, for which the early rabbis served as bureaucratic-scribal retainers. He further suggests that the development of both the Patriarchy in the Land of Israel and the social formation of the rabbinic guild may have been spurred by the imposition of Roman-style urbanization in the region over the course of the latter half of the second and beginning of the third century.
Lightstone’s approach is informed by the insights and methods of several cognate disciplines, encompassing literary analysis, sociology and anthropology, and history (including, in the last chapter, the history of material culture). The book will be of interest to advanced students in the history of Judaism, rabbinic literature, biblical studies, early Christianity, and the history of religion and culture in the late Roman Near East.

This third volume in the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale reports her controversial theological essays (only two of which have been previously published) and a great array of correspondence, from such Roman Catholics as Cardinal Manning and the Reverend Mother of the Sisters of Mercy of Bermondsey to the liberal Protestant Benjamin Jowett, evangelicals and missionaries. Nightingale’s recommendations for a revision of the Bible for schoolchildren and excerpts from her devotional reading are given.
Currently, Volumes 1 to 11 are available in e-book version by subscription or from university and college libraries through the following vendors: Canadian Electronic Library, Ebrary, MyiLibrary, and Netlibrary.
The Series
In the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale all the surviving writing of Florence Nightingale will be published, much of it for the first time. Known as the heroine of the Crimean War and the major founder of the modern profession of nursing, Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) will be revealed also as a scholar, theorist and social reformer of enormous scope and importance.
Original material has been obtained from over 150 archives and private collections worldwide. This abundance of material will be reflected in the series, revealing a significant amount of new material on her philosophy, theology and personal spiritual journey, as well as on her vision of a public health care system, her activism to achieve the difficult early steps of nursing for the sick poor in workhouse infirmaries and her views on health promotion and women’s control over midwifery. Nightingale’s more than forty years of work for public health in India, particularly in famine prevention and for broader social reform, will be reported in detail.
The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale demonstrates Nightingale’s astute use of the political process and reports on her extensive correspondence with royalty, viceroys, cabinet ministers and international leaders, including such notables as Queen Victoria and W.E. Gladstone. Much new material on Nightingale’s family is reported, including some that will challenge her standard portrayal in the secondary literature.
Sixteen printed volumes are scheduled and will record her enormous and largely unpublished correspondence, previously published books, articles and pamphlets, many of which have long been out of print.
There will be full publication in electronic form, permitting readers to easily pursue their particular interests. Extensive databases, notably a chronology and a names index, will also be published in electronic form, again permitting convenient access to persons interested not only in Nightingale but in other figures of the time.

Beyond the Altar illustrates how women religious overcome sexist subjugation by side-stepping the patriarchal power of the Roman Catholic Church. This book counters the stereotypical image of Catholic nuns as being loyally compliant with their church by showing how a number of current and former women religious in Canada challenge their institutional religion’s precepts and engage in transformative strategies to effect change both within and outside the Roman Catholic Church.


The sisters’ testimonials reveal never-before-shared details about their painful experiences of male domination, their courageous efforts to move beyond such sexist stifling, and the women-led and women-centered spiritual, governance, and activist practices they have engendered in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.


Featuring many examples of the sisters’ resourcefulness, resilience, and resistance, this book fills a void in international scholarship on what Canadian Catholic women religious have endured and accomplished. Through interviews and in-depth accounts of the complexities and nuances present in the current and former sisters’ lives, readers will discover their steadfast indomitability as they strategically, and sometimes subversively, innovate their spiritual spaces.

Augustine: From Rhetor to Theologianconsists of fifteen chapters from international scholars written to celebrate the 1600th anniversary of the conversion to Catholic Christianity of Augustine of Hippo.

Augustine set his stamp on the Latin Church, yet only in the twentieth century, with its profound, even paradigmatic change did the descendants of that church -- Anglican, Reformed, and Roman Catholic -- recognize the degree to which their inbred attitudes and theological positions were "Augustinian." It is, however, another measure of the importance of Augustine that many aspects of his life and meanings of his writings are still disputed. This continuing investigation and debate is evidenced in this volume.

This state-of-the-art account gives readers the tools to understand why antisemitism is such a controversial subject. It acquaints readers with the ambiguities inherent in the historical relationship between Jews and Christians and shows these ambiguities in play in the unfolding relationship between Jews and Canadians of other religions and ethnicities. It examines present relationships in light of history and considers particularly the influence of antisemitism on the social, religious, and political history of the Canadian Jewish community. 
A History of Antisemitism in Canada builds on the foundation of numerous studies on antisemitism in general and on antisemitism in Canada in particular, as well as on the growing body of scholarship in Canadian Jewish studies. It attempts to understand the impact of antisemitism on Canada as a whole and is the first comprehensive account of antisemitism and its effect on the Jewish community of Canada. The book will be valuable to students and scholars not only of Canadian Jewish studies and Canadian ethnic studies but of Canadian history.

From its inception in the early 1900s, The United Church of Canada set out to become the national church of Canada. This book recounts and analyzes the history of the church of Canada’s largest Protestant denomination and its engagement with issues of social and private morality, evangelistic campaigns, and its response to the restructuring of religion in the 1960s.
A chronological history is followed by chapters on the United Church’s worship, theology, understanding of ministry, relationships with the Canadian Jewish community, Israel, and Palestinians, changing mission goals in relation to First Nations peoples, and changing social imaginary.
The result is an original, accessible, and engaging account of The United Church of Canada’s pilgrimage that will be useful for students, historians, and general readers. From this account there emerges a complex portrait of the United Church as a distinctly Canadian Protestant church shaped by both its Christian faith and its engagement with the changing society of which it is a part.

The United Church of Canada has a rich and complex history of theological development. This volume, written for the general reader as well as students and scholars, provides a comprehensive overview of that development, together with an analysis of this unique denomination’s core statements of faith and its contemporary theological landscape.

When the Methodist, Congregational, and Local Union Churches in Canada, as well as most of the Presbyterians, came together as The United Church of Canada, the theological commonalities between them were significant. Over the succeeding decades, this made-in-Canada denomination has continued to define its convictions through consensus-building and large-scale studies. This volume, written by leading scholars, outlines key faith perspectives in areas such as creation, the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, sin, mission, and sacraments.

No book like this has appeared in over seventy years, and readers will find insight here that is unparalleled in its scope. In creative tension with each individual member’s freedom of conscience, the United Church as a whole has continued to express its commonly held faith in dialogue, continuity, and critical interaction with the faith of the worldwide, historic Christian community.

Focussing on three first- and early-second-century documents (the Shepherd of Hermas, 1 Clement and the Ignatian epistles), this work contributes to a growing body of literature concerned with the social setting of early Christianity. Maier argues that the development of structures of leadership in the early Christian church is best accounted for by reference to the hospitality, patronage, and leadership of wealthy hosts who invited local Christian groups to meet in their homes. Sociological models and types are employed to analyze the tensions that arose from excesses of patronage and leadership by the well-to-do.
Recognizing the socio-economic setting of these conflicts corrects the interpretation of early Christian conflicts over the ministry as purely theological and doctrinali.

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) is widely known as the heroine of the Crimean War and the founder of the modern profession of nursing. She was also a scholar and political activist who wrote and worked assiduously on many reform causes for more than forty years.
This series will confirm Nightingale as an important and significant nineteenth-century scholar and illustrate how she integrated her scholarship with political activism. Indispensable to scholars, and accessible and revealing to the general reader, it will show there is much more to know about Florence Nightingale than the “lady with the lamp.”
Although a life-long member of the Church of England, Nightingale has been described as both a Unitarian and a significan nineteenth-century mystic. Volume 2 begins with an introduction to the beliefs, influences and practices of this complex person. The second and largest part of this volume consists of Nightingale’s biblical annotations, made at various stages of her life (some dated, some not). The third part of volume 2 contains her journal notes, including her diary for 1877, which is published here for the first time. Much of this material is highly personal, even confessional in nature. Some of it is profoundly moving and will serve to show the complexity and power of Nightingale’s faith.
Currently, Volumes 1 to 11 are available in e-book version by subscription or from university and college libraries through the following vendors: Canadian Electronic Library, Ebrary, MyiLibrary, and Netlibrary.

Technology, tourism, politics, and law have connected human beings around the world more closely than ever before, but this closeness has, paradoxically, given rise to fear, distrust, and misunderstanding between nation-states and religions. In light of the tensions and conflicts that arise from these complex relationships, many search for ways to find peace and understanding through a “global public sphere.” There citizens can deliberate on issues of worldwide concern. Their voices can be heard by institutions able to translate public opinion into public policy that embraces more than simply the interests and ideas of the wealthy and the empowered.

Contributors to this volume address various aspects of this challenge within the context of Bahá’í thought and practice, whose goal is to lay the foundations for a new world civilization that harmonizes the spiritual and material aspects of human existence. Bahá’í teachings view religion as a source of enduring insight that can enable humanity to repair and transcend patterns of disunity, to foster justice within the structures of society, and to advance the cause of peace. Accordingly, religion can and ought to play a role in the broader project of creating a pattern of public discourse capable of supporting humanity’s transition to the next stage in its collective development.

The essays in this book make novel contributions to the growing literature on post-secularism and on religion and the public sphere. The authors additionally present new areas of inquiry for future research on the Bahá’í faith.

In Canadian universities in the early 1960s, no courses were offered on Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam. Only the study of Christianity was available, usually in a theology program in a church college or seminary. Today almost every university in North America has a religious studies department that offers courses on Western and Eastern religions as well as religion in general. Harold Coward addresses this change in this memoir of his forty-five-year career in the development of religious studies as a new academic field in Canada. He also addresses the shift from theology classes in seminaries to non-sectarian religious studies faculties of arts and humanities; the birth and growth of departments across Canada from the 1960s to the present; the contribution of McMaster University to religious studies in Canada and Coward’s Ph.D. experience there; the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria; and the future of religious studies as a truly interdisciplinary enterprise.
Coward’s retrospective, while not a history as such, documents information from his varied experience and wide network of colleagues that is essential for a future formal history of the discipline. His story is both personally engaging and richly informative about the development of the field.

These essays represent a multidisciplinary approach to the study of religion and, especially, Judaism.

Setting aside common scholarly concerns with source criticism and history of interpretation, Shimon Levy argues that in Numbers 11 the redactor has forged diverse elements into a unity. Observing that much of what is said about Second Commonwealth Judaic culture is speculative, Jack Lightstone calls for radical revision of accepted portrayals of the period. Ira Robinson's study of al-Kirkisani's effort to differentiate magic and miracle while demonstrating the rationality of belief in miracle locates his thoughts in the context of Rabbinic and Muslim treatments of the subject.

While historians of modern Judaism have acknowledged in the influence of Kant and Hegel, Rousseau, contends Michel Despland, is often overlooked; he opened the way for changes in social and religious life. In Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history Charles Davis finds a significant combining of elements from Kabbalistic and Marxist thought. Michael Oppenheim finds a common core of concerns addressed by modern Jewish philosophers: a struggle with modernity, identification with Jewish thought and values, and commitment to their Jewish communities. Gershon Hundert's "Reflections on the 'Whig' Interpretation of Jewish History" argues—vis-à-vis the Jerusalem school of Zionist historians—that the responsibility of national historians to their community can be fulfilled only by repudiating ideologies that may stand in the way of the search for truth.

Howard Joseph's survey of teh extensive literature on the Holocaust indicates the options the authors find most worthy of continued focus. Jerome Eckstein critically examines one of the few published pieces by Joseph Soloveitchik, who combines the Talmudic genius of the Lithuanian Yeshiva world with mastery of the Western intellectual tradition. B. Barry Levy's study of the Artscroll series of translations of and commentaries on biblical literature examines the assumptions and methodology of the series and the hidden agenda that emerges.

Frederick Bird's comparison of charity ethics in Judaism and Christianity draws attention to the imprint on these ethics of the formative period of each religion.

The volume will be of interest to student of the Bible, Judaism, and Christianity.

This work explores the relationship between religion, social patterns, and the perception of the character of scripture in four modes of Ancient Judaism: (1) the Jerusalem community of the fifth to fourth centuries B.C.E. (ie, the Early Second Temple Period); (2) the Judaism of the Graeco-Roman Disapora down to the end of the fourth century of the Christian Era; (3) earliest rabbinic Judaism in the second century C.E> in the land of Israel; (4) Late Antique Talmudic Rabbinism, primarily inn Babylonia, down to the sixth century of the Christian Era. Lightstone attempts not only to describe these perceptions and relationships but also to account for them, to explore why scripture should be thus perceived. His imaginative approach to the challenging descriptive and theoretical tasks is influenced by literary and form-critical methods as well as by the methods and perspectives of social anthropology and sociology of the mind.
This unique attempts at revising the perception of the character of scripture should arouse the interest of scholars and students of Ancient Judaism.

From Logos to Christos is a collection of essays in Christology written by friends and colleagues in memory of Joanne McWilliam. McWilliam was a pioneer woman in the academic study of theology, specializing in Patristic studies and internationally recognized for her work on Augustine. For countless students she was a teacher, a mentor, an inspiration. These fourteen essays are a fitting tribute to her memory.
Written by recognized North American scholars, the essays explore various aspects of Christology, inviting the reader to probe the meaning and significance of Jesus Christ for today. They address a broad range of issues, including the Christology of the Acts of Thomas, Hooker on divinization, and Christ figures in contemporary Canadian culture.
Teachers of theology and religious studies, pastors, and informed general readers will find the essays stimulating and instructive. They present the readers with considered, mature, and current scholarship. These are the questions that engaged Joanne McWilliam throughout her life, and she was happy to know that the critical dialogue would continue in this volume as friends and colleagues wrestled with Christological questions. For her, “In Jesus we come to know the compassion, the power, the wisdom, the love, and the faithfulness of God”.

The Newtonian concept of time has been changed by Einsteinian insight. Yet the Einsteinian world view might make it difficult to appreciate traditional concepts of eschatology, like heaven and hell, death and immortality, life after death and resurrection, last day and final judgments, because these expressions presuppose a pre-Einsteinian view of the universe. Since theology cannot remain unaffected by the new research in concepts of time, Eternity and Eternal Life tries to express the eschatological faith of the Church by using the time language of our age. To achieve this it provides an overview on the research in the nature of time done in geology, cosmology, physics, biology, psychology, sociology, history and philosophy and proposes a notion of time for “timely” Christology and for “timely” eschatology.

By using the singularity event as literary form, Horvath scrutinizes how Christ’s time can lead to the times of all existing realities, through death to “eternity.” This is a pioneering work, one that needs to be tested in the community of interested readers. It is a communal search for an understanding of life, death and eternal life, not only in the light of abstract ideas and cultural linguistic doctrines in the world of religions, but also in the light of science and especially of a person as the horizon of understanding for both time and eternity. Christ as the eschatological union of time and eternity becomes the work’s unifying focus and its paradigm, which solves recognized problems and opens our minds to new ones.

Biblical tradition asserts that the revelation of God to Moses in the burning bush involved also a declaration of the divine name, the Tet (represented by the letters Y, H, W, H), and its meaning. There are indications that the divine name was known prior to the time of Moses, although ultimate questions of origin and precise meaning are shrouded in obscurity. IN fact, even the exact pronunciation of the name (usually pronounced YAHWEH) is by no means certain.


The author of The Divine Name in the Bible surveys the immense literature on this subject, and traces the use of various names for deity in Israel from patriarchal times onwards, with special attention to the significance of the Tetragrammaton, which in course of time, became the name by which the God of Israel was known. Various aspects of the theological meaning of the name in the Old Testament writings are explored. The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Jewish Talmudic literature, and later mystical writings are also examined. The translators of the Old Testament into Greek used Kyrios as the equivalent for YHWH—with implications for the New Testament understanding of the person of Jesus Christ, reflected also in subsequent Christological formulations.

George Lindbeck once characterized postliberalism, which received its initial structure from his book The Nature of Doctrine, as an attempt to recover pre-modern scriptural interpretation in contemporary form. In Lord, Giver of Life: Toward a Pneumatological Complement to George Lindbeck’s Theory of Doctrine, Jane Barter Moulaison explores the success of that effort through a close examination of Lindbeck’s own theological contributions. Taking seriously the ecumenical promises of Lindbeck’s writing (he was instrumental in advancing Lutheran and Roman Catholic dialogue throughout the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s), this book brings Lindbeck’s famous cultural-linguistic model of religion into dialogue with Christianity’s theological forbearers: specifically, the Eastern progenitors of orthodox confession.
This constellation of theological voices—Lindbeck, his supporters and detractors, along with patristic theologians—is meant not only to test the viability of a religious model but, more importantly, to advance Lindbeck’s project in ways that have not yet been pursued. Among the critical questions engaged are: to what degree can the excesses of modern theology be overcome by a return to premodern sources? What are the implications of a constructive pneumatology to the cultural-linguistic model? Does this complement address the critiques of postliberalism, particularly those that consider the role of human agency, rationality, and autonomy?
While Lindbeck recovers significant and forgotten elements of pre-modern biblical interpretation, the very formalism of his project sometimes obscures the theological underpinnings of premodern insights and practices. Through specific attention to Eastern Trinitarian theologies of the fourth century, this book exposes a rather persistent oversight within Lindbeck’s recovery: namely, that alongside the regulative function of canon and doctrine, early biblical interpretation recognizes the role of the Holy Spirit in the appropriation of scripture, in the mission of the church, and in the defence of the gospel within the context of an unbelieving world. This book attends to these insights from the early churchs doctrine of the Holy Spirit in appreciative service to the cultural-linguistic model of religion.

The result of a dialogue between poets and scholars on the meaning and making of the sacred, this book endeavours to determine how the sacred emerges in sacred script as well as in poetic discourse. It ranges through scholarship in areas as apparently disparate as postmodernism and Buddhism. The perspectives developed are various and without closure, locating the sacred in modes as diverse as patristic traditions, feminist retranslations of biblical texts, and oral and written versions of documents from the world’s religions. The essays cohere in their preoccupation with the crucial role language plays in the creation of the sacred, particularly in the relation that language bears to silence. In their interplay, language does not silence silence by, rather, calls the other as sacred into articulate existence.

This book explores the intersection in contemporary Western culture of Catholic sexual theology and adolescent female developmental and sexual experiences. The voices of adolescent females, so long silent in sexual theologies, are given privilege here in the articulation of a normative theology.
Applying a feminist natural law framework, the book engages both theoretical scholarship and practical evidence from psychological and other social sciences to inform sexual theology in the Catholic tradition. Attending to gendered, developmental, and social contexts, Doris Kieser explores adolescent females’ experiences of puberty, menarche, various sexual activities, communities of support, sexual desire, and the pleasure and danger these realities reap. She critically explores historical and traditional sexual theologies and prevailing social patriarchal and androcentric sexual attitudes through a feminist lens.
The author’s attention to the voices of girls and women, and her aim to see their sexual flourishing in particular and diverse social contexts, yields a theology mindful of the rich complexities of female sexual desire, pleasure, and well-being. The result is an integrated sexual theology that grapples with the Catholic theological tradition, feminist theory and theology, and the embodied experiences of females. For anyone who is invested in the lives and well-being of adolescent females, this work uncovers both barriers and boons to their sexual flourishing.

In September of 1976 a group of some fifty scholars and practising mystics gathered at the University of Calgary. The chief objective of the Conference was to ponder and assess the nature of mysticism in its Eastern, Western and North American Indian forms. The method the Conference followed was somewhat unusual in that it aimed at a dialogue between the practising mystics and the scholars.

What this book presents to the reader is not the outcome of the dialogue, but the personal statements and papers from which the dialogue began. Of course there is a degree to which the dialogue is already present, in that the papers of the scholars were written with the statements of the mystics in hand. Among some of the philosophers present, a set of more formal comments on each others presentations was recorded and these have been included.

This book uncovers an early collection of sayings, called N, that are ascribed to Jesus and are similar to those found in the Gospel of Thomas and in Q, a document believed to be a common source, with Mark, for Matthew and Luke. In the process, the book sheds light on the literary methods of Mark and Thomas. A literary comparison of the texts of the sayings of Jesus that appear in both Mark and Thomas shows that each adapted an earlier collection for his own purpose. Neither Mark nor Thomas consistently gives the original or earliest form of the shared sayings; hence, Horman states, each used and adapted an earlier source. Close verbal parallels between the versions in Mark and Thomas show that the source was written in Greek. Horman’s conclusion is that this common source is N.
This proposal is new, and has implications for life of Jesus research. Previous research on sayings attributed to Jesus has treated Thomas in one of two ways: either as an independent stream of Jesus sayings written without knowledge of the New Testament Gospels and or as a later piece of pseudo-Scripture that uses the New Testament as source. This book rejects both views.

What makes the Book of Revelation so hard to understand?
How does the Book of Revelation fit into Judaism and the beginning of
Christianity?
John W. Marshall proposes a radical reinterpretation of the Book of Revelation of John, viewing it as a document of the Jewish diaspora during the Judean War. He contends that categorizing the Book as "Christian" has been an impediment in interpreting the Apocalypse. By suspending that category, solutions to several persistent problems in contemporary exegesis of the Apocalypse are facilitated. The author thus undertakes a rereading of the Book of Revelation that does not merely enumerate elements of a Jewish "background" but understands the Book of Revelation as an integral whole and a thoroughly Jewish text.
Marshall carefully scrutinizes the problems that plague contemporary interpretations of the Book of Revelation, and how the category of "Christian" relates to such problems. He employs the works of Mieke Bal, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Jean Fran‡ois Lyotard, and Jonathan Z. Smith as theoretical resources. In the second half of his study, he provides detailed descriptions of the social and cultural context of the diaspora during the Judean War, and constructive rereadings of four key text complexes.
The result is a portrait of the Apocalypse of John that envisions the document as deeply invested in the Judaism of its time, pursuing rhetorical objectives that are not defined by the issues that scholars use to differentiate Judaism from Christianity.

In retrospect it is difficult to accept that Western democracies have implicitly supported, or at least tolerated, the legalized system of white supremacy in South Africa known as apartheid. Renate Pratt’s new book, In Good Faith, explains why the Christian churches were among the first to publicly protest, and why they provided such cogent and determined international support for the struggle against apartheid.

The Taskforce on the Churches and Corporate Responsibility is a coalition of Christian churches that for nearly twenty years was one of Canada’s leading anti-apartheid advocates. As the first co-ordinator of this Taskforce, Renate Pratt was at the centre of the early anti-apartheid initiatives in Canada and consequently is able to supply a clear and accurate view.

The book traces the history of exchanges between the Taskforce and successive ministers and senior civil servants of the Department of External Affairs. It details the reluctant and weak responses offered by the Canadian government and business community right up to the time of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.

In Good Faith will be of particular interest to Canadian Christians concerned with ecumenical co-operation and with the social and political dimensions of their faith. Equally, it will appeal to those interested in the impact of public interest organizations on public policy or the relationship between politics and business interests.

What is “theological method”? Can there be more than one method? If so, how do you choose between them? How does method relate to experience?
Would experience affect your choice of method and method affect experience?
Abdul-Masih offers a three-part proposition. The first is that theological method is influenced by theological reasoning. That is, beliefs about the doctrines of revelation and God’s activity will shape one’s attitude toward experience. Your convictions provide a broad definition of “experience,” and determine how it is to be used.
Her second proposition is that one’s attitude toward experience and its use will, in turn, shape subsequent theology. In other words, the relationship between theological method and subsequent theological discourse is circular—or, more accurately, a spiral.
Her third proposition is that “experience” is itself contextual, and therefore there is no right or wrong choice but rather a plurality of methods.
To expand upon and illustrate her claim, Abdul-Masih analyzes, throughout her book, the methods of Edward Schillebeeckx and Hans Frei, who represent the tension in contemporary theology surrounding the issue of experience.
Edward Schillebeeckx and Hans Frei: A Conversation on Method and Christology is a book that will challenge and enlighten those who wish to expand their understanding of theological methodology.

Reinhold Niebuhr was a twentieth-century American theologian who was known for his commentary on public affairs. One of his most influential ideas was the relating of his Christian faith to realism rather than idealism in foreign affairs. His perspective influenced many liberals and is enjoying a resurgence today; most recently Barack Obama has acknowledged Niebuhr’s importance to his own thinking.
In this book, Kenneth Hamilton makes a claim that no other work on Niebuhr has made—that Niebuhr’s chief and abiding preoccupation throughout his long career was the nature of humankind. Hamilton engages in a close reading of Niebuhr’s entire oeuvre through this lens. He argues that this preoccupation remained consistent throughout Niebuhr’s writings, and that through his doctrine of humankind one gets a full sense of Niebuhr the theologian. Hamilton exposes not only the internal consistency of Niebuhr’s project but also its aporia. Although Niebuhr’s influence perhaps peaked in the mid-twentieth century, enthusiasm for his approach to religion and politics has never waned from the North American public theology, and this work remains relevant today.
Although Hamilton wrote this thesis in the mid-1960s it is published here for the first time. Jane Barter Moulaison, in her editorial gloss and introduction, demonstrates the abiding significance of Hamilton’s work to the study of Niebuhr by bringing it into conversation with subsequent writings on Niebuhr, particularly as he is re-appropriated by twenty-first-century American theology.

Luther and the Radicals, written by a Mennonite scholar, seeks to understand the reasons for the clash between Luther and the Anabaptist radical religious reformists.

In their zeal to tell the true story of sixteenth-century radicalism, some sympathizers of the Anabaptist movement have portrayed the once maligned individuals and groups as innocent, pious people who suffered cruel persecution at the hands of the wicked state-churchmen. Their side of the story is thus often as one-sided as was the story of the enemies of Anabaptism. This book keeps Luther, however, in a central position, exploring the issues that led to the Reformer’s attitude toward the radicals and analyzing the principles that were at stake in his struggle with the dissident groups.

Mysticism and Eastern Religions, the fourth volume in the Collected Works and the third on Nightingale’s religion, begins with the publication for the first time of Florence Nightingale’s Notes on Devotional Authors of the Middle Ages, translations from and comments on the medieval (and some later) mystics who nourished her own life of faith. Next come her annotations of and comments on the Imitation of Christ, a book to which she turned in times of distress. The largest part of the volume consists of her Letters from Egypt, written 1849-50, a significant period in her own intellectual and spiritual development. Here we provide (for the first time) complete publication and include (also for the first time) material preparatory for the trip and reflections on it over the later years. The last section reports Nightingale’s correspondence and journal notes on Eastern religions, mainly Hinduism.
Currently, Volumes 1 to 11 are available in e-book version by subscription or from university and college libraries through the following vendors: Canadian Electronic Library, Ebrary, MyiLibrary, and Netlibrary.

During that colloquium the Karl Barth Society of North America was inaugurated. Its aim, far from being a personality-cult of Karl Barth, is to encourage a critical and constructive theology through the exploration of his work. It is envisaged that the assistance given to the Karl Barth Stiftung in Europe in its purpose to collect and preserve all literature by and about Karl Barth, the publication of a complete edition of his works together with the establishment on this Continent of a similar collection will make available for theological research materials that will adequately meet the proposed aim. Both the academic and the pastoral areas of theology are meant to benefit from the endeavours of this Society.

—from the Introduction by Martin Rumscheidt

In Canadian universities in the early 1960s, no courses were offered on Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam. Only the study of Christianity was available, usually in a theology program in a church college or seminary. Today almost every university in North America has a religious studies department that offers courses on Western and Eastern religions as well as religion in general. Harold Coward addresses this change in this memoir of his forty-five-year career in the development of religious studies as a new academic field in Canada. He also addresses the shift from theology classes in seminaries to non-sectarian religious studies faculties of arts and humanities; the birth and growth of departments across Canada from the 1960s to the present; the contribution of McMaster University to religious studies in Canada and Coward’s Ph.D. experience there; the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria; and the future of religious studies as a truly interdisciplinary enterprise.
Coward’s retrospective, while not a history as such, documents information from his varied experience and wide network of colleagues that is essential for a future formal history of the discipline. His story is both personally engaging and richly informative about the development of the field.

In early Christianity, many people were inspired to write gospels, treatises, letters, and stories celebrating the new faith, but not all of these writings are found in the New Testament. One such story from an unknown author is the Coptic, gnostic Apocalypse of Paul, a tale of the apostle Paul’s ascent to the heavens that was lost for millennia and rediscovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945. In Flora Tells a Story, Michael Kaler discusses the Apocalypse of Paul and how it was shaped by its literary environment.
The book takes a behind the scenes look at early Christian literary production, analyzing the ways in which various literary traditions—such as apocalyptic writings, gnostic thought, and understandings of Paul—influenced the author of the Apocalypse of Paul and helped to shape the text. It also includes a new annotated English translation of the Apocalypse of Paul and a fictional account of how it might have come to be written.
This work is the most in-depth study of the Apocalypse of Paul to date and the only full-length discussion of it in English. It provides a detailed but accessible account of the literary environment in which its author worked and integrates this little-known work into the broader stream of early Christian writings. This book will be of interest to specialists in Nag Hammadi and gnostic studies and early Christian literature, but will also appeal to the general reader interested in Christianity, mysticism, and gnosticism.

The role and function of law in religious communities in the Roman period—especially in Judaism—has been a key issue among scholars in recent years. This thought-provoking work is the first full-scale attempt to write a historical assessment of the scholarly debate concerning this question, focussing on two closely related religious communities, Judaism and Christianity. By juxtaposing the two religions, a clearer understanding of the developments with respect to torah and nomos in Judaism and early Christianity emerges.
This insightful work, placing emphasis on the major figures and both the scholarly lines of development and the appropriate lines for future research, will set the debate in a clearer and more and succinct manner. It will serve as a critical point of reference for further discussion.

This Spot of Ground: Spiritual Baptists in Toronto represents the first detailed exploration of an African-Caribbean religion in the context of contemporary migration to Canada. Toronto is home to Canadas largest black population, a significant portion of which comprises Caribbean migrants and their descendants.
This book shows how the development of the Spiritual Baptist religion in Canada has been shaped by the immigration experiences of church members, the large majority of whom are women, and it examines the ways in which religious experiences have mediated the members’ experiences of migration and everyday life in Canada. This Spot of Ground is based on a critical ethnography, with in-depth interviews and participant observations of church services and other ritual activities, including baptism and pilgrimage and field research in Trinidad that explores the transnational linkages with Spiritual Baptists there. The book addresses theoretical and methodological issues also, including the development of perspectives suitable for examining diasporic African religious and cultural expressions characterized by transnational migration, an emphasis on oral tradition as the repository of cultural history, and linguistic and cultural hybridity.
This Spot of Ground contributes new information to the study of Caribbean religion and culture in the diaspora, providing a detailed examination of the significance of religion in the immigration process and identity and community formations of Caribbean people in Canada.

The four essays in this volume present an overview of current issues in studies of the book of Job. The opening essay, by Williams, deals with major aspects of Joban research: new commentaries, Near Eastern backgrounds, textual criticism, language and vocabulary, literary criticism, dating problems, and theological ideas. The remaining essays focus on specifics from within Williams’ overview. Craigie discusses the impact of Ugaritic language and literature on studies of Job. Cox is concerned with textual criticism of Job, primarily with regard to the Septuagint. And, in the final essay, Aufrecht illustrates the importance of Aramaic in biblical studies in general and studies of Job in particular.

In this re–examination of the roots of the relationship between religion and science, David Hawkin focuses on the concept of autonomy as he explores the question: Is there continuity and compatibility between the autonomy that underlies Christian faith and the role of individual freedom in the technological age?

What makes this work particularly valuable is Professor Hawkin’s review of the theological, philosophical, political, psychological, and sociological works that have formed our ideas of the nature of both Christianity and modernity — Reimarus, Strauss, Schweitzer, and Bultmann on the quest for the historical Jesus; Bauer and Turner on Christian faith and practice; Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Darwin, Freud, and Marx on our historicity; Gogarten, Cox, and Bonhoeffer who affirm our autonomy in the technological process; Ellul and George who deny it.

A careful analysis of Luther’s thought in the context of his age, this volume examines Luther’s links with later medieval Thomism. The study is organized on the theme of theological anthropology—the state of humans within a theological system. In the course of the discussion, Janz studies parallels and divergences between the thought of Luther and the thought of Thomas Aquinas, Peter Lombard, John Capreolus, Henry of Gorkum, Conrad Koellin, Karlstadt, and Cajetan. Janz suggests that at some crucial points late medieval Thomist teaching misrepresents the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. This, compounding Luther’s lack of direct knowledge of Thomas, helps to explain Luther’s opposition not only to his own nominalist teachers but to the scholastics generally.

Students of late medieval and Reformation theology will find the wealth of primary citation and the detailed readings of the sources invaluable guides to the issues. Students of religion interested in contemporary problems in theological anthropology, in the natural capacity of humanity for good and evil, for example, will find the historical Christian perspective of great interest.

Can archaeological remains be made to “speak” when brought into conjunction with texts? Can written remains, on stone or papyrus, shed light on the parables of Jesus, or on the Jewish view of afterlife? What are the limits to the use of artifactual data, and when is the value overstated? Text and Artifact addresses the complex and intriguing issue of how primary religious texts from the ancient Mediterranean world are illuminated by, and in turn illuminate, the ever-increasing amount of artifactual evidence available from the surrounding world.
The book honours Peter Richardson, and the first two chapters offer appreciations of this scholarship and teaching. The remaining chapters focus on early Christianity, late-antique Judaism and topics germane to the Roman world at large. Many of the essays relate to features of Jewish life — the epigraphic evidence for gentile converts to Judaism or for Jewish defectors, ancient accounts of the Essenes or of the siege of Masada, and the material context of the first great rabbinic work, the Mishnah. Other essays connect early Christian texts with the social and cultural realia of their day — modes of travel, notions of gender, patronage and benefaction, the relation of tenants and owners — or reflect on the aesthetics of Christian architecture and the relation between building and ritual in Constantinian churches. One study relates the writing of the famous novelist Apuleius to a household mithraeum in Ostia, while another explores the changing appropriation of religious realia as the Roman world became Christian.
These wide-ranging and original studies demonstrate clearly that texts and artifacts can be mutually supportive. Equally, they point to ways in which artifacts, no less than texts, are inherently ambiguous and teach us to be cautious in our conclusions.

Originally developed for use in introductory courses on Eastern religious traditions, this popular anthology offers a selection of readings from primary texts of India, China, and Japan.
The selections are arranged both chronologically and thematically within religious traditions and include readings from Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism (including Tibetan Buddhism), Sikhism, Early Chinese thought, Confuciansiim, Taoism, Mao Tse Tung, Shintoism, and Japan’s new religions (Tenrikyo and Sokka Gakkai). Throughout the anthology, an effort has been made to present more than the usual short excerpts. As much as possible larger excerpts have been included to give students a better sense of significant developments within traditions. As well, doctrinal elements have been combined with story to make these traditions more than museum pieces for students.
For the second edition, the editors have added excerpts and have written introductions that provide a more comprehensive context for the readings. A section on Chan / Zen and excerpts from the writings of Ge Hong, representing the central concerns of Daoism, are included. A section on modern China includes a poem written by Mao, exhibiting his Daoist sensibilities. A revised chapter on Buddhism presents the voices of modern Buddhist writers, including the Dalai Lama. Throughtout the volume, reflections on the role of women in Eastern religions, as well as women’s voices themselves, are added.

China Interrupted is the story of the richly interwoven lives of Canadian missionaries and their China-born children (mishkids), whose lives and mission were irreversibly altered by their internment as “enemy aliens” of Japan from 1941 to 1945.
Over three hundred Canadians were among the 13,000 civilians interned by the Japanese in China. China Interrupted explores the experiences of a small community of Canadian missionaries who worked in Japanese-occupied China and were profoundly affected by Canada’s entry into the Pacific War. It critically examines the fading years of the missionary movement, beginning with the perspective of Betty Gale and other mishkid nurses whose childhood socialization in China, decision to return during wartime, choice to stay in occupied regions against consular advice, and response to four years of internment reflect the resilience, fragility, and eventual demise of the China missions as a whole.
China Interrupted provides insight into the many ways in which health care efforts in wartime China extended out of the tight-knit missionary community that had been established there decades earlier. Urging readers past a thesis of missions as a tool of imperialism, it offers a more nuanced way of thinking about the relationships among people, institutions, and nations during one of the most important intercultural experiments in Canada’s history.

Barbara Paleczny, herself a daughter of garment workers, tugs at the threads of homeworking in the garment industry to reveal a low-wage strategy that rends the fabric of social integrity and exposes global trends. The resurgence of sweatshops affects the working poor in both first- and third-world countries.
Paleczny assesses the responsibility of transnational retailers for unacceptable wages and working conditions and describes historic shifts in the global context of garment production. After exploring systemic causes of poverty, relevant policy setting, and ethical foundations, Paleczny introduces both short- and long-range possibilities for transformation, emphasizing the collaborative nature of work.
Clothed in Integrity draws on feminist studies, alternative economics, and the ethical foundations proposed by Bernard Lonergan to fashion a constructive work in which Paleczny connects issues of societal meanings and values, moral imperatives, and economic feasibility. With candour, she shares personal stories of engagement in coalition work. Those who dwell on this text will find information, challenges, and inspiration to nurture their reflection, research, dialogue, and action.

John Henry Newman's writings in theology, apologetics, history, poetry, and educational theory, among other fields, made him one of the most controversial as well as influential modern Christian thinkers. Central to his religious vision was his innovative and complex "mental philosophy," first sketched out at Oxford during his Anglican years and developed in its most detailed form in his celebrated Grammar of Assent. In The Mental Philosophy of John Henry Newman, Jay Newman (no relation) presents a careful scrutiny of John Henry Newman's phenomenology of belief and epistemology in the context of the nineteenth-century cleric's major work. He departs from traditional historical and technological approaches to Newman's work on belief and critically examines Newman's contribution in this area from the standpoint of contemporary analytical philosophy.

The study examines the sources, aims, and implications of Newman's philosophical project. While it draws attention to the positive value of Newman's original approach, it also explores the weaknesses and dangers of Newman's main phenomenological and epistemological theories. Jay Newman not only makes a significant original contribution to the field of Newman studies but also provides us with a guide to some of the problems and confusions of the Grammar of Assent.

A study of modern Muslim ethics, focused upon the lives and writings of Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Mawlana Mawdudi, this book  sheds light upon the modern ethical problems of contemporary Islam.

Sayyid Ahmad Khan, often called a liberal, a modernist, or an acculturationist, represents the "liberal" trend of Sunni Muslim ethics. Khan's approach borrows much from reason, but, for Khan, reason and revelation are not in conflict. Reason guides the interpretation of Islam when revelation is insufficient. In contrast, Mawlana Mawdudi's fundamentalism is, at least in part, anti-rational; it depends upon revelation (as it comes to one man in particular) and is very autocratic.

McDonough is concerned with Khan and Mawdudi, both writers within the Indo-Pakistan Muslim tradition. Their conflicting views, their differing interpretations of ethics that suit Islam in the contemporary world, exemplify the difficulties and turmoil faced by Muslims the world over. For these men, modernity has not spelled the end of Islam; yet each has found a different way of relating Islam to the present and the future in faithfulness to traditional Islam.

This book will be of interest to students of contemporary Islam, as well as to those interested in questions of comparative ethics, for the liberal/fundamentalist conflicts outlined in this book are analogous to manifestations of the same dichotomy in all world religions.

Spirituality and Health: Multidisciplinary Explorations examines the relationship between health/well-being and spirituality. Chap-lains and pastoral counsellors offer evidence-based research on the importance of spirituality in holistic health care, and practitioners in the fields of occupational therapy, clinical psychology, nursing, and oncology share how spirituality enters into their healing practices. Unique for its diversity, this collection explores the relationship between biomedical, psychological, and spiritual points of view about health and healing.

One of the most widely read German authors in the world, Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. After his death, his novels enjoyed a revival of popularity, becoming a staple of popular religion and spirituality in Europe and North America.
Veneration and Revolt: Hermann Hesse and Swabian Pietism is the first comprehensive study of the impact of German Pietism (the religion of Hesse’s family and native Swabia) on Hesse’s life and literature. Hesse’s literature bears witness to a lifelong conversation with his religious heritage despite that in adolescence he rejected his family’s expectation that he become a theologian, cleric, and missionary.
Hesse’s Pietist upbringing and broader Swabian heritage contributed to his moral and political views, his pacifism and internationalism, the confessional and autobiographical style of his literature, his romantic mysticism, his suspicion of bourgeois culture, his ecumenical outlook, and, in an era scarred by two world wars, his hopes for the future. Veneration and Revolt offers a unique perspective on the life and works of one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers.

The essays in this volume deal with the relationship between living religious traditions in Canada and the fabric of Canadian society. Canada is a pluralistic society, ethnically and religiously. How are these two pluralisms related? Their connection is intimate, but never simple. For many years there could plausibly have been said to be a dominant Anglo-Canadian Protestant tradition, with other faiths and denominations being associated primarily with ethnic minorities. No doubt this would always have been a simplistic understanding, but today, as Canadian culture is increasing secularized, it is religion itself that the majority sees as a minority concern. Ethnic and religious loyalties pull together against a secular assimilation. Such a change leaves the “establishment” denominations with an unwanted identity crisis of their own, not the least part of which is due to an unfamiliar awareness of their own ethnic roots and histories.

Canadian Methodist women, like women of all religious traditions, have expressed their faith in accordance with their denominational heritage. Canadian Methodist Women, 1766-1925: Marys, Marthas, Mothers in Israel analyzes the spiritual life and the varied activities of women whose faith helped shape the life of the Methodist Church and of Canadian society from the latter half of the eighteenth century until church union in 1925.
Based on extensive readings of periodicals, biographies, autobiographies, and the records of many women’s groups across Canada, as well as early histories of Methodism, Marilyn Färdig Whiteley tells the story of ordinary women who provided hospitality for itinerant preachers, taught Sunday school, played the melodeon, selected and supported women missionaries, and taught sewing to immigrant girls, thus expressing their faith according to their opportunities. In performing these tasks they sometimes expanded women’s roles well beyond their initial boundaries.
Focusing on religious practices, Canadian Methodist Women, 1766-1925 provides a broad perspective on the Methodist movement that helped shape nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Canadian society. The use and interpretation of many new or little-used sources will interest those wishing to learn more about the history of women in religion and in Canadian society.

Why, Salmond asks, would nineteenth-century Hindus who come from an iconic religious tradition voice a kind of invective one might expect from Hebrew prophets, Muslim iconoclasts, or Calvinists?
Rammohun was a wealthy Bengali, intimately associated with the British Raj and familiar with European languages, religion, and currents of thought. Dayananda was an itinerant Gujarati ascetic who did not speak English and was not integrated into the culture of the colonizers. Salmond’s examination of Dayananda after Rammohun complicates the easy assumption that nineteenth-century Hindu iconoclasm is simply a case of borrowing an attitude from Muslim or Protestant traditions.
Salmond examines the origins of these reformers’ ideas by considering the process of diffusion and independent invention—that is, whether ideas are borrowed from other cultures, or arise spontaneously and without influence from external sources. Examining their writings from multiple perspectives, Salmond suggests that Hindu iconoclasm was a complex movement whose attitudes may have arisen from independent invention and were then reinforced by diffusion.
Although idolatry became the symbolic marker of their reformist programs, Rammohun’s and Dayananda’s agendas were broader than the elimination of image-worship. These Hindu reformers perceived a link between image-rejection in religion and the unification and modernization of society, part of a process that Max Weber called the “disenchantment of the world.” Focusing on idolatry in nineteenth-century India, Hindu Iconoclasts investigates the encounter of civilizations, an encounter that continues to resonate today.

The period since the close of World War II has been agonizingly introspective—not least because of the pain of reassessing Christianity’s attitude to Judaism. The early Christian materials have often been examined to assess their role in the long-standing negative attitude of Christians to Jews. The motivation for the early church’s sometimes harsh attitude was partly theological—it needed to define itself over against its parent—and partly sociological—it needed to make clear the line that divided the fledgling group of Christian believers fromt he group with which it was most likely to be confused. This collection of studies emphasizes the context and history of early Christianity in reconsidering many of the classic passages that have contributed to the development of anti-Judaism in Christianity. The volume opens with an essay that clearly delineates the state of the question of anti-Judaism in early Christianity. Then follow discussions of specific passages in the writings of Paul as well as the Gospels.

John Locke is often thought of as one of the founders of the Enlightenment, a movement that sought to do away with the Bible and religion and replace them with scientific realism. But Locke was extremely interested in the Bible, and he was engaged by biblical theology and religion throughout his life. In this new book, K.I. Parker considers Locke’s interest in Scripture and how that interest is articulated in the development of his political philosophy.

Parker shows that Locke’s liberalism is inspired by his religious vision and, particularly, his distinctive understanding of the early chapters of the book of Genesis. Unlike Sir Robert Filmer, who understood the Bible to justify social hierarchies (i.e., the divine right of the king, the first-born son’s rights over other siblings, and the “natural” subservience of women to men), Locke understood from the Bible that humans are in a natural state of freedom and equality to each other. The biblical debate between Filmer and Locke furnishes scholars with a better understanding of Lockes political views as presented in his Two Treatises.

The Biblical Politics of John Locke demonstrates the impact of the Bible on one of the most influential thinkers of the seventeenth century, and provides an original context in which to situate the debate concerning the origins of early modern political thought.

Weaving Relationships tells the remarkable, little-known story of a movement that transcends barriers of geography, language, culture, and economic disparity.
The story begins in the early 1980s, when 200,000 Maya men, women, and children crossed the Guatemalan border into Mexico, fleeing genocide by the Guatemalan army and seeking refuge. A decade later, many of the refugees returned to their homeland along with 140 Canadians, members of “Project Accompaniment”. The Canadians were there, by their side, to provide companionship and, more significantly, as an act of solidarity.
Weaving Relationships describes the historical roots of this solidarity focusing on the Maya in Guatemala. It relates the story of “Project Accompaniment” and two of its founders in Canada, the Christian Task Force on Central America and the Maritimes-Guatemala “Breaking the Silence” Network. It reveals solidarity’s impact on the Canadians and Guatemalans whose lives have been changed by the experience of relationships across borders. It presents solidarity not as a work of charity apart from or “for” them but as a bond of mutuality, of friendship and common struggle with those who are marginalized, excluded, and impoverished in this world.
This book speaks of a spirituality based on community and justice, and challenges the church to move beyond its preoccupation with its own survival to solidarity with those who are suffering. It is a book about hope in the face of death and despair.

During the upheavals of the Reformation, one of the most significant of the radical Protestant movements emerged — that of the Anabaptist movement. Profiles of Anabaptist Women provides lively, well-researched profiles of the courageous women who chose to risk prosecution and martyrdom to pursue this unsanctioned religion — a religion that, unlike the established religions of the day, initially offered them opportunity and encouragement to proselytize.

Derived from sixteenth-century government records and court testimonies, hymns, songs and poems, these profiles provide a panorama of life and faith experiences of women from Switzerland, Germany, Holland and Austria.

These personal stories of courage, faith, commitment and resourcefulness interweave women’s lives into the greater milieu, relating them to the dominant male context and the socio-political background of the Reformation. Taken together, these sketches will give readers an appreciation for the central role played by Anabaptist women in the emergence and persistence of this radical branch of Protestantism.

Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity discusses the diverse cultural destinies of early Christianity, early Judaism, and other ancient religious groups as a question of social rivalry.
The book is divided into three main sections. The first section debates the degree to which the category of rivalry adequately names the issue(s) that must be addressed when comparing and contrasting the social “success” of different religious groups in antiquity. The second is a critical assessment of the common modern category of “mission” to describe the inner dynamic of such a process; it discusses the early Christian apostle Paul, the early Jewish historian Josephus, and ancient Mithraism. The third section of the book is devoted to “the rise of Christianity,” primarily in response to the similarly titled work of the American sociologist of religion Rodney Stark.
While it is not clear that any of these groups imagined its own success necessarily entailing the elimination of others, it does seem that early Christianity had certain habits, both of speech and practice, which made it particularly apt to succeed (in) the Roman Empire.

The figure of Jesus has fascinated Western civilization for centuries. As the year 2000 approaches, eliciting connections with Jesus’ birth and return, excitement grows — as does the number of studies about Jesus. Cutting through this mass of material, Whose Historical Jesus? provides a collection of penetrating, jargon-free, intelligently organized essays that convey well both the centrality and the complexity of deciphering the historical Jesus.
Contributors include such eminent scholars as John Dominic Crossan, Burton L. Mack, Seán Freyne and Peter Richardson. Essays range from traditional to modern and postmodern and address both recent and enduring concerns. Introductions and reflections augment these lucid essays, provide context and help the reader focus on the issues at stake. Whose Historical Jesus? will be of interest to all who wish to understand the current controversies and historical debates, who want insightful critiques of those views or who would like guidance on the direction of future studies.

This volume, one in a series of books examining religious rivalries, focuses in detail on the religious dimension of life in two particular Roman cities: Sardis and Smyrna. The essays explore the relationships and rivalries among Jews, Christians, and various Greco-Roman religious groups from the second century bce to the fourth century ce.
The thirteen contributors, including seasoned scholars and promising newcomers, bring fresh perspectives on religious life in antiquity. They draw upon a wide range of archaeological, epigraphic, and literary data to investigate the complex web of relationships that existed among the religious groups of these two cities—from coexistence and cooperation to competition and conflict. To the extent that the essays investigate how religious groups are shaped by their urban settings, the book also offers insights into the material urban realities of the Roman Empire.
Investigating two cities together in one volume highlights similarities and differences in the interaction of religious groups in each location. The specific focus on Sardis and Smyrna is broadened through an investigation of methodological issues involved in the study of the interaction of urban-based religious groups in antiquity. The volume will be of particular interest to scholars and advanced students in Biblical Studies, Classical Studies, and Archaeology.

Most Ontario universities were established by Christian denominations; a Christian ethos was assumed and pervasive, and students were required to take courses designed to teach and inculcate religion. This insightful and comprehensive study demonstrates how, as Ontario society became secularized and pluralistic, so too did universities. Today, religion is again studies in university classrooms but as “religious studies,” a relatively new field that reflects the religiously pluralistic nature of Ontario and the world-wide explosion of knowledge.
This authoritative volume will be of interest to students of religion in and outside academic circles, to adminstratots of academic institutions and granting agencies and to persons wanting to know more about the social and cultural changes that have transformed Ontario and Canadian society.

The education provided by Canada’s faith-based schools is a subject of public, political, and scholarly controversy. As the population becomes more religiously diverse, the continued establishment and support of faith-based schools has reignited debates about whether they should be funded publicly and to what extent they threaten social cohesion.
These discussions tend to occur without considering a fundamental question: How do faith-based schools envision and enact their educational missions? Discipline, Devotion, and Dissent offers responses to that question by examining a selection of Canada’s Jewish, Catholic, and Islamic schools. The daily reality of these schools is illuminated through essays that address the aims and practices that characterize these schools, how they prepare their students to become citizens of a multicultural Canada, and how they respond to dissent in the classroom.
The essays in this book reveal that Canada’s faith-based schools sometimes succeed and sometimes struggle in bridging the demands of the faith and the need to create participating citizens of a multicultural society. Discussion surrounding faith-based schools in Canada would be enriched by a better understanding of the aims and practices of these schools, and this book provides a gateway to the subject.

A history of Chinese immigrants encounter with Canadian Protestant missionaries, “His Dominion” and the “Yellow Peril”: Protestant Missions to Chinese Immigrants in Canada, 1859-1967, analyzes the evangelizing activities of missionaries and the role of religion in helping Chinese immigrants affirm their ethnic identity in a climate of cultural conflict.
Jiwu Wang argues that, by working toward a vision of Canada that espoused Anglo-Saxon Protestant values, missionaries inevitably reinforced popular cultural stereotypes about the Chinese and widened the gap between Chinese and Canadian communities. Those immigrants who did embrace the Christian faith felt isolated from their community and their old way of life, but they were still not accepted by mainstream society. Although the missionaries’ goal was to assimilate the Chinese into Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture, it was Chinese religion and cultural values that helped the immigrants maintain their identity and served to protect them from the intrusion of the Protestant missions.
Wang documents the methods used by the missionaries and the responses from the Chinese community, noting the shift in approach that took place in the 1920s, when the clergy began to preach respect for Chinese ways and sought to welcome them into Protestant-Canadian life. Although in the early days of the missions, Chinese Canadians rejected the evangelizing to take what education they could from the missionaries, as time went on and prejudice lessened, they embraced the Christian faith as a way to gain acceptance as Canadians.

“Every time we raise our voices, we hear echoes.” Jo-Anne Elder, from the Foreword
Through short stories, journal entries and poetry, the women in Voices and Echoes explore the changing landscape of their spiritual lives. Experienced writers such as Lorna Crozier, Di Brandt and Ann Copeland, as well as strong new voices, appear to speak to each other as they draw from a wealth of personal resources to find a way to face life’s questions and discover meaning in their lives.
There is something familiar about these stories and poems — they echo those we’ve heard before and those we’ve half forgotten. Whether they search for a voice in a world where men monopolize or journey into painful memories to free the self from the past, they do not despair, they do not end. Individual entries become the whole story — an unending story of rebirth and reaffirmation.
The book begins with an illuminating foreword that introduces readers to the cultural and philosophical background of many of the stories, and concludes with the reflections of scholars, writers and artists that are intended to provoke further discussion.

The second volume in this two-volume work studying the initial developments of anti-Judaism within the church examines the evolution of the Christian faith in its social context as revealed by evidence such as early patristic and rabbinic writings and archaeological findings.

The Bible has always been vital to Jewish religious life, and it has been expounded in diverse ways. Perhaps the most influential body of Jewish biblical interpretation is the Midrash that was produced by expositors during the first five centuries CE. Many such teachings are collected in the Babylonian Talmud, the monumental compendium of Jewish law and lore that was accepted as the definitive statement of Jewish oral tradition for subsequent generations.
However, many of the Talmud’s interpretations of biblical passages appear bizarre or pointless. From Sermon to Commentary: Expounding the Bible in Talmudic Babylonia tries to explain this phenomenon by carefully examining representative passages from a variety of methodological approaches, paying particular attention to comparisons with Midrash composed in the Land of Israel.
Based on this investigation, Eliezer Segal argues that the Babylonian sages were utilizing discourses that had originated in Israel as rhetorical sermons in which biblical interpretation was being employed in an imaginative, literary manner, usually based on the interplay between two or more texts from different books of the Bible. Because they did not possess their own tradition of homiletic preaching, the Babylonian rabbis interpreted these comments without regard for their rhetorical conventions, as if they were exegetical commentaries, resulting in the distinctive, puzzling character of Babylonian Midrash.

Why did it take so long for the United Church of Canada to respond to violence against women?
Tracy J. Trothen looks at the United Church as a uniquely Canadian institution, and explores how it has approached gender and sexuality issues. She argues that how the Church deals with these issues influences its ability to name violence against women.
In examining the Church’s early approaches to gender and sexuality, Tracy J. Trothen discovered that the United Church had tended to see certain structures or roles as sacred and others as demonic. For example, while sex outside marriage was bad or improper, sexual expression within marriage was largely deemed as proper or good, no matter what manifestation it took. This assumption allowed much violence within families and marriages to go unchallenged.
Trothen uncovers significant shifts in this approach through the examination of such issues as redemptive homes, marriage, pornography, abortion, the ordination of women, and family. Then, analyzing three recent case studies, she demonstrates the value of women’s voices in challenging dominant world views. Finally, she suggests how the Church’s approach to human sexuality and gender has facilitated or obstructed the move to address violence against women.
The findings in Linking Sexuality and Gender can be applied to faiths outside the United Church and will be important to anyone interested in church and society, sexuality, gender, or the causal dynamics behind one Canadian institution’s response to violence against women.
Tracy J. Trothen is an assistant professor of systematic theology and ethics, and director of field education at Queen’s Theological College, Queen’s University, Canada. She was ordained in the United Church of Canada. Why did it take so long for the United Church of Canada to respond to violence against women?

In the last twenty years, the number of texts written on clinical pastoral supervision has accelerated. Thomas St. James O’Connor analyzes these texts, nearly 300 of them, in light of three fundamental questions about the praxis of clinical pastoral supervision: (1)what is distinctive about the praxis? (2)what is an appropriate theological method for the praxis? and, (3)what is an adequate praxis? In doing so, he formulates three approaches: the social science, the hermeneutic and the special interest.
Looking at the theology of Charles Gerkin, a pastoral theologian and family therapist, O’Connor develops a conversation between Gerkin’s theology and the texts. The theological methods in the three approaches are critiqued and Gerkin’s praxis/theory/praxis method is endorsed. Case examples are used throughout to illustrate theory and issues discussed and to aid in the presentation of an adequate praxis.
Clinical Pastoral Supervision and the Theology of Charles Gerkin provides a unique overview of the history and current state of clinical pastoral supervision and an understanding of its methodology and theological foundations. More than that, it builds on the practical theory of Charles Gerkin, expanding it for immediate use in the practice of ministry.

The stories in Leaving Fundamentalism provide a personal and intimate look behind sermons, religious services, and church life, and promote an understanding of those who have been deeply involved in, and then left, the conservative Christian church.
These autobiographies come from within the congregations and homes of religious fundamentalists, where their highly idealized faith, in all its complexities and problems, meets the reality of everyday life. In a time when religious conservatives have placed their faith and values at the forefront of the so-called “culture wars,” this book is extremely relevant. Told from the perspective of distance gained by leaving fundamentalism, each story gives the reader a snapshot of what it is like to go through the experiences, thoughts, feelings, passions, and pains that, for many of the writers, are still raw. Explaining how their lives might continue after fundamentalism, these writers offer a spiritual lifeline for others who may be questioning their faith.
Foreword by Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and many other books.

Avatar and Nature Spirituality explores the cultural and religious significance of James Cameron's film Avatar (2010), one of the most commercially successful motion pictures of all time. Its success was due in no small measure to the beauty of the Pandora landscape and the dramatic, heart-wrenching plight of its nature-venerating inhabitants. To some audience members, the film was inspirational, leading them to express affinity with the film's message of ecological interdependence and animistic spirituality. Some were moved to support the efforts of indigenous peoples, who were metaphorically and sympathetically depicted in the film, to protect their cultures and environments. To others, the film was politically, ethically, or spiritually dangerous. Indeed, the global reception to the film was intense, contested, and often confusing.

To illuminate the film and its reception, this book draws on an interdisciplinary team of scholars, experts in indigenous traditions, religious studies, anthropology, literature and film, and post-colonial studies. Readers will learn about the cultural and religious trends that gave rise to the film and the reasons these trends are feared, resisted, and criticized, enabling them to wrestle with their own views, not only about the film but about the controversy surrounding it. Like the film itself, Avatar and Nature Spirituality provides an opportunity for considering afresh the ongoing struggle to determine how we should live on our home planet, and what sorts of political, economic, and spiritual values and practices would best guide us.

The current interest in spirituality has intensified the quest to incorporate spirituality in non-sectarian therapy. Spiritual Care and Therapy is a hands-on, up-to-date clinical guide that addresses this concern.
Peter VanKatwyk explores spiritual care, from pastoral traditions to essential psychotherapies, in individual, couple, and family therapy, offering integrative perspectives. Therapy vignettes from multiple perspectives are included, as well as a wealth of diagrams and maps. His unique perspective of different helping relationships is an approach that celebrates diversity and promotes the flexibility of multiple uses of self and their respective styles of care.
Part 1 describes common and pluralistic meanings of spirituality, locating spiritual care both in the ordinary experience of daily life and in professional practice.
Part 2 focuses on the essentials of caring, posed in the three questions of what to know (therapy models), what to say (communication roles) and what to be (uses of self). These three core areas converge in the book’s central framework of the helping style inventory (helping relationships).
Part 3 maps the contexts of care: the person situated in family and society, moving through time in rites of passage that congest when impacted by crisis and loss.
Finally, Part 4 presents the actual process of clinical education, first through a model of supervision and second, through a research methodology designed for the study of spirituality and health care.
Perfect as a text in either education or academic programs, this book will be of interest to all helping professionals who value an integrative and holistic approach to spiritual care and therapy.

Is it possible that early Christian anti-Judaism was directed toward people other than Jews?
Michele Murray proposes that significant strands of early Christian anti-Judaism were directed against Gentile Christians. More specifically, it was directed toward Gentile Christian judaizers. These were Christians who combined a commitment to Christianity with adherence in varying degrees to Jewish practices, without viewing such behaviour as contradictory. Several Christian leaders thought that these community members dangerously blurred the boundaries between Christianity and Judaism. As such, Gentile Christian judaizers became the target of much anti-Jewish rhetoric in various early Christian writings.
Evidence of Gentile Christian judaizers can be found in canonical sources, such as Pauls Letter to the Galatians and the Book of Revelation, as well as non-canonical sources, such as the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, and Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho. In order to compare the phenomenon of judaizing and the reaction to it of ecclesiastical authorities, Murray organizes the evidence by probable geographical location, using Asia Minor and Syria as the two main loci.
The phenomenon of Gentile Christian judaizing is examined within the broader context of Jewish-Christian relations in the early centuries, and is the first attempt to draw all possible references to Gentile Christian judaizers together into one study to consider them as a whole. This discussion invites readers to reflect on the existence of Gentile Christian judaizers as another point on the continuum of Jewish-Christian relations in the Greco-Roman world — an area, Murray concludes, that needs to be more carefully defined.

Provides a new understanding of the relationship between Church and State in 20th-century Costa Rica.
Understanding the relationship between religion and social justice in Costa Rica involves piecing together the complex interrelationships between Church and State — between priests, popes, politics, and the people. This book does just that.
Dana Sawchuk chronicles the fortunes of the country’s two competing forms of labour organizations during the 1980s and demonstrates how different factions within the Church came to support either the union movement or Costa Rica’s home-grown Solidarity movement.
Challenging the conventional understanding of Costa Rica as a wholly peaceful and prosperous nation, and traditional interpretations of Catholic Social Teaching, this book introduces readers to a Church largely unknown outside Costa Rica. Sawchuk has carefully analyzed material from a multitude of sources — interviews, newspapers, books, and articles, as well as official Church documents, editorials, and statements by Church representativesto provide a firmly rooted socio-economic history of the experiences of workers, and the Catholic Church’s responses to workers in Costa Rica.

If Buddhism denies a permanent self, how does it perceive identity? According to Buddhist texts, the entire universe, including the individual, is made up of different phenomena, which Buddhism classifies into different categories: what we conventionally call a “person” can be understood in terms of five aggregates, the sum of which must not be taken for a permanent entity, since beings are nothing but an amalgam of ever-changing phenomena. Although the aggregates are only a “convenient fiction,” the Buddha nevertheless made frequent use of the aggregate scheme when asked to explain the elements at work in the individual.
In this study Mathieu Boisvert presents a detailed analysis of the five aggregates (pañcakkhandhā) and establishes how the Therav<-a>da tradition views their interaction. He clarifies the fundamentals of Buddhist psychology by providing a rigorous examination of the nature and interrelation of each of the aggregates and by establishing, for the first time, how the function of each of these aggregates chains beings to the cycle of birth, death and rebirth — the theory of dependent origination (paticcasamuppāda). Boisvert contends that without a thorough understanding of the five aggregates, we cannot grasp the liberation process at work within the individual, who is, after all, simply an amalgam of the five aggregates.
The Five Aggregates represents an important and original contribution to Buddhist studies and will be of great interest to all scholars and students of Buddhism.

It is commonly assumed that all religions are essentially alike, that they are all common members of the genus Religion. But what if religions are not fundamentally similar after all? What if, on the contrary, it is better to presuppose a radical difference among the world’s various religious communities, with each faith being defined by different beliefs, different practices, different world views, and different ways of life?
Radical Difference: A Defence of Hendrik Kraemer’s Theology of Religions explores the implications of this presupposition by examining the pioneering work of Dutch Reformed theologian and missionary Hendrik Kraemer. Perry shows that a critical reappropriation of Kraemer by contemporary Christian theology of religions can only help those Christians, especially evangelical Protestants, who find themselves equally unsatisfied with the various pluralisms and traditional responses, whether optimistic or skeptical, currently available.
Increased global migration and technological advances have brought us closer together than ever before. At the same time, ethnic, cultural and religious tensions throughout the world have awakened us to issues of interreligious tolerance and cooperation. This book recognizes and addresses the impact differing religious beliefs, practices and world views have on our lives.

Shattering the Illusion is the first book to gather and comparatively analyze policies addressing child sexual abuse complaints in a selection of religious institutions in Canada. Although there is a substantial body of literature regarding Christianity and sexual abuse, very little of it focuses on religious institutions in Canada and their respective policies.
In the foreword, Tracey J. Trothen summarizes the Cornwall Inquiry, out of which this book arose. She then examines the Roman Catholic Church, The United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church, the Mennonite Church, Islam, and the Canadian Unitarian Council/Unitarian Universalist Association, describing in detail the evolution and particular content of policies and procedures that address child sexual abuse complaints directed at paid and volunteer faith community representatives and/ or leaders. She identifies differences and common themes among the approaches taken by the institutions and provides a summary table for an accessible comparative overview.
Child sexual abuse is not new, but the emergence of policies to address abuse complaints within religious institutions is. This book identifies significant and shared causal factors behind the emergence of policy and reviews their content carefully. This review will serve as a significant tool for furthering the development of such policies.

Virtually from its redaction about the sixth century A.D., the Babylonian Talmud became the rabbinic document par excellence. Through its lens almost all previous canonical rabbinic tradition was refracted. Study and mastery of the Talmud marked one as a rabbi, a “master.” This book examines the character, use and social meaning of the formalized rhetoric which pervades the Babylonian Talmud. It explores, first, how the editors of the Talmud employ a consistent and highly laconic code of formalized linguistic terms and literary patterns to create the Talmud’s (renowned) dialectical, analytic “essays.” Second, the work considers the social meanings implicitly communicated by the use of this rhetoric, which not only provided an authoritative model for modes of thought and for treatment of earlier authoritative Judaic tradition, but also reflected, reinforced or helped engender new social definitions.
Through comparison of the Talmud’s rhetoric with that of other, earlier rabbinic documents and by placing the editing of the Talmud against the backdrop of the social and political situation of Rabbinism in the Late Persian Empire, the book relates the Talmud’s creation and promulgation to a major shift in Rabbinism’s understanding of the social role, “rabbi,” and to the emergence and ascendancy of the talmudic academy (the Yeshiva) as the primary institution of Rabbinism toward the end of Late Antiquity. In its agenda, and methodological and theoretical perspectives, The Rhetoric of the Babylonian Talmud brings together the insights and tools of historical, literary and rhetorical analysis of the New Testament and of early rabbinic literature, on the one hand, and the sociological and anthropological study of religion, on the other.

Apuleius’ Metamorphoses is probably best known as the literary source for the myth of Eros and Psyche and as a primary source of information about mystery religions in the ancient world.
There is another realm of the Metamorphoses which has, until now, received relatively little attention — namely, the many dreams found within it. The Religious Dreamworld of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses offers an engaging portrait of the second-century dreamworld. Recognizing the centrality of the religious function and spiritual interpretation of dreams, this book illustrates their vital importance in the ancient world and the wide variety of meanings attributed to them.
James Gollnick draws deeply from historical and psychological studies and provides a historical background on the current interest in the role of dreams in psychological and spiritual transformation.
This study of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses adds to an appreciation of Apuleius the dreamer and the second-century dreamworld in which he lived and wrote.

One of the most pressing issues for scholars of religion concerns the role of persuasion in early Christianities and other religions in Greco-Roman antiquity. The essays in Rhetoric and Reality in Early Christianities explore questions about persuasion and its relationship to early Christianities. The contributors theorize about persuasion as the effect of verbal performances, such as argumentation in accordance with rules of rhetoric, or as a result of other types of performance: ritual, behavioural, or imagistic. They discuss the relationship between the verbal performance of rhetoric and other performative modes in generating, sustaining, and transmitting a persuasive form of religiosity.
The essays in this book cover a wide chronological range (from the first century to late antiquity) and diverse topical examples contribute to the collection’s thematic centre: the relations among formalized and technical verbal performances (rhetoric, texts) and other forms of persuasive performances (ritual, practices), the social agendas that early Christians pursued by means of verbal, rhetorical performances, and the larger social context in which Christians and other religious groups competitively jockeyed to attract the minds and bodies of audiences in the Greco-Roman world.