Showing titles in History

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two million Jewish immigrants poured into America, leaving places like Warsaw or the Russian shtetls to pass through Ellis Island and start over in the New World. Though some moved on to Philadelphia, Chicago, and other points west, many of these new citizens settled in New York City, especially in Manhattan's teeming tenements....

How did the preaching of a peasant carpenter from Galilee spark a movement that would grow to include over two billion followers? Who listened to this "good news," and who ignored it? Where did Christianity spread, and how? Based on quantitative data and the latest scholarship, preeminent scholar and journalist Rodney Stark presents new and startling information about the rise of the early church, overturning many prevailing views of how Christianity grew through time to become the largest religion in the world.

A History of the Church Through Its Buildings takes the listener to meet people who lived through momentous religious changes in the very spaces where the story of the Church took shape. Buildings are about people, the people who conceived, designed, financed, and used them. Their stories become embedded in the very fabric itself, and as the fabric is changed through time in response to changing use, relationships, and beliefs, the architecture becomes the standing history of passing waves of humanity.

In recent years, stories of religious universities and institutions grappling with their slave-owning past have made headlines in the news. People find it shocking that the Church itself could have been involved in such a sordid business. This timely book, the result of many years of research, is a study of the origins of this problem.

In The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Porwancher debunks a string of myths about the origins of this founding father to arrive at a startling conclusion: Hamilton, in all likelihood, was born and raised Jewish. For more than two centuries, his youth in the Caribbean has remained shrouded in mystery. Hamilton himself wanted it that way, and most biographers have simply assumed he had a Christian boyhood. With a detective's persistence and a historian's rigor, Porwancher upends that assumption.

Historian Philip Jenkins draws out the complex relationship between religion and climate change. He asserts that the religious movements and ideas that emerge from climate shocks often last for many decades, and even become a familiar part of the religious landscape. By stirring conflicts and provoking persecutions that defined themselves in religious terms, changes in climate have redrawn the world's religious maps, and created the global concentrations of believers as we know them today.

Martin Luther was a controversial figure during his lifetime, eliciting strong emotions in friends and enemies alike, and his outsized persona has left an indelible mark on the world today. Living I Was Your Plague explores how Luther carefully crafted his own image and how he has been portrayed in his own times and ours, painting a unique portrait of the man who set in motion a revolution that sundered Western Christendom.

High on God gives the first robust and plausible explanation for why megachurches have conquered the churchgoing market of America. Without condescension or exaggeration, the authors show the genius of megachurches: the power of charisma, the design of facilities, the training of leaders, the emotional dynamics, and the strategies that bring people together and lead them to serve and help others.

The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk.

Hasidic Williamsburg is famous as one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy communities. Less known is how the community survived in one of New York City's toughest neighborhoods during an era of steep decline, only to later oppose and also participate in the unprecedented gentrification of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper unravel the fascinating history of how a community of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped, and sometimes fiercely resisted the urban processes that transformed their gritty neighborhood.

The world is becoming less religious. Since 2007, there has been a pervasive decline in religious belief and most of the world's people now say that God is less important in their lives than they said he was in the quarter century before 2007. Many factors contributed to this dramatic shift, but as Inglehart shows, certain ones stand out. Utilizing a massive global database, Inglehart analyzes the conditions under which religiosity collapses, and explores its implications for the future.

Missionary, theologian, and religious genius, Paul is one of the most powerful human personalities in the history of the Church. E. P. Sanders, an influential Pauline scholar, analyzes the fundamental beliefs and vigorous contradictions in Paul's thought, discovering a philosophy that is less of a monolithic system than the apostle's convictions would seem to suggest.

Exploring the cultural and institutional dimensions of Christianity and tracing its course over two millennia, Linda Woodhead provides a fresh, lively, and candid portrait of Christianity's past and present. Addressing topics including the competition for power between different forms of Christianity, the churches' use of power, and its struggles with modernity, this new edition includes up-to-date information on the growth and geographical spread of Eastern Christianity, reflecting the global nature of Christianity in our ever-shifting contemporary culture.

What is the true nature and mission of the church? Is its proper Christian purpose to save souls, or to transform the social order? This question is especially fraught when the church is one built by an enslaved people and formed, from its beginning, at the center of an oppressed community's fight for personhood and freedom. Such is the central tension in the identity and mission of the Black church in the United States.

A deathbed promise leads a daughter on an incredible journey to write about her grandfather who was a famous war hero. But this journey had a terrible destination: the discovery that he was a Nazi war criminal.

In autumn 1942, Anna Goldenberg's great-grandparents and one of their sons are deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Hans, their elder son, survives by hiding in an apartment in the middle of Nazi-controlled Vienna. But this is no Anne Frank-like existence; teenage Hans passes time in the municipal library and buys standing-room tickets to the Vienna State Opera. Hans never sees his family again. Goldenberg reconstructs this unique story in magnificent reportage.

The history of the church is filled with stories. Stories of triumph, stories of defeat, stories of joy, and stories of sorrow. In this book, Dr. Stephen J. Nichols provides snapshots of the church through the centuries. You’ll meet fascinating saints, travel to curious places, examine precious artifacts, and watch as surprising turns of events unfold. This lively and informative journey not only captures the richness of Christian history, but also reveals a record of God’s providence and faithfulness to his people.

Concise Bible History from Catholic Book Publishing provides a clear, easy-to-listen-to survey of the history of our salvation. This compact Bible history offers an excellent introduction to the Bible for individuals, parish study groups, and elementary and high schools. This book is a valuable, informative resource for all who wish to participate in the study of Sacred Scripture that was encouraged by the Second Vatican Council.

In The American Puritans, Dustin Benge and Nate Pickowicz tell the story of the first hundred years of Reformed Protestantism in New England through the lives of nine key figures: William Bradford, John Winthrop, John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, Anne Bradstreet, John Eliot, Samuel Willard, and Cotton Mather. Here is sympathetic yet informed history, a book that corrects many myths and half-truths told about the American Puritans while inspiring a current generation of Christians to let their light shine before men.

Inside Syria and Iraq, and even along the refugee trail, they’re a religious minority persecuted for their Christian faith. Outside the Middle East, they’re suspect because of their nationality. A small remnant of Christians is on the run from the Islamic State. If they are wiped out, or scattered to the corners of the earth, the language that Jesus spoke may be lost forever - along with the witness of a church that has modeled Jesus’ way of nonviolence and enemy-love for two millennia.