World Christianity: An Introduction provides an accessible introduction to the discipline, methodology, and field of world Christianity. In this book, Graham Joseph Hill engages with more than one hundred high-profile Majority World and First Nations Christian leaders to learn what they can teach the West about mission, leadership, hospitality, creation care, education, worship, and more. Hill challenges the Western church to move away from a Eurocentric and Americentric view of church and mission, and he calls for the church to engage with crucial paradigm shifts in world Christianity. The future of the global church—including the churches in the West—exists in these global exchanges. World Christianity is an indispensable guide for the church as it navigates the unique global experiences of the twenty-first century.

Synthesizing the thinking of the most prominent scholars, Professor Edmund Chia discusses practically everything that should be known about Christianity’s encounter with other religions in this comprehensive book. Topics include: the invention of the idea of World Religions and World Christianity the Bible and the church’s attitude toward other faiths Vatican II, Asian Christianity, and interfaith dialogue the what, why, when, and how of dialogue the global ecumenical movement theologies of religious pluralism cross-textual hermeneutics comparative theology interfaith worship religious syncretism multiple religious belonging interfaith learning in seminaries.

This volume comprises an excellent introductory survey of Christian missions from A.D. 30 to the twentieth century.

Luke 12:1, Jesus said: “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” In the same breath, I say to you: “Beware of the yeast of Paul’s Christianity which is lie and hypocrisy.” All I see today are the Christians of Paul, hardly the Christians of Jesus. Where is Jesus? He is there still buried beneath the 2,000 years of lies and hypocrisies of the Christianity of Paul. If the Jews crucified the living Jesus on the cross, the Christianity of Paul murdered the risen Christ right after his resurrection. Behold the “TEN GREATEST LIES & HYPOCRISIES” that up to now are wreaking havoc in our Christian world. Happy reading!

The Christian faith has the allegiance of one third of the human race. It has succeeded in influencing civilization to such a degree that we now take its existence almost for granted. Yet it might all have been so different. Christianity began with the words and deeds of an obscure village carpenter's son who died a shameful criminal's death at the hands of the Roman occupiers of his country: itself an insignificant outpost of the powerful ruling Empire. The feverish land of biblical Palestine, awash with apocalyptic expectations of deliverance from its foreign overlords, was hardly short of seers and prophets who claimed to be sent visions from God. Yet the followers of this man thought he was different: so different, in fact, that some years after his death and asserted resurrection they scandalously insisted not only that he was sent by God, but that he 'was' God. How a provincial sect, with its seemingly outrageous ideas, became first the sanctioned religion of the Roman Empire and then, over the course of 2000 years, the creed of billions of people, is the improbable story that this book tells. It is a story of freethinkers, friars, fanatics and firebrands; and of the lay people (not just the clerical or the powerful) who have made up the great mass of Christians over the centuries. Many introductions to Christianity are written by Christians, for Christians. This elegant textbook, by contrast, shows that the history of the religion, while often glorious, is not one of unimpeded progress, but something still more remarkable, flawed and human.

Christianity has been accused of being misogynistic, pro-slavery, and anti-science, and some say it is finally beginning its long decline. This book provides an entirely different side to the stories about this faith. Why did Christianity become the largest religion in the world? Is it because it was misogynistic, pro-slavery, anti-science, and set on condemning those who didn't join it? This book investigates many of the misconceptions about Christianity and argues that there are good reasons this faith has become the world's largest. The book includes chapters on various misconceptions related to the history of Christianity, such as the beliefs that Jesus was a meek and mild carpenter, the Roman emperor Constantine was insincere in his Christian faith, medieval Europe was devoutly Christian, and Christianity was anti-science. Each chapter explores how the historical misconception developed and spread, and offers what we now believe to be the historical truth contradicting the fiction. Excerpts from primary source documents provide evidence for the historical misconceptions and truths and help readers to respond critically to claims about Christian history.

The power of modernity to secularise has been a foundational idea of the western world. Both social science and church history understood that the Christian religion from 1750 was deeply vulnerable to industrial urbanisation and the Enlightenment. But as evidence mounts that countries of the European world experienced secularising forces in different ways at different periods, the timing and causes of de-Christianisation are now widely seen as far from straightforward. Secularisation in the Christian World brings together leading scholars in the social history of religion and the sociology of religion to explore what we know about the decline of organised Christianity in Britain, Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. The chapters tackle different strands, themes, comparisons and territories to demonstrate the diversity of approach, thinking and evidence that has emerged in the last 30 years of scholarship into the religious past and present. The volume includes both new research and essays of theoretical reflection by the most eminent academics. It highlights historians and sociologists in both agreement and dispute. With contributors from eight countries, the volume also brings together many nations for the first consolidated international consideration of recent themes in de-Christianisation. With church historians and cultural historians, and religious sociologists and sociologists of the godless society, this book provides a state-of-the-art guide to secularisation studies.

This volume advances our understanding of early Christianity as a lived religion by approaching it through its rites, the emotions and affects surrounding those rites, and the material setting for the practice of them. The connections between emotions and ritual, between rites and their materiality, and between emotions and their physical manifestation in ancient Mediterranean culture have been inadequately explored as yet, especially with regard to early Christianity and its water and dining rites. Readers will find all three areas—ritual, emotion, and materiality—engaged in this exemplary interdisciplinary study, which provides fresh insights into early Christianity and its world. Ritual, Emotion, and Materiality in the Early Christian World will be of special interest to interdisciplinary-minded researchers, seminarians, and students who are attentive to theory and method, and those with an interest in the New Testament and earliest Christianity. It will also appeal to those working on ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman religion, emotion, and ritual from a comparative standpoint.