Crossing social, cultural, and religious barriers and making disciples of all nations has probably never been without some level of controversy. This book is an attempt to hit the pause button on this rapid-paced world and to reflect on how we do mission, especially in light of the new layers of complexity that globalization brings. While the contributors engage in new aspects of mission and cultural encounter unique to the twenty-first century, the underlying issues of each chapter are age-old topics that have reared their heads at various times throughout history: priorities in mission, power struggles, perspectives on cultural others, and contextualization. With that in mind, our aims are twofold: (1) to carefully consider issues causing tension and contention within current mission thought, practice and strategy and then (2) to engage in serious but charitable dialogue for the sake of God’s mission and the salvation of all peoples.

This book provides a thorough introduction to historical and contemporary issues in American religion, tackling controversial hot-button topics such as abortion, Intelligent Design, and Scientology. Surveying key aspects of the controversial issues, persons, and religious groups of today, Encyclopedia of Religious Controversies in the United States, Second Edition is a thorough update and expansion of the first edition of this book. This two-volume work contains many new entries that reflect current 21st-century religious controversies. Written by a variety of scholars with varying specializations, the content covers major people, ideas, terms, institutions, groups, books, and events. The A–Z format allows for easy location of materials, a chronology of developments and events enables readers to trace the development of contentious topics over time, and a section of primary document excerpts gives readers further perspective on the issues.

This book represents the first critical edition and scholarly annotated translation of a pioneering report on the predicament of cross-cultural understanding at the dawn of globalization, titled “A Brief Response on the Controversies over Shangdi, Tianshen and Linghun” (“Resposta breve sobre as Controversias do Xámtý, Tien Xîn, Lîm hoên”), which was written in China by the Sicilian Jesuit missionary Niccolò Longobardo (1565–1654) in the 1620s and profoundly influenced Enlightenment understandings of Asian philosophy. The book restores the focus on Longobardo’s own intellectual concerns, while also reproducing and analyzing all the Chinese-language annotations on the previously unpublished Portuguese and Latin manuscripts. Moreover, it meticulously modernizes all romanizations with standard Hanyu pinyin and identifies, on the basis of archival research, most of Longobardo’s Chinese interlocutors, thus providing new insights into how the Jesuits networked with Chinese scholars in the late Ming. In this way, it opens up this seminal text to Sinologists and global historians exploring Europe’s first intellectual exchanges with China. In addition, the book presents four introductory essays, written by the editors and two prominent scholars on the Jesuit China mission. These essays comprehensively reconstruct the historical and intellectual context of Longobardo’s report, stressing that it cannot be viewed purely as a product of Sino-European cultural exchange, but also as an outgrowth of both exegetic debates within Europe and of European experiences across Asia, especially in Japan. Hence this critical edition will greatly contribute to a more globalized view of the Jesuit China mission.

The Rites Controversies in the Early Modern World is a collection of fourteen articles focusing on debates concerning the nature of “rites” raging in intellectual circles of Europe, Asia and America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The controversy started in Jesuit Asian missions where the method of accommodation, based on translation of Christianity into Asian cultural idioms, created a distinction between civic and religious customs. Civic customs were defined as those that could be included into Christianity and permitted to the new converts. However, there was no universal consensus among the various actors in these controversies as to how to establish criteria for distinguishing civility from religion. The controversy had not been resolved, but opened the way to radical religious scepticism. Contributors are: Claudia Brosseder, Michela Catto, Gita Dharampal-Frick, Pierre Antoine Fabre, Ana Carolina Hosne, Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, Giuseppe Marcocci, Ovidiu Olar, Sabina Pavone, István Perczel, Nicholas Standaert, Margherita Trento, Guillermo Wilde and Ines G. Županov.

The mystic von Speyr continues her reflections on the Gospel of John, concentrating here on the discourses of Jesus in chapters 6-12. The various other events included by Saint John in these chapters are seen primarily by him as the occasion for new confrontations between Jesus and his disputants. These reflections present the moment in which the limited, self-satisfied standpoint of Christ's hearers must let itself be burst open into the unlimited, loving standpoint of the Lord. Some of the controversial discourses in this section of John's Gospel which von Speyr comments on include: The Multiplication of the Loaves; The Bread of Life; The Adulteress; The Man Born Blind; The Raising of Lazarus; The Good Shepherd, and The Entry into Jerusalem. The combination of the Scripture verses and von Speyr's moving meditations provide rich nourishment for prayer and spiritual reading. This series is particularly important because the spirituality of Saint John, the Apostle of Divine Love, was the central source of von Speyr's own spiritual life. Adrienne von Speyr was a contemporary Swiss convert, mystic, wife, medical doctor and author of some 70 books on spirituality and theology. She entered the Church under the direction of one the greatest theologians and spiritual writers of the 20th century, Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar, who became her spiritual director and confessor for the last 30 years of her life. Her writings, recognized as a major contribution to the great mystical writings of the Church, are being translated and published by Ignatius Press. Among her most important works are Book of All Saints, Confession, The World of Prayer, Handmaid of the Lord, and The Passion from Within.

This book is about Anglo-American involvement in the reopening of the border controversy between Guyana, formerly British Guiana, and Venezuela. The dispute over the border commenced in the mid-nineteenth century when Venezuela asserted a claim to some two-thirds of the territory of the British colony. Great Britain’s refusal to refer the delimitation of the border to arbitration developed into a major crisis in Anglo-American affairs in 1895. The United States had assessed the issue as a major challenge to the Monroe Doctrine and it would provoke the two English-speaking powers close to military conflict. In 1899, an arbitral tribunal met in Paris and agreed unanimously on the boundary line between British Guiana and Venezuela. That boundary line has been universally accepted. In 1962 at the height of the Cold War, Venezuela repudiated the award claiming that it was a “political deal”. Fidel Castro had assumed power in Cuba and there were anxieties about the spread of Communism in the Americas, particularly in British Guiana during the pre-independence premiership of Marxist oriented Cheddi Jagan. Cedric Joseph examines the primary documents relating to the diplomacy of the administrations of John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. He explores their special relationships, sympathies and acute predisposition towards Venezuela that permitted the reopening of the boundary issue and ultimately sacrificed the territorial integrity of Guyana. He also establishes the collusion between Suriname’s claim to territory in Guyana and the Venezuelan claim.

JESUS IN Q is about the Sabbath and the theology of Jesus. There are several books about the Sabbath with regard to the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but nothing regarding Q. This book is designed to address the relation to the Sabbath in Q which makes it remarkable amongst other Sabbath related books with reference to the Synoptic Gospels. Considering the rabbinic writers and the early fathers, who have used, generally in a free way, the sayings of Jesus drawn from the Gospels and/or oral tradition, this book examines the apologists and the extracanonical writers, whose writings constitute a well-defined literary genre and witness a progressively more bookish use of the sayings of Jesus. This book understands the extracanonical documents in early Judaism as a prerequisite for understanding the appearances of Jesus.

Following on from Ethics Education in the Military (eds. Paul Robinson, Nigel de Lee and Don Carrick: Ashgate 2008) which surveyed and critically analyzed the existing theory and practice of educating soldiers, sailors and airmen in the ethics of 'old fashioned' warfaring, this volume considers the extent to which such theory and practice is adequate to prepare members of the military to meet the more complex ethical challenges faced when engaging in irregular warfare in the 21st century. In recent years, events in Iraq and Afghanistan have highlighted the requirement that Western military personnel, drawn from the armed forces of many different countries, should behave in an ethical manner at all times. The contributors to this volume come from various disciplinary backgrounds, several are serving or former military officers and most are actively engaged in ethics education. The volume advances theoretical understanding of different approaches to ethics education and provides practical conclusions.

THE CATHOLIC CONTROVERSY SAINT FRANCIS DE SALES — A Catholic Classic! — Includes Over 300 Active Linked Endnotes — Includes an Active Index, Table of Contents and Layered NCX Navigation — Includes Illustrations by Gustave Dore Publisher: Available in Paperback: ISBN-13: 978-1-78379-454-6 After being repeatedly rebuffed in his attempts to re-evangelize Calvinist Protestants who would not listen to Catholic preaching for fear of reprisals, St. Francis turned to writing leaflets and inserting them into copies of his sermons, which he then posted on walls, slipped under doors and handing to whomever he could. Four years later, almost 72,000 had returned to the ancient Catholic Faith! These tracts have been compiled into a book and given the title The Catholic Controversy. The works are still as fresh and powerful today as they were then, and give some of the most compelling arguments against Protestantism that have ever been written, presenting a defense of the Catholic Faith that in some respects has never been equalled. PUBLISHER: CATHOLIC WAY PUBLISHING