An informational and entertaining text, this work offers readers a deeper sense of why the saints and the honoring of them has been influential in the lives of Catholics and others who strive to follow Jesus Christ and experience his love. (Catholic)

In his introduction, Paul Sigmund states that the growing religious pluralism in Latin America is one of several reasons why the trend toward democracy that has marked the last two decades may endure. Nevertheless, Sigmund notes that this new pluralism, particularly the growth of Protestantism, has led to tensions that must be resolved. Religious Freedom and Evangelization in Latin America provides an indispensable resource for understanding the range of issues confronting the continent, offering Catholic as well as Protestant perspectives, and trenchant analyses of the situation in different countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Cuba.

This handbook offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamics of religious conversion, which for centuries has profoundly shaped societies, cultures, and individuals throughout the world.

The Second Vatican Council endorsed an engagement with the modern and secularized world through a renewed proclamation of the Gospel. John Paul II described this as the New Evangelization, and in 2010, Benedict XVI confirmed this priority by creating the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization to 're-propose the perennial truth of the Gospel.' The New Evangelization was the subject of the Synod of Bishops in 2012 and in 2014 Pope Francis gave his reflections on the topic in Evangelii Gaudium. The New Evangelization draws on material presented and discussed at the conference 'Vatican II, 50 Years On: The New Evangelization' organised by Leeds Trinity University on 26-29th June 2012. Part I traces the historical and theological links between the Council and the New Evangelization. Part II examines the renewed understanding of the Church as a result of the Council and the extent to which it is shaped by civilization. Part III analyzes the nature of the New Evangelization and its outworking in today's multifarious context of cultures, religions and societies. Part IV deals with the implementation of the New Evangelization by different communities and organizations and the issues this raises. In the Introduction and Conclusion, the editors reflect on the New Evangelization in the light of significant developments since 2012.

Ven. Fulton J. Sheen, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Rev. Jerry Falwell—religious leaders who popularized theology through media campaigns designed to persuade the public In Religion in the Public Square, James M. Patterson considers religious leaders who popularized theology through media campaigns designed to persuade the public. Ven. Fulton J. Sheen, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Rev. Jerry Falwell differed profoundly on issues of theology and politics, but they shared an approach to public ministry that aimed directly at changing how Americans understood the nature and purpose of their country. From the 1930s through the 1950s, Sheen was an early adopter of paperbacks, radio, and television to condemn totalitarian ideologies and to defend American Catholicism against Protestant accusations of divided loyalty. During the 1950s and 1960s, King staged demonstrations and boycotts that drew the mass media to him. The attention provided him the platform to preach Christian love as a political foundation in direct opposition to white supremacy. Falwell started his own church, which he developed into a mass media empire. He then leveraged it during the late 1970s through the 1980s to influence the Republican Party by exhorting his audience to not only ally with religious conservatives around issues of abortion and the traditional family but also to vote accordingly. Sheen, King, and Falwell were so successful in popularizing their theological ideas that they won prestigious awards, had access to presidents, and witnessed the results of their labors. However, Patterson argues that Falwell's efforts broke with the longstanding refusal of religious public figures to participate directly in partisan affairs and thereby catalyzed the process of politicizing religion that undermined the Judeo-Christian consensus that formed the foundation of American politics.

The act of converting people to certain beliefs or values is highly controversial in today's postcolonial, multicultural world. Proselytization has been viewed by some as an aggressive act of political domination. 'Proselytization Revisited' offers a comprehensive overview of the many arguments for and against proselytization in different regions and contexts. Proselytization is examined in the context of rights talk, globalisation and culture wars. The volume brings together essays demonstrating the global significance of proselytization, ranging from Christians in India to Turkish Islamic Movements and the Wiccan use of modern media technologies. The cross-cultural and multidisciplinary nature of this collection of essays provides a fresh perspective and the book will be of value to readers interested in the dynamic interaction of beliefs, ideas and cultures.

The situation of religious institutional diminishment in many Western countries requires new approaches to the proclamation of Christian faith. As a response to these complexities, Karl Rahner suggested a “mystagogic” approach as a future pathway for theology. A mystagogical approach seeks modes of spiritual and theological conversation which engage the religious imagination and draws upon personal experiences of transcendence and religious sensibility. In Karl Rahner, Culture and Evangelization: New Approaches in an Australian Setting, Anthony Mellor develops a reflective process of contemporary “mystagogia”, describing how different fields of engagement require different patterns of mystagogical conversation. While focussing on the Australian setting, these differentiate arenas of engagement are also applicable to other cultural settings and offer fresh perspectives for evangelization today.

The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies represents more than a century of scholarship related to the theology, history, and methodology of the propagation of Christian faith and the engagement of Christians with cultures, religions, and societies worldwide. It contains more than 40 articles by experts from different disciplinary and ecclesial perspectives, who are from all continents. It not only offers a broad overview of key approaches and issues in mission studies but it also highlights current trends and suggests future developments. The Handbook builds on renewed interest in mission studies this century generated by recent key statements on mission from ecumenical, evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox sources, and by a spate of academic works on the topic. Western church leaders now apply insights from foreign missions (such as, inculturation, liberation, interfaith work, and power encounter) to today's multicultural societies. Meanwhile, there are new initiatives in mission from the Majority World, where most Christians live, so that sending is not only 'from the west to the rest' but 'from everywhere to everywhere'. Therefore, this volume aims to reflect the voices of the receivers of mission as well as its protagonists and to raise awareness of new movements. In a time of growing recognition of 'religions' more generally, this work examines and theorizes the missional dimensions of the world's largest religion: its agendas, growth, outreach, role in public life, effect on cultures, relevance for development, and its approaches to other communities.

The concept of religious freedom is the favoured modern human rights concept, with which the modern world hopes to tackle the phenomenon of religious pluralism, as our modern existence in an electronically shrinking globe comes to be increasingly characterised by this phenomenon. To begin with, the concept of religious freedom, as embodied in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, seems self-evident in nature. It is the claim of this book, however, that although emblematic on the one hand, the concept is also problematic on the other, and the implications of the concept of religious freedom are far from self-evident, despite the ready acceptance the term receives as embodying a worthwhile goal. This book therefore problematizes the concept along legal, constitutional, ethical and theological lines, and especially from the perspective of religious studies, so that religious freedom in the world could be enlarged in a way which promotes human flourishing.