Three basic forces dominated sixteenth-century religious life. Two polarized groups, Protestant and Catholic reformers, were shaped by theological debates, over the nature of the church, salvation, prayer, and other issues. These debates articulated critical, group-defining oppositions. Bystanders to the Catholic-Protestant competition were a third force. Their reactions to reformers were violent, opportunistic, hesitant, ambiguous, or serendipitous, much the way social historians have described common people in the Reformation for the last fifty years. But in an ecology of three forces, hesitations and compromises were natural, not just among ordinary people, but also, if more subtly, among reformers and theologians. In this volume, Christopher Ocker offers a constructive and nuanced alternative to the received understanding of the Reformation. Combining the methods of intellectual, cultural, and social history, his book demonstrates how the Reformation became a hybrid movement produced by a binary of Catholic and Protestant self-definitions, by bystanders to religious debate, and by the hesitations and compromises made by all three groups during the religious controversy.

Studies the thought and actions of the Reformation's central figures - reformers, counter-reformers, and their supporters - in the light of ordinary people.

This book throws new light on the issue of the dramatist's religious orientation by dismissing sectarian and one-sided theories, tackling the problem from the angle of the variegated Elizabethan context recently uncovered by modern historians and theatre scholars. It is argued that faith was a quest rather than a quiet certainty for the playwright.

This new Handbook offers a combination of theoretical, thematic and empirical analyses of the statebuilding regime, written by leading international scholars. Over the past decade, international statebuilding has become one of the most important and least understood areas of international policy-making. Today, there are around one billion people living in some 50-60 conflict-affected, 'fragile' states, vulnerable to political violence and civil war. The international community grapples with the core challenges and dilemmas of using outside force, aid, and persuasion to build states in the wake of conflict and to prevent such countries from lapsing into devastating violence. The Routledge Handbook of International Statebuilding is a comprehensive resource for this emerging area in International Relations. The volume is designed to guide the reader through the background and development of international statebuilding as a policy area, as well as exploring in depth significant issues such as security, development, democracy and human rights. Divided into three main parts, this Handbook provides a single-source overview of the key topics in international statebuilding: Part One: Concepts and Approaches Part Two: Security, Development and Democracy Part Three: Policy Implementation This Handbook will be essential reading for students of statebuilding, humanitarian intervention, peacebuilding, development, war and conflict studies and IR/Security Studies in general.

The Third International Conference on Hybrid Learning (ICHL 2010) was organized by the School of Continuing and Professional Studies of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Beijing Normal University, Goethe-Institut China, Caritas Francis Hsu College, and Caritas Bianchi College of Careers. ICHL 2010 provided a platform for knowledge exchange on hybrid learning among educators, researchers and computer scientists, who share a common goal to enhance the quality of learning and teaching in this fast-changing knowledge world, with the support of technology innovation. Hybrid learning has been an ongoing trend for a number of years. It is not merely a simple combination of face-to-face and technology-mediated instruction, but also encompasses different learning strategies for teaching and learning. It places emphasis on outcome-based teaching and learning, and provides a diversified learning envir- ment. Hybrid learning is probably the most efficient learning mode in the present age of globalization, when learning has to be borderless and dynamic in order to address the diverse learning needs of students. Students are given more opportunities to - velop into active independent learners, and to practice practical skills for work and study. It was our pleasure to have three keynote speakers for the ICHL 2010. They were Rebecca Launer from Goethe-Institut, Germany, Bebo White from Stanford Univ- sity, and Yan Ji Chang from Tsinghua University, all of whom shared with us their valuable insights in the hybrid learning field.

A New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia, 600-1700 proposes a new language for studying and conceptualizing the spaces, societies, and institutions that existed on the territory of today's Northern Eurasia. This is not the story of a certain present-day state or people evolving through consecutive historical stages. Rather, the book is a modern analytical approach to the problem of human diversity as a fundamental social condition. Through cooperation and confrontation, various attempts to manage diversity fostered processes of societal self-organization, as new ideas, practices, and institutions were developed virtually from scratch or radically altered. Essentially, this is the story of individuals and societies creatively responding to their natural and social environments in unique historical circumstances. This volume explores how the mutual interactions of several local socio-political arrangements, and attempts to integrate with one of the universal cultures of the time, caused a string of unintended consequences. As a result, the enormous landmass from the Carpathian Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, from the Polar Circle in the north to the steppe belt in the south was divided among several regional powers. Ultimately unable to overtake each other by military force, they were locked in a zero-sum game until the uneven development of modern state institutions tilted the balance in favor of one of them – Russia.

The era of post-colonialism and globalisation has brought new intensities of debate concerning the existence of diversity and plurality, and the need to work in partnerships to resolve major problems of injustice and marginalisation now facing local and global communities. The Church is struggling to connect with the significant economic, political and cultural changes impacting on all types of urban context but especially city centres, inner rings and outer estates and the new ex-urban communities being developed beyond the suburbs. This book argues that theology and the church need to engage more seriously with post-modern reality and thought if points of connection (both theologically and pastorally) are going to be created. The author proposes a sustained engagement with a key concept to emerge from post-modern experience - namely the concept of the Third Space. Drawing on case studies from Europe and the USA primarily, this book examines examples of Third Space methodologies to ask questions about hybrid identities and methods churches might adopt to effectively connect with post-modern cities and civil society. Particular areas of focus by the author include: the role and identity of church in post-modern urban space; the role of public theology in addressing key issues of marginalisation and urbanisation as they impact in the 21st century; the nature and role of local civil society as a local response to globalised patterns of urban, economic, social and cultural change.

Presents an illustrated history of electric and hybrid cars produced during the early twentieth century, the companies that built them, political and environmental aspects, marketing strategies, and general attitude by consumers.

The Song of Songs is a fascinating text. Read as an allegory of God’s love for Israel, the Church, or individual believers, it became one of the most influential texts from the Bible. This volume includes twenty-three essays that cover the Song’s reception history from antiquity to the present. They illuminate the richness of this reception history, paying attention to diverse interpretations in commentaries, sermons, and other literature, as well as the Song’s impact on spirituality, theological and intellectual debates, and the arts.

This landmark interdisciplinary study shines the light of religious Hermetism on Love’s Labour’s Lost, King Lear, Othello and The Tempest and reveals the ‘religion of the mind’ found in the Corpus Hermeticum to be a source of Shakespeare’s understanding of human psychology.